READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 11, 1853.
A well-known rule in the Eton Greek Grammar may serve to introduce the
subject of the present remarks:--"Quinque sunt aoristi primi qui futuri
primi characteristicam non assumunt: ἔθηκα _posui_, ἔδωκα _dedi_, ἥκα
_misi_, εἴπα _dixi_, ἥνεγκα _tuli_." The absolute accuracy of this
sentence is no part of our considerations: it has merely been quoted
for the sake of illustration.
What is the import of this abnormal κ? or, changing the expression,
what is the explanation of the aorist in -κα? Is it certain that it
_is_ an aorist? or, granting this, is it certain that its relations to
the future are exceptional?
The present writer was at one time inclined to the doubts implied by
the first of these alternatives, and gave some reasons[2] for making
the form a _perfect_ rather than an aorist. He finds, however, that
this is only shifting the difficulty. How do _perfects_ come to end in
-κα? The typical and unequivocal perfects are formed by a reduplication
at the beginning, and a modification of the final radical consonant at
the end of words, τύπ(τ)ω, τέ-τυφ-α; and this is the origin of the χ
in λέλεχα, &c., which represents the γ of the root. Hence, even if we
allow ourselves to put the κ in ἔθηκα in the same category with the κ
in ὀμώμοκα, &c., we are as far as ever from the true origin of the form.
[Footnote 2: English Language, p. 489.]
In this same category, however, the two words--and the classes they
represent--_can_ be placed, notwithstanding some small difficulties of
detail. At any rate, it is easier to refer ὀμώμοκα and ἔθηκα to the
same tense than it is to do so with ὀμώμοκα and τέτυφα.
The next step is to be sought in Bopp's Comparative Grammar. Here we
find the following extract:--"The old Slavonic _dakh_ 'I gave,' and
analogous formations remind us, through their guttural, which _takes
the place of a sibilant_, of the Greek aorists ἔθηκα, ἔδωκα, ἧκα. That
which in the old Slavonic has become a rule in the first person of
the three numbers, viz. the _gutturalization of an original s_, may
have occasionally taken place in the Greek, but carried throughout all
numbers. No conjecture lies closer at hand than that of regarding ἔδωκα
_as a corruption of_ ἔδωσα," &c.... "The Lithuanian also presents a
form which is akin to the Greek and Sanscrit aorist, in which, as it
appears to me, _k assumes the place of an original s_." (vol. ii. p.
791, Eastwick's and Wilson's translation.) The italics indicate the
words that most demand attention.