[NOTE A.][text]
On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem tad.
One or two instances may here suffice to show how compassless even the best comparative philologists find themselves if, without a knowledge of Sanskrit, they venture into the deep waters of grammatical research. What can be clearer at first sight than that the demonstrative pronoun that has the same base in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German? Bopp places together (§ 349) the following forms of the neuter:—
| Sanskrit | Zend | Greek | Latin | Gothic |
| tat | taḍ. | τό | is-tud | thata |
and he draws from them the following conclusions:—
In the Sanskrit ta-t we have the same pronominal element repeated twice, and this repeated pronominal element became afterwards the general sign of the neuter after other pronominal stems, such as ya-t, ka-t.
Such a conclusion seems extremely probable, particularly when we compare the masculine form sa-s, the old nom. sing., instead of the ordinary sa. But the first question that has to be answered is, whether this is phonetically possible, and how.
If tat in Sanskrit is ta + ta, then we expect in Gothic tha + tha, instead of which we find tha + ta. We expect in Latin istut, not istud, illut, not illud, it, not id, for Latin represents final t in Sanskrit by t, not by d. The old Latin ablative in d is not a case in point, as we shall see afterwards.
Both Gothic tha-ta, therefore, and Latin istud, postulate a Sanskrit tad, while Zend and Greek at all events do not conflict with an original final media. Everything therefore depends on what was the original form in Sanskrit; and here no Sanskrit scholar would hesitate for one moment between tat and tad. Whatever the origin of tat may have been, it is quite certain that Sanskrit knows only of tad, never of tat. There are various ways of testing the original surd or sonant nature of final consonants in Sanskrit. One of the safest seems to me to see how those consonants behave before taddhita or secondary suffixes, which require no change in the final consonant of the base. Thus before the suffix îya (called cha by Pâṇini) the final consonant is never changed, yet we find tad-îya, like mad-îya, tvad-îya, asmad-îya, yushmad-îya, etc. Again, before the possessive suffix vat final consonants of nominal bases suffer no change. This is distinctly stated by Pâṇini, I. 4, 19. Hence we have vidyut-vân, from vidyut, lightning, from the root dyut; we have udaśvit-vân, from uda-śvi-t. In both cases the original final tenuis remains unchanged. Hence, if we find tad-vân, kad-vân, our test shows us again that the final consonant in tad and kad is a media, and that the d of these words is not a modification of t.
Taking our stand therefore on the undoubted facts of Sanskrit grammar, we cannot recognize t as the termination of the neuter of pronominal stems, but only d;[24] nor can we accept Bopp’s explanation of tad as a compound of ta + t, unless the transition of an original t into a Sanskrit and Latin d can be established by sufficient evidence. Even then that transition would have to be referred to a time before Sanskrit and Gothic became distinct languages, for the Gothic tha-ta is the counterpart of the Sanskrit tad, and not of tat.