Part 12 (1/2)

In the graes, on the contrary, we have before us a language of perfectly transparent structure, and a gra the building of cells in a crystal bee-hive An eine Turkish to be the result of the deliberations of some eminent society of learned men;” but no such society could have devised what the mind of uided only by its innate laws, or by an instinctive power as wonderful as any within the realm of nature

Let us exaeneral sense of the word, or love, as a root, is in Turkish _sev_ This does not yet mean ”to love,” which is _sevu_ or _sevi_; but it only expresses the general idea of loving in the abstract

This root, as we remarked before, can never be touched Whatever syllables , the root itself must stand out in full proed or broken, assilish I fall, I fell, I take, I took, I think, I thought, and similar forms With this one restriction, however, we are free to treat it at pleasure

Let us suppose we possessed nothing like our conjugation, but had to express such ideas as I love, thou lovest, and the rest, for the first ti would seem more natural now than to for,” and then add the different pronouns, as I loving, thou loving, &c Exactly this the Turks have done We need not inquire at present how they produced e call a participle It was a task, however, by no means so facile asconceive it In Turkish, one participle is formed by _er_ _Sev_+_er_ would, therefore,Thou, in Turkish, is _sen_, and as all et _sev-er-sen_, thou lovest You in Turkish is _siz_; hence _sev-er-siz_, you love In these cases the pronouns and the terminations of the verb coincide exactly In other persons the coincidences are less complete, because the pronominal terminations have soular, _sever_, dropped altogether as unnecessary A reference to other cognate languages, however, where either the terminations or the pronouns themselves have maintained a inal Turkish verb, all persons of the present were formed by means of pronouns appended to this participle _sever_ Instead of ”I love, thou lovest, he loves,” the Turkish grammarian says, ”lover-I, lover-thou, lover”

But these personal terminations are not the same in the imperfect as in the present

PRESENT IMPERFECT

Sever-im, I love, sever-di-m, I loved

Sever-sen, sever-di-n

Sever, sever-di

Sever-iz, sever-di-k (miz)

Sever-siz, sever-di-niz

Sever-ler, sever-di-ler

We need not inquire as yet into the origin of the _di_, added to form the imperfect; but it should be stated that in the first person plural of the i occurs in other Tataric dialects, and that _ at these terminations _m_, _n_, _i_, _miz_, _niz_, and _ler_, we find that they are exactly the same as the possessive pronouns used after nouns As the Italian says _fratelmo_, my brother, and as in Hebree say, _El-i_, God (of) I, _ie_ es form the phrases ”my house, thy house, his house,” by possessive pronouns appended to substantives A Turk says,-

Baba, father, baba-ha-n, thy lord

El, hand, el-i, his hand

Oghlu, son, oghlu-muz, our son

Ana, mother, ana-niz, your mother

Kitab, book, kitab-leri, their book

We may hence infer that in the iinally taken in a possessive sense, and that, therefore, what remains after the personal terminations are removed, _sever-di_, was never an adjective or a participle, butterinally expressed by the i-I,” but ”love of me”

How then, could this convey the idea of a past tense as contrasted with the present? Let us look to our own language If desirous to express the perfect, we say, I have loved, _j'ai aiinally, I possess, and in Latin ”anified in fact a friend whom I hold dear,-not as yet, whom I _have_ loved In the course of time, however, these phrases, ”I have said, I have loved,” took the sense of the perfect, and of time past-and not unnaturally, inasmuch as what I _hold_, or _have_ done, _is_ done;-done, as we say, and past In place of an auxiliary possessive verb, the Turkish language uses an auxiliary possessive pronoun to the sa to inally possessive, took a tenification, and became a past or perfect tense This, however, is the very anatorammar, and when a Turk says ”severdim”

he is, of course, as unconscious of its literal force, ”loving belonging to enious part of Turkish is undoubtedly the verb Like Greek and Sanskrit, it exhibits a variety of moods and tenses, sufficient to express the nicest shades of doubt, of surmise, of hope, and supposition In all these forh all the various es of person, number, mood, and time But there is one feature so peculiar to the Turkish verb, that no analogy can be found in any of the Aryan languages-the power of producing new verbal bases by the ive to every verb a negative, or causative, or reflexive, or reciprocal

_Sev- _in_, we obtain a reflexive verb, _sev-in-mek_, which means to love oneself, or rather, to rejoice, to be happy This h allin every respect equal to a new root By adding _ish_ we form a reciprocal verb, _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another

To each of these three forms a causative sense may be imparted by the addition of the syllable _dir_ Thus,

I _sev-mek_, to love, becomes IV _sev-dir-mek_, to cause to love

II _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes V _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice

III _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes VI

_sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause one to love one another