xvi PREFACE.
this class of words,[1] and which will, therefore, be treated in this point of view among the pronominal adjectives.[2] It is likely that a chasm in our literature, very prejudicial to inquiries of this kind, may be shortly filled up by a work ready for the press, and earnestly looked for by all friends of German and general philology, the Old High German Treasury of Graff. What we may expect from a work founded on a comprehensive examination of the MS. treasures of libraries national and foreign, as well as on a correction of printed materials, may be gathered from a survey of the amount contributed to knowledge in a specimen of the work, small, but happily selected, “The Old High German Prepositions.”
F. BOPP.
Berlin, 1833.
- ↑ I refer the reader preliminarily to my two last treatises (Berlin, Ferd.
Dümmler) “On Certain Demonstrative Bases, and their connection with
various Prepositions and Conjunctions,” and “On the Influence of
Pronouns on the Formation of Words.” Compare, also, C. Gottl. Schmidt’s
excellent tract “Quæst. Gramm. de Præpositionibus Græcis,” and the
review of the same, distinguished by acute observations, by A. Benary,
in the Berlin Annual (May 1830). If we take the adverbs of place in
their relation to the prepositions—and a near relation does exist—we shall
find in close connection with the subject a remarkable treatise of the
minister W. von Humboldt, “On the Affinity of the Adverbs of Place to
the Prepositions in certain Languages.” The Zend has many grammatical
rules which were established without these discoveries, and have since
been demonstrated by evidence of facts. Among them it was a satisfaction
to me to find a word, used in Sanskrit only as a preposition (ava, “from,”)
in the Zend a perfect and declinable pronoun (§. 172.). Next we find
sa-cha, “isque,” which in Sanskṛit is only a pronoun, in its Zend shape
AVE ha-cha (§. 53.), often used as a preposition to signify “out of”;
the particle AVE cha, “and,” loses itself, like the cognate que in absque, in
the general signification.
“Remark.—What in §. 68. is said of the rise of the u or o out of the older a is so far to be corrected according to my later conviction, that nothing but a retroactive influence is to be ascribed to the liquids; and the u and the o, in forms like plinṭemu (mo), plintỵu, are to be exempted from the influence of the antecedent consonants.”
- ↑ The arrangement thus announced, as intended, has undergone, as will be seen, considerable modification.—Editor.
