to me not uninteresting to examine whether there was any difference in the origin of the words themselves which might lead to their different application, for few such usages are owing entirely to accident. I was thus led to look at Rask's Grammar, and from Rask to turn to Grimm's third volume, in the few last pages of which the subject of questions and their answers is discussed with his usual learning. So much it seems necessary to state, more as a sort of apology for the nature of the subject, by explaining how I was led to it, than with the intention of confining my remarks in the following pages to the point which first provoked my curiosity, or labouring to preserve the unity of subject, when anything of interest may suggest itself. My intention is to lay before the English reader some small part of what is stated by Grimm on the subject of interrogative particles and their answers, begging him to remember that all that is valuable, he owes to the learned and laborious German.
Grimm[1] divides questions into subjective and objective : in the former it is the copula, in the latter the subject or predicate which we ask about. The subjective has reference to the knowledge or opinion of the person addressed, the objective to the nature of that of which we are speaking. Thus, "have you seen the man .?" (or not[2]) "is he there?" (or not) are subjective and admit in modern English of only one of two answers, yes or no; whereas in the following, "where have you been.? who has done that ?" it is to supply the subject or predicate, or something which modifies them that we put the question, and the answer may of course be anything.
The objective interrogative is a sort of indefinite relative
of which we are looking (if we may so speak) for the antecedent, and in the Sanscrit and all its kindred European tongues
the root of its variously modified forms is K[3], QV, or HV.
The Teutonic h constantly represents the Greek and Latin k; thus we find(
Greek characters)[4], cor ; Gothic, hairtô; (Greek characters), calamus;
