99
following; case marks must be suffixes. And why? These case suffixes are themselves chiefly verbs. It is the law of the position of the verb which originates and necessitates the law of the position of case marks. The one law embraces the other. Treat the case mark as a verb and its proper place is after its noun. Kara “from” and made “to” must then be looked for among verbs meaning for example to begin and terminate action. Among Chinese roots we have kai to open, k’i begin, pit to end. To some such roots I should look for the origin of these Japanese case marks.
Another group of case marks, those which indicate the nominative, genitive and accusative, are more correctly regarded as demonstrative pronouns. The Japanese and Mongol usage in regard to these are the same, as may be seen by comparing them. In accounting for their origin there need be no great difficulty felt. Take the old English, John Smith his book. His has in modern English become abbreviated into an s. The principle would be the same if he were used instead of his. Probably no genitive particle in any language has any other origin than this. Bopp explains genitives in this way, and his system in this respect serves as well for the Eastern Asiatic languages as for those which he examined.
We may go farther than this. The growth of the European verb tree may be illustrated from Japanese and kindred languages. The European languages are the most perfect and finished in the world. Rudimentary forms are therefore more lost to view in Latin and Greek Grammar than in the more primitive speech of Eastern Asia where the verb is in a sort of chrysalis condition. As the caterpillar changes into the chrysalis and then into the butterfly, and the leaf into the bud and then into the flower, so the bare and unornamental forms of Chinese grammar are seen passing into the crude transitional state assumed by the verb in Japanese and Mongol, previous to their European development, embracing those varieties of voice, mood, tense and person which strike us by their precision, richness and beauty. By dissecting
