The explanation of the ‘weak’ Gothonic preterit from a coalescence of did (loved = love did) was long one of the strongholds of the agglutination theory, Bopp’s original collocation of these forms with other forms which could not be thus explained (see above 51) having passed into oblivion. Now we have Collitz’s comprehensive book Das schwache Präteritum, 1912, in which the formative consonant is shown to have been Aryan t, and the close correspondence not only with the passive participle, but also with the verbal nouns in -ti is duly emphasized.
The impossibility of explaining the Latin perfect in -vi from composition with fui has been demonstrated by Merguet (see Walde in Streitberg’s Gesch., 2. 220). Instead of this rectilinear explanation, scholars now incline to assume an intricate play of various analogical influences starting from a pre-ethnic perfect in w in isolated instances.
Many have explained the case ending -s as a coalesced demonstrative pronoun sa or, as it is now given, so; the difficulty that the same s denotes now the nominative and now the genitive was got over by Curtius (C 12) by the assumption that sa was added at two distinct periods, and that each period made a different use of the addition, though Curtius does not tell us how one or the other function could be evolved from such a pronoun. The latest attempt at explanation, which reaches me as I am writing this chapter, is by Hermann Möller (KZ 49. 219): according to him the common Aryan and Semitic nominative ended in o and the genitive in e, but to this was added in the masculine, and more rarely in the feminine, the pronoun s as a definite article, so that the primitive form corresponding to Lat. lupus meant ‘the wolf’ and lupu ‘(a) wolf’; later the s-less form was given up, and lupus came to be used for both ‘the wolf’ and ‘wolf’ (similarly presumably in the genitive, if we translate the presumed original forms into Latin lupis ‘the wolf’s’ and lupi ‘(a) wolf’s,’ later lupi in both functions). In Semitic, inversely, an element m, corresponding to the Aryan accusative ending, was added as an indefinite article, the m-less form thus becoming definite, but in the oldest Babylonian-Assyrian the distinction has been given up, and the form in m is (like the Latin form in s) used both definitely and indefinitely. Ingenious as these constructions are, the whole theory seems to me highly artificial, and it is difficult to imagine that both Aryans and Semites, after having evolved such a valuable distinction as that between ‘the wolf’ and ‘a wolf,’ expressed by simple means, should have wilfully given it up—to evolve it again in a later period.[95] Fortunately one is allowed to confess one’s ignorance of the origin of the case endings s and m, but if I were on pain of death to choose between Möller’s hypothesis and the suggestion thrown out by Humboldt (Versch 129), that the light (high-pitched) s symbolized the living (personal) and active (the subject), and the dark (low-pitched) m the lifeless (neutral) and passive (the object), I should certainly prefer the latter explanation.
Hirt (GDS 37) also thinks that the s found in Aryan cases is an originally independent word, only he thinks that this se, so was not originally a demonstrative pronoun, but the particle, which with the extension i is found in Gothic sai ‘ecce,’ and as it can thus be compared with the particle c in Lat. hic, it is clear that it might be added in all cases—and as a matter of fact Hirt finds it in six different cases in the singular and in all cases in the plural except the genitive. Hirt makes no attempt at explaining how these various case-forms have come to acquire the signification (function) with which we find them in the oldest documents; “the s element had nothing to do with the denotation of any case, number or gender, and only after it had been added to some cases and not to others could it come to be distinctive of cases” (p. 39). In other words, his explanation explains just nothing at all. The same is true with regard to the ‘particles’ om or em, e, o, i, which he thinks were added in other cases, and when he ends (p. 42) by saying that “this must be sufficient to give a glimpse of the way in which Aryan flexion originated,” the only thing we have really seen is the haphazard way in which this flexion is formed, and the impossibility at present of arriving at a fully satisfactory explanation of these things. I should especially demur to the two suppositions underlying Hirt’s theory that Aryan had at one period a completely flexionless structure, and that the same sound when occurring in various cases must have had the same origin: it seems much more probable to me that the s of the nominative and the s of the genitive were not at first identical.[96]
That item of the coalescence theory which probably appealed most to the fancy of scholars and laymen alike was the explanation of the personal endings in the verbs from the personal pronouns: we have an m in the first person of the mi-verbs (esmi) and in the pronoun me, etc., and we have a t in the third person (esti) and in a third-person pronoun or demonstrative (to); it is, therefore, quite natural to think that esmi is simply the root es ‘to be’ + the pronoun mi ‘I,’ and esti es + the other pronoun, and to extend this view to the other persons. And yet not even this has been allowed to stand unchallenged by later disrespectful linguists, headed by A. H. Sayce (Techmer’s Zeitschr. f. allg. Sprwiss. i. 22) and Hirt. As a matter of fact, the theory is based exclusively on the above-mentioned correspondence in the first and third persons singular, while the dual and plural endings do not at all agree with the corresponding personal pronouns and the endings of the second person can only be compared with the pronoun through the employment of phonological tricks unworthy of a scientific linguist. Even in the first person the correspondence is not complete, for besides -mi we have other endings: -m, which cannot be very well considered a shortened -mi (and which agrees, as Sayce remarks, much more closely with the accusative ending of nouns), -o and -a, neither of which can be explained from any known pronoun. There is thus nothing for it except to say, as Brugmann does (KG § 770): “The origin of the personal endings is not clear”; cf. also Misteli 47: “The relations between personal endings and the independent personal pronouns must be much more evident to justify this view.... The Aryan language offers direct evidence against the assumption that a sentence has been thus drawn together, because it uses in the verbal forms of the first and third person sg. pronominal stems which are otherwise employed only as objects, and, moreover, would here place the subject after the predicate, though in sentences it observes the opposite order.” Meillet expresses himself very categorically (Bulletin de la Soc. de Ling. 1911, 143): “Scarcely any linguist who has studied Aryan languages would venture to affirm that *-mi of the type Gr. fēmi is an old personal pronoun.”
The impression left on us by all these cases is that many of the earlier explanations by agglutination have proved unsatisfactory, and that linguists are nowadays inclined either to leave the forms entirely unexplained or else to admit less rectilinear developments, in which we see the speakers of the old languages groping tentatively after means of expression and finding them only by devious and circuitous courses. It is, of course, difficult to classify such explanations, and the agglutination or coalescence theory has to be supplemented by various other kinds of explanation; but I think one of these, which has not received its legitimate share of attention, is important and distinctive enough to have its own name, and I propose to term it the ‘secretion’ theory.
XIX.—§ 13. Secretion.
By secretion I understand the phenomenon that one integral portion of a word comes to acquire a grammatical signification which it had not at first, and is then felt as something added to the word itself. Secretion thus is a consequence of a ‘metanalysis’ (above, Ch. X § [2]); it shows its full force when the element thus secreted comes to be added to other words not originally possessing this element.
A clear instance is offered in the history of some English possessive pronouns. In Old English min and þin the n is kept throughout as part and parcel of the words themselves, the other cases having such forms as mine, minum, minre, exactly as in German mein, meine, meinem, meiner, etc. But in Middle English the endings were gradually dropped, and min and þin for a short time became the only forms. Soon, however, n was dropped before substantives beginning with a consonant, but was retained in other positions (my father—mine uncle, it is mine); then the former form was transferred also to those cases in which the pronoun was used (as an adjunct) before words beginning with vowels (my father, my uncle—it is mine). The distinction between my and mine, thy and thine, which was originally a purely phonetic one, exactly like that between a and an (a father, an uncle), gradually acquired a functional value, and now serves to distinguish an adjunct from a principal (or, to use the terms of some grammars, a conjoint from an absolute form); my came to be looked upon as the proper form, while the n of mine was felt as an ending serving to indicate the function as a principal word. That this is really the instinctive feeling of the people is shown by the fact that in dialectal and vulgar speech the same n is added to his, her, your and their, to form the new pronouns hisn, hern, yourn, theirn: “He that prigs what isn’t hisn, when he’s cotch’d, is sent to prison. She that prigs what isn’t hern, At the treadmill takes a turn.”
Another instance of secretion is -en as a plural ending in E. oxen, G. ochsen, etc. Here originally n belonged to the word in all cases and all numbers, just as much as the preceding s; ox was an n stem in the same way as, for instance, Lat. (homo), hominem, hominis, etc., or Gr. kuōn, kuna, kunos, etc., are n stems. In Gothic n is found in most of the cases of similar n stems. In OE. the nom. is oxa, the other cases in the sg. oxan, pl. oxan (oxen), oxnum, oxena, but in ME. the n-less form is found throughout the singular (gen. analogically oxes), and the plural only kept -n. Thus also a great many other words, e.g. (I give the plural forms) apen, haren, sterren (stars), tungen, siden, eyen, which all of them belonged to the n declension in OE. When -en had thus become established as a plural sign, it was added analogically to words which were not originally n stems, e.g. ME. caren, synnen, treen (OE. cara, synna, treow), and this ending even seemed for some time destined to be the most usual plural ending in the South of England, until it was finally supplanted by -s, which had been the prevalent ending in the North; eyen, foen, shoen were for a time in competition with eyes, foes, shoes, and now -n is only found in oxen (and children). In German to-day things are very much as they were in Southern ME.: -en is kept extensively in the old n stems and is added to some words which had formerly other endings, e.g. hirten, soldaten, thaten. The result is that now plurality is indicated by an ending which had formerly no such function (which, indeed, had no function at all); for if we look upon the actual language, oxen (G. ochsen) is = ox (ochs) singular + the plural ending -en; only we must not on any account imagine that the form was originally thus welded together (agglutinated)—and if in G. soldaten we may speak of -en being glued on to soldat, this ending is not, and has never been, an independent word, but is an originally insignificative part secreted by other words.