(1) Nothing can be proved with regard to the ultimate genesis of flexion in general from the adduced examples, for in all of them the elements were already fully flexional before the coalescence (cf. ON. finnask, fannsk; It. finirò, finirai, finira; ON. maðrenn, mannenn, mansens, etc.). What they show, then, is really nothing but the growth of new flexional formations on an old flexional soil, and it might be imagined that the fusion would not have taken place, or not so completely, if the minds of the speakers had not been already prepared to accept formations of this character. I do not, however, attach much importance to this argument, and turn to those that are more cogent.
(2) The number of actual forms proved beyond a doubt to have originated through coalescence is comparatively small. It is true that not a few derivative syllables were originally independent; still, if we compare them with the number of those for which no such origin has been proved or even proposed, we find that the proportion is very small indeed. In the list of English suffixes enumerated in Sweet’s Grammar, only eleven can be traced back to independent words, while 74 are not thus explicable. Anyone going through the countless suffixes enumerated in the second volume of Brugmann’s Vergleichende Grammatik will, I think, be struck with the impossibility of any great number of them being traced back to words in the same way as hood, etc., above: their forms and, still more, their vague spheres of meaning, and on the whole their manner of application, distinctly speak against such an origin.
As to real flexional endings traceable to words, their number is even comparatively smaller than that of derivative suffixes; the three or four instances named above are everywhere appealed to, but are there so many more than these? And are they numerous enough to justify so general an assertion? My impression is that the basis for the induction is very far from sufficient.
(3) This argument is strengthened when we are able to point out instances in which, as a matter of fact, flexional endings have arisen in a way that is totally opposed to the agglutinative, which then must renounce all claims to be the only possible way for a language to arrive at flexional formatives. See below (§ [13]) on Secretion.
(4) Assuming the theory to be true, we should expect much greater regularity, both in formal (morphological) and in semantic (syntactic) respect than we actually find in the old Aryan languages; for if one definite element was added to signify one definite modification of the idea, we see no reason why it should not have been added to all words in the same way. As a matter of fact, the Romanic future, the Scandinavian passive voice and definite article present much greater regularity than is found in the flexion of nouns and verbs in old Aryan.
XIX.—§ 11. Irregularity Original.
It will be objected that the irregularity which we find in these old languages is of later growth, and that, in fact, flexion, as Schuchardt says, is “anomal gewordene agglutination.” Whitney said that “each suffix has its distinct meaning and office, and is applied in a whole class of analogous words” (L. 254), and in reading Schleicher’s Compendium one gains the impression that the old Aryan sounds and forms were like a regiment of well-trained soldiers marching along in the best military style, while all irregularities were the result of later decay in each language separately. But the trend of the whole scientific development of the last fifty years has been in the direction of demonstrating more and more irregularity in the original forms: where formerly only one ending was assumed for the same case, etc., now several are assumed. (See, e.g., Walde in Streitberg’s Gesch., 2. 194, Thumb, ib. 2. 69.) And as with the forms, so also with the meanings and applications of the forms. Madvig as early as 1857 (p. 27. Kl 202) had seen that the signification of the grammatical forms must originally have been extremely vague and fluctuating, but most scholars went on imagining that each case, each tense, each mood had originally stood for something quite settled and definite, until gradually the progress of linguistics made away with that conception point by point. In place of the belief that the original Aryan verb had a definite system of tense forms, it is now generally assumed that different ‘aspects’ (‘aktionsarten’), somewhat like those of Slav verbs, were indicated, and that the notion of ‘time’ differences was only afterwards developed out of the notion of aspect: but if we compare the divisions and definitions of these aspects given by various scholars, we see how essentially vague this notion is; instead of being a model system of nice logical distinctions, the original condition must rather have been one in which such notions as duration, completion, result, beginning, repetition were indistinctly found as germs, from which such ideas as perfect and imperfect, past and present, were finally evolved with greater and greater clearness.
Similar remarks apply to moods. All attempts at finding out, deductively or inductively, the fundamental notion (grundbegriff) attached to such a mood as the subjunctive have failed: it is impossible to establish one original, sharply circumscribed sphere of usage, from which all the various, partly conflicting, usages in the actually existing languages can be derived. The usual theory is that there existed one true subjunctive, characterized by long thematic vowels -ē-, -ā-, -ō-, and distinct from that an optative, characterized by a formative -iē-: -ī-,[93] and that these two were fused in Latin. But, as Oertel and Morris have shown in their valuable article “An Examination of the Theories regarding the Nature and Origin of Indo-European Inflection” (Harvard Studies in Classical Philol. XVI, 1905) it is probably safer to assume for the Indo-European period substantial identity of meaning in the modal formatives iē: ī and the long thematic vowels -ē-, -ā-, -ō-, which were then continued undifferentiated in Latin, while on the one hand the Germanic branch has practically discarded the forms with long thematic vowel and confined itself to the i suffix, and on the other hand two branches, Greek and Indo-Iranic, have availed themselves of the formal difference and separated a ‘subjunctive’ and an ‘optative’ mood.
XIX.—§ 12. Coalescence Theory dropped.
In the historical part I have already mentioned some instances of coalescence explanations of Aryan forms which have been abandoned by most scholars, such as the theory that the r of the Latin passive is a disguised se, which would agree very well with the Scandinavian passive, but falls to the ground when one remembers that corresponding forms are found in Keltic, where the transition from s to r is otherwise unknown: these forms are now believed to be related to some r forms found in Sanskrit, but there not possessed of any passive signification, this latter being thus a comparatively late acquisition of Keltic and Italic: these two branches turning an existing, non-meaning consonant to excellent use in their flexional system and generalizing it in the new application.[94]