Before passing on to the subject of morphology it will be IleeetiSarY to speak of one of the most important topics discussed, though not definitive ly settled, in the last few years. Verner showed that. accent or stress influenced the character of ecmsonants according to the of the syllable. The effect of stress, however, as already explained, is also patent as regards the vowel. which, as in °Too, *Lev (originally /WO, shifts with the accent. lint of late it has been shown that another very important law of ae centuation has been at work in determining the form of stems. Fick and '.:tlitiler have the importance of pitch. that is, musket accent, as contrasted with stress accent. They show that there is a certain relation between the palatal vowel and a high piteh, and a guttural vowel and a low pitch. a relation explicable on physio logical grounds; the action of the vocal or Fats naturally associating, the high pitch with the palatal c and the low pitch with the guttural o. Thu, there is a natural connection between the neeetit or nomaccent and the form of the two vowels in Xi the e-vowel having the high pitch, the o•vowel having the low pitch. This matter has not vet been thoroughly investigated, and there are many phenomena not yet explained by it. I.'or example, in Xtryos the low pitch has the stress. Rut at 4111 events, accent is evidently a factor which will. when properly understood, t•xp]ain much in stem-formation.
loariumouv. This studies change of form and the valise of change. The chief factors tending to change the form of ;wills :u•e 'phonetic degenera tion,' as it used to be called, or phonetic Varia tion and growth• due partly to individual pecu liarities, hut 1. to the attrition of speech, force of expression, the law of least resistance, and the interaction of the individual and his en vironment. Change of stress and elmnge of pitch and the substitution of stressed accent for pitch affect the form as well a.s the accent of words. Analogy (q.v.), especially false analogy, causes c•Ihanges, in the endings particularly, and the growth or change of function in one class of words is liable :eriimsly to affeet the form and even the existence of words of ;mother class. im itation iliac to association may be conscious or 1111 1.1111sviOnS. COMplete changes in the prommeia that of a vowel may occur over a wide area in a short thne and then remain, or as suddenly dis appear. 'Most of these changes of form are the result of a long series of gradual minute altera tions. intervening in time, laAli in phonetics and in morphology. Difference of meaning may be mentioned last as having had efl•ect on form, a factor more or less eonneeted with accent. Apart from questions of the philosophy of change, morphology has to do with the forms as presented in language, wide!' may most eonveni ently be discussed under the head of roots (see RuOTS), stems, the forms of nouns, and the forms of verbs.
In regard to the stem.complex of root and end ing. apart from a Vague theory of Westphal that 'near' and 'distant' sonuds have something to do with steneformation. only use theory has been opposed to Itopp's agglutination theory. This is a profound study by Ludwig, marred only by the assumption of absolute lawlessness in phonetics. 'flie points made are that the (railings serve differ ent purposes, a first person serves as third, a lo cative as a genitive, etc., and the further hack we go the looser is the language. Ludwig substi tutes for agglutination. therefore, the theory of adaptation. Verha I endings a re not from no personal endings existed; before the verb was the indefinite infinitive used for any person, any tense, and both imperative or indicative in mean ing: suffixes aequired definite implication by a gradual adaptation of special meanings, having originally only a denonstrativt• sense. While containing much truth. this adaptation theory is too exaggerated to acceptable as a working hypothesis. Another theory, that of Sc]erer. re gards endings of steins of verbs and nouns as in dicating a locative sense, while Bonfev traced all 4.1111i11,2.1 Erma noti (hid kying that nouns are from verbs) : but the two latter views are too fantastie to be discussed.
Foams Nouns. The same word is noun and verb in its most primitive form, as Sanskrit dati, 'a giving' or 'he gives.' Nouns had seven cases. perhaps more, in Indo-European. The same ease had different endings, but. on the other hand, it is most likely, despite the fact that this seems to point to other cases, that, had such eases ex isted, some traces would have been preserved. Different endings may gradually have become restricted in application, and, as in the ease of the Greek dative, different functions may have been absorbed by one ending, tending to a loss of another ending. The seven eases have endings more or less uniform, but apart from modifica tions caused by the form of the stem, some cases are compounds of two case-endings and some eases show different forms according as a word is declined as noun or pronoun. The seven cases are nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, genitive, ablative, locative. They are found in the singular, dual, and plural, but except for the nom inative and accusative dual in au (dr-iiu, duo) the dual endings are not identical in the different languages and are omitted here. The vocative is not a case, but the bare stem in weak form. An apparent ending in the n-stems is only a vowel weakening. The chief endings are: Nom. sg., s, an; pl., os (cs), (o) [a].