[4] Only in one subordinate point did Rask make a mistake (b = b), which is all the more venial as there are extremely few examples of this sound. Bredsdorff (Aarsagerne, 1821, p. 21) evidently had the law from Rask, and gives it in the comprehensive formula which Paul (Gr. 1. 86) misses in Rask and gives as Grimm’s meritorious improvement on Rask. “The Germanic family has most often aspirates where Greek has tenues, tenues where it has mediæ, and again mediæ where it has aspirates, e.g. fod, Gr. pous; horn, Gr. keras; þrír, Gr. treis; padde, Gr. batrakhos; kone, Gr. gunē; ti, Gr. deka; bærer, Gr. pherō; galde, Gr. kholē; dør, Gr. thura.” To the word ‘horn’ was appended a foot-note to the effect that h without doubt here originally was the German ch-sound. This was one year before Grimm stated his law!
[5] The muddling of the negatives is Grimm’s, not the translator’s.
[6] I am therefore surprised to find that in a recent article (Am. Journ. of Philol. 39. 415, 1918) Collitz praises Grimm’s view in preference to Rask’s because he saw “an inherent connexion between the various processes of the shifting,” which were “subdivisions of one great law in which the formula T:A:M may be used to illustrate the shifting (in a single language) of three different groups of consonants and the result of a double or threefold shifting (in three different languages) of a single group of consonants. This great law was unknown to Rask.” Collitz recognizes that “Grimm’s law will hold good only if we accept the term ‘aspirate’ in the broad sense in which it is employed by J. Grimm”—but ‘broad’ here means ‘wrong’ or ‘unscientific.’ There is no kreislauf in the case of initial k = h; only in a few of the nine series do we find three distinct stages (as in tres, three, drei); here we have in Danish three stages, of which the third is a reversal to the first (tre); in E. mother we have five stages: t, þ, ð, d, (OE. modor) and again ð. Is there an “inherent connexion between the various processes of this shifting” too?
[7] Probably under the influence of Humboldt, who wrote to him (September 1826): “Absichtlich grammatisch ist gewiss kein vokalwechsel.”
[8] Humboldt’s relation to Bopp’s general ideas is worth studying; see his letters to Bopp, printed as Nachtrag to S. Lefman’s Franz Bopp, sein leben und seine wissenschaft (Berlin, 1897). He is (p. 5) on the whole of Bopp’s opinion that flexions have arisen through agglutination of syllables, the independent meaning of which was lost; still, he is not certain that all flexion can be explained in that way, and especially doubts it in the case of ‘umlaut,’ under which term he here certainly includes ‘ablaut,’ as seen by his reference (p. 12) to Greek future stalô from stéllō; he adds that “some flexions are at the same time so insignificant and so widely spread in languages that I should be inclined to call them original; for example, our i of the dative and m of the same case, both of which by their sharper sound seem intended to call attention to the peculiar nature of this case, which does not, like the other cases, denote a simple, but a double relation” (repeated p. 10). Humboldt doubts Bopp’s identification of the temporal augment with the a privativum. He says (p. 14) that cases often originate from prepositions, as in American languages and in Basque, and that he has always explained our genitive, as in G. manne-s, as a remnant of aus. This is evidently wrong, as the s of aus is a special High German development from t, while the s of the genitive is also found in languages which do not share in this development of t. But the remark is interesting because, apart from the historical proof to the contrary which we happen to possess in this case, the derivation is no whit worse than many of the explanations resorted to by adherents of the agglutinative theory. But Humboldt goes on to say that in Greek and Latin he is not prepared to maintain that one single case is to be explained in this way. Humboldt probably had some influence on Bopp’s view of the weak preterit, for he is skeptical with regard to the did explanation and inclines to connect the ending with the participle in t.
[9] Humboldt seems to be the inventor of this term (1821; see Streitberg, IF 35. 191).
[10] It has been objected to the use of Aryan in this wide sense that the name is also used in the restricted sense of Indian + Iranic; but no separate name is needed for that small group other than Indo-Iranic.
[11] In Lefmann’s book on Bopp, pp. 292 and 299, there are some interesting quotations on this point.
[12] For example, the correct appreciation of Scandinavian o sounds and especially the recognition of syllables without any vowel, for instance, in G. mittel, schmeicheln, E. heaven, little; this important truth was unnoticed by linguists till Sievers in 1876 called attention to it and Brugmann in 1877 used it in a famous article.
[13] A young German linguist, to whom I sent the pamphlet early in 1886, wrote to me: “Wenn man sich den spass machte und das ding übersetzte mit der bemerkung, es sei vor vier jahren erschienen, wer würde einem nicht trauen? Merkwürdig, dass solche sachen so unbemerkt, ‘dem kleinen veilchen gleich,’ dahinschwinden können.” A short time afterwards the pamphlet was reprinted with a short preface by Vilh. Thomsen (Copenhagen, 1886).