Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/274

wire, hickory-pole, campaign-document, gun-boat, without previous possession of the simple words of which are formed these modern compounds. Fearful and fearless, in like manner, imply the existence beforehand of the noun fear, and of the adjectives full and loose, or their older equivalents, which have assumed, with reference to that noun, the quality of suffixes. Nor should we have any adverbial suffix ly, if we had not earlier had the adjective like, nor any preterits in d (as I love-d), but for the fact that our Germanic ancestors owned an imperfect corresponding to our did, which they added to their new verbs to express past action. Any one, I think, will allow that elements distinguishable by word-analysis which can thus be identified with independent words are thereby proved to have been themselves once in possession of an independent status in the language, and to have been actually reduced by combination to the form and office with which our analysis finds them endowed. But farther, few or none will be found to question that all those formative elements which belong to the Germanic languages alone, of which no traces are to be discovered in any other of the branches of the Indo-European family, which constitute the peculiar patrimony of some or all of the dialects of our branch, must have been gained by the latter since their separation from the common stock, and in the same way with the rest, even though we can no longer demonstrate the origin of each affix. With the disguising and effacing effects of the processes of linguistic change fully present to our apprehensions, we shall not venture to conclude that those cases in which our historical researches fail to give us the genesis of both the elements of a compound form are fundamentally different from those in which it fully succeeds in doing so. The difference lies, not in the cases themselves, but in our attitude toward them; in our accidental possession of information as to the history of the one, and our lack of it as to that of the other. This reasoning, however, obviously applies not to Germanic speech alone; it is equally legitimate and cogent in reference to all Indo-European language. We cannot refuse to believe that the whole history of this family of languages has been, in its