Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 36
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

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Page 200
________________ 186 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. (JULY, 1907. tone, as in Chinese. And because of this, the form or tone which a word can be made to assume is capable of indicating the class to which it belongs for the nonce. In Chinese the same word can become a noun or verb and so on merely by the tone used in attering it : tone being to Chinese what inflexion is to Latin. So the Latin stem domin by changing its form does all sorts of things and belongs to all sorts of classes. As domin-1 it is an indicator (noan): as domin-or it is a predicator (verb): as domin-ans it is an explicator (adjective): as domin-i it may be a subordinate noun showing its intimate relation to some other word or it may be simply a noon according to context : as domin-o it is, again according to context, an illustrator (adverb) of a verb or a complementary indicator, i.e., & noun governed by a verb, as we have all been taught to say: as dominum it is always a complementary indicator: and so on. It is further obvious that words transferable from class to class belong primarily to a certain class and secondarily to the others, that a transfer involves the fulfilment of a new function, and that a word in its transferred condition becomes a new word connected with the form fulfilling the primary function, the relation between the forms or tones, i. e., the words so connected, being that of parent and offshoot. Form and tone therefore can indicate the class to which a parent word and its offshoots respectively belong. In English it is not usually difficult to detect primary and secondary function, or parent and offshoot words. Thus, in the case of "bridge" the noun and bridge" the verb: of " kill the verb and kill” the noun, or in the caso of " kill" and " killer.” In the inflected languages it is never easy, as all the observable forms are probably connected secondary forms of some older lost word. It is not easy to say offhand what should be affixed to domin as the form of its primary function. But the principle of the application of every existing inflected form is precisely that above explained. It is by the above induction that one is led to the argument that form grows out of function, or, to put it in a familiar way, accidence grows out of syntax, because when connected words differ in form they must consist of & principal part or stem, and an additional part or functional affix. The function of the stem is to indicate the meaning of the word, and the function of the fanctional affix to modify that meaning with reference to the function of the word. This modification can be expressed by indicating the class to which the word belongs, or by indicating its relation or correlation to the other words in the sentence. All this is illustrated in the words just quoted. The meaning of those connected words lies in the stem domin, and this meaning is modified, and the function in the sentence and relation to its other words of each individual is determined, by affixing us, or, ans, i, o, um and so on. But the stem itself may consist of an original meaning and thus be a simple stem, or it may contain a modification of an original meaning and so be a compound stem. A compound stem must consist of a principal part or root and additional parts or radical affixes, the function of the root being to indicate the original meaning of the stem, and of the radical affixes to indicate the modifications by which the meaning of the root has been changed into the meaning of the stem. As simple examples may be instanced, the modern English words "form" and "information," of which the former is a simple stem and the latter & compound stem, built up of the root "form" and the radical affixes "in" and " at " and the functional affix " ion." So too the stem domin already mentioned is a compound stem with root dom, having the sense of "(to be ) set," modified into the sense of " mastery" by a radical affix, which has there the form of in. Further, since words fulfil functions and belong to classes, they must possess inherent qualities, which can be indicated by qualitative affixes and by tones. There are many English words, whose modern forms are however chiefly old decayed inflexional forms, which can illustrate

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