A Short Comparative Grammar of English and German, Tr. by the Author (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 Excerpt: ...the adjectives einec, notec, schadec, schuldec, respectively kraftig, miichtig, etc., --having been erroneously traced back to the simple words ein, noth, schade, schuld, kraft, macht, etc., the speaker formed, in the same way, from ende and theil, for instance, the verbs end-ig-en and be-theil-ig-en, though no adjectives end-ig and theil-ig actually exist. From this false analogy has sprung the causative suffix-igen, which is widely diffused: be-fehl-igen, be-schaft-igen, ver-ein-igen, genehm-igen, be-schdn-igen, etc. VI. G.-ieren, -iren.--It is only on account of the wide use of this element, that it may be held to deserve a place in our list; for it is of Romance origin, though modified by the general G. infinitive ending: G. spazier-en--li. spatidrl (to walk). It characterizes chiefly borrowed verbs (rasonn-iren), or such as are derived from borrowed words (stud-iren). But, at the time when it became general under the influence of the French language (XVIIth-XVIIIth century), it was even attached to some Germanic stems, as in stolz-iren (to strut), schatt-iren (to shadow), buchstab-iren (to spell). Section III. OLD WORDS CHANGED TO SUFFIXES. (108) This subject has been seen above to belong properly to the study of composition, inasmuch as, for instance, childhood and kind-heit, if referred to their origin, are no less truly compound nouns than child-birth and kind-bett. The only difference lies in the fact that birth and bett are still extant in their respective languages, while hood and heit have long been obsolete. Now, this difference, though theoretically quite insignificant, is important in practice; for, since these final syllables have no longer any meaning by themselves and are merely used as a vague derivative exponent, they have gradually acquir.