The plural mas (for masi, masa, I and he — that is,
we), faithfully represented by the Lat. mus, is also repre-



The Indo-European Verb. 3 1 3

sen ted, in spite of the nasal termination, by the Greek
(t.ev (Xvofiev, rvirTOfiev) for /we? (^olian, cpepofiLes:), and
by the French noics aimdmes, nous eHmes. Tas or
tJias (for dhvas, for twasas, thou and they) does not
exist in Sanscrit properly speaking (ta, thds), nor in
Greek, but Latin and French have retained it : legitis,
essetis ; dites, faites, vous ites. The third person, nti, has
been atrophied in various fashions ; it is almost un-
altered in the present Sanscrit, Zend, Lithuanian, and
even in the Greek ovtL, afterwards elcri, ova-i, wcri, acri ;
it is still recognisable in the Latin sunt, amant, monent,
audiunt, &c., in the Gothic bairand (ferunt), they bear,
and sind, they are ; and in French in the silent termi-
nation of the words awient, aimaient, aimeraient, no
longer pronounced except in Normandy {Us ne peuvte
pas, Us ne veulte pas) ; but the termination nti is gene-
rally reduced to an n, sometimes suppressed or replaced
(in Sanscrit) by a vague sound, uh. In Greek the
letter n has a double use in the imperfect : eXd/i^avov,
I took, they took ; in the aorist it has disappeared from
the first person, eXvaa, I loosed. Italian has become
fixed at the Greek stage, so7io, amano, amino, adding,
however, an as a support. From these facts I con-
clude that if the destiny of the suffixes and termina-
tions excites our wonder, it is far less on account of
alteration and loss, than of the extreme tenacity of
these frail particles. The sign of the first person alone
has almost entirely disappeared, doubtless because it
was the least useful. Greek, Latin, and the Germanic
languages, in adopting verbs ending in 0, u, and e have
only followed the example set by the ancient Indo-
European.
