Читать книгу The Latin Dual and Poetic Diction: Studies in Numbers and Figures - Andrew J. Bell - Страница 12

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I translate from Diomedes, de Numero (I. 334-5, K.): Verbs, moreover, are inflected by both numbers, the singular and the plural. The dual is in use among the Greeks only, but by us is excluded, just as it is in nouns. Nowhere can there be found in Latin any expression which shows the dual number. For the Romans, mindful of antique usage, refused to use the dual, which had been adopted as a novelty in the usage of later ages. For though it (the dual) is claimed as belonging from the beginning to discourse as produced by nature, it was disregarded and kept in obscurity, and for a considerable period lay hidden in uncertainty between both numbers, as well the singular as the plural. Later, however, as age followed age, it was adopted through a regard for scrupulous accuracy, and crept in as an intercalar number, and for this reason it is rare in old writers, since its frequent use involves constant error. To such an extent is this the case that all expressions of the Greek tongue that are unintelligible are explained as due to usages of this nature (i.e. of the dual). Only in Attic does it flourish to any great extent, and most of all in Homer, who, whilst he used the Attic dialect, as one favouring his mother-tongue, to follow the opinion of some, was after all not ignorant of ancient usage, as that well-known verse attests. For though they (the heralds) were two, himself mindful of antiquity set forth (Achilles’) greeting of them after this fashion: χαίρετε κήρυκες ἄγγελοι (Il. 1. 334). Besides, it seemed superfluous to the ancients, especially when the inflexion of the dual was shaped after the likeness of the plural.

As the only detailed statement about the dual proceeding from an ancient Greek, I find this passage interesting. Diomedes feels that the dual is later in development than the singular or the plural, that it is not a necessary number, nor one in general, but only in occasional, use; and that from a striving after scrupulous exactness of expression that commonly led to error. Perhaps an examination of the inflexions of the dual for nouns, verbs, and pronouns may make his meaning clearer; we shall see that in languages like Sanskrit and Greek, where the dual is most in use, it developed few inflexions in comparison with the singular and the plural; and these in consequence were likely, if much used, to occasion frequent confusion of meaning. If a number has only one case form, as has the Greek dual, to express the genitive, dative, ablative, locative, and instrumental relations, it is easy to see what confusion would arise from its frequent use even for natural pairs. And so it seems likely that never in any branch of Indo-Germanic was the dual in constant popular use; at most it was used only to some such extent as we find it in Homeric Greek. In Sanskrit the dual has three case forms for nouns: one for the nom.-acc. ending in -au for masculines, -ī for neuters, and -e (=ai) for feminines; a second in -os for the gen.-loc.; a third in -bhyām for the dat.-instr.-abl. For a late and artificial number like the dual it is natural to expect that the endings should be significant, and that is what we find. The ending -e (=ai) is really the neuter ending -ī added to the fem. stem -ā, originally the ending of the so-called neuter plural; and so it may be classed as a mere variety of the neuter ending -ī. The ending -au is probably for older -āvi, where the vi means ‘two’, as it does in viginti. Whether the neuter -ī is another form of vi is a question suggested by forms like νῶϊ and σφῶϊ, which scholars are disposed to answer in the affirmative. In the ending -os of the gen.-loc. the -s seems a reduced form of the genitive ending -as (=os) which has been added to the nom. ending -āu, giving us -au-s (=os). The ending -bhyām is a variation of the dat.-abl. -bhyas, whose nature will appear more clearly when we come to pronouns. It seems to have no cognate parallel except in Avestan; and as it is not found in any of the Central or Western groups, it cannot be claimed for primitive Indo-German. But the ending -os is claimed for Latin, as we saw.

For Greek nouns the dual shows two case forms: the nom.-acc. in -ω for ο stems, in -ᾱ for α stems, and in -ε for the rest; and the gen-dat. ending in -αιν for α stems and in -οιν for the rest. The endings for α stems, as we shall see, are late developments following the analogy of those for ο stems. We find for pronouns νῶε for νῶϊ, which suggests that -ε is a degeneration from -ῑ, the ending still in use for pronouns and ϝίκατι. Probably this -ῑ is for ϝι, identical with vi, of which the reduced form υ is part of the ending -ω (=au). In the gen.-dat. ἵπποιν is shortened from the Homeric ἵπποιϊν (=ἵπποιϝιν), and the relation of this -ϝιν to -ϝι will be seen when we come to pronouns.

In Latin we noticed Sommer’s view that genū and cornū are old duals. It is hard to understand the ū on any other theory; for in the Greek γόνυ and the Sanskrit janu the u is short; and in γουνός (=γονϝος) it is reduced to a consonant. If genu is really an old dual we can understand forms of the gen. sing. found in inscriptions like conventuus (C.I.L. 2. 2416) as for conventuos, showing the ending of the Sanskrit gen.-loc. dual.

For verbs we find a full set of personal forms for the Sanskrit dual, but a defective one for Greek. The so-called secondary or aorist forms are simpler and more primitive than the so-called primary or present ones—a state of things which appears natural only when you think of the aorist as the old timeless form of the verb, out of which the present was evolved. Sanskrit shows for the aorist tenses active: 1st dual -va, 2nd -tam, 3rd -tām; and for the middle: -vahi, -thām, tām. In the present tenses active we have -vas, -thas, -tas, and for the middle -vahe, -the, -te; for the pf. active -va, -thur, -tur, and for the middle -vahe, -the, -te. The imperative shows only one variation from these, -vahai for the 1st middle. In Greek we find for aorists 2nd -τον, 3rd -την in the active, and 1st -μεθον, 2nd -σθον, 3rd -σθην in the middle; for presents 2nd -τον, 3rd -τον in the active, and 1st -μεθον, 2nd -σθον, 3rd -σθον in the middle. At first sight the present endings seem the simpler here; but it may be questioned whether it is really simpler to use the same inflexion for ‘you two’ as for ‘they two’.

The only point of coincidence between the Greek and Sanskrit inflexions is in the endings -τον, -την of the aorist tenses, which correspond phonetically and in meaning to the Sanskrit -tam, tām; and we may take this as our starting-point. The middle endings -σθον, -σθην seem to come from the 2nd pl. ending -σθε on the analogy of -τον, -την; and -μεθον to have come from -μεθα, the 1st pl. ending, on the analogy of -σθον, -σθην. In the aorist tenses at times -τον is used for the 3rd, and -την for the 2nd (Hirt, Gr. Laut- u. Formenlehre, 403.3), and it seems that from this confusion has arisen the use of -τον and -σθον for both the 2nd and 3rd persons in the present tenses. How this came about we shall understand better when we consider the use of σφῶϊ for ‘you two’. Why the 1st dual should develop much later than the 2nd and 3rd, and not at all for the Greek active, we may understand when we see that -va, its oldest ending in Skt., seems originally a word meaning ‘two’ or ‘both’, but later ‘we two’ or ‘we’. If the English ‘we’ is really the same word as the Skt. va, probably the 1st plural was originally very closely connected with the idea of ‘two’, and it was long before the need of a separate form for the 1st dual was felt.

In Sanskrit let us start from -va, the ending of the aorist 1st dual, related to -vi, the noun-ending of the dual, as dva is to dvi. The impf. has -va; the pres. has -vas, on analogy of the 1st pl. -mas; and the middle has aor. -vahi, pres. -vahe, on analogy of the 1st plurals -mahi and -mahe. Following -vas comes the 2nd dual -thas from the 2nd pl. -tha; and following -thas from the 3rd dual -tām we get -tas. For the middle the aorist middle has -tām for the 3rd, which it changes to -thām for the 2nd and to -the and -te for the 2nd and 3rd present after the plural endings -dhvam, -dhve, -nte; and the pf. endings -thur and -tur evidently follow the 3rd pl. pf. ending -ur. So -vahi, -vahe, -vahai follow the first plurals -mahi, -mahe, -mahai. So, like the Greek endings, excepting -τον and -την, all Sanskrit endings excepting -tam and -tām are evidently late formations, and indicate the truth of Diomedes’ view that the dual was a later formation, possibly from a striving after meticulous accuracy.

While in the Latin verb we find no endings in use as dual, Brugmann and Thumb agree that -tis in estis or ducitis is the Skt. -thas (=-thes), and that the primary Italic -tes has changed to -tis after the analogy of -is in ducis. If cornūs is really the old genitive dual, and estis really the old 2nd dual of the pres. active, the only dual inflexion for cases in Latin is in use as a singular inflexion, and the only dual inflexion for persons as a plural inflexion. This balance, too, might seem to indicate that, when the Latin dual disappeared, while it usually passed to the plural, at times it became a singular.

To understand the dual endings of the verb in Greek and Sanskrit we must give some attention to the Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit personal pronouns, and especially to their dual forms in Greek and Sanskrit. Let us begin with νῶϊ, ‘we two’. Homer has an older form, νώ (Od. 15. 475 and 16. 306), which has been adopted by Attic, where it develops the gen.-dat. νῶν, not found in Homer. But Homer has usually νῶϊ, and from it he forms a gen.-dat. νῶιν. We feel that νώ is an old dual like in ending to δύω and ἄμφω; what then is νῶϊ? Brugmann thinks it is for an older νῶϝι, the -ϝι being the same as the ϝι in ϝίκατι and the vi- in viginti; so that νῶϝι is equivalent to ‘we two two’. The Greek νώ is probably the Skt. nau, used as an enclitic for the acc. dat. gen. dual ‘we two’. In later Greek we have νῶε, with the same ending as δοῦρε ‘the two spears’, which may develop on its analogy. The Greek νώ appears in Latin as nos, passing into the plural just as ambo passes into ambos and duo into duos. That nos is first an acc. and later a nom. is confirmed by the use of nau in Skt. as an acc. and not a nom., while in Avestan the corresponding enclitic acc. has developed a nom. nā̊. It may be that we have here the starting-point for the use of the acc. pl. as a nom. in Latin, which we see in homines, a use which spreads to the sing. in the French homme (=hominem), while on (=homo) has become a specialized term.

While nau in Skt. is the enclitic acc. for ‘us two’, nas is the corresponding enclitic pl. for ‘us’. The English ‘us’ is the German uns (=n̥s), which is a reduced grade of nas, which may have been nos or nes in Indo-Germanic. This reduced form appears in the first syllable of the accented acc. asmān (=n̥sman), and in the Aeolic ἄμμε (=n̥sme), the Skt. asma-, found in the dat. asmabhyām and the instr. asmābhis. The Doric form is ἅμε, which gets its aspirate from ὕμε ‘you’, just as ἐσμέν gets its first syllable from ἐστέ. From ἄμμε and ἅμε, old accusatives, come the nominatives ἄμμες and ἅμες. The Attic ἡμεῖς; has changed α to η and -ες to -εις after the analogy of τρεῖς, thinks Brugmann; for it is a plural, not a dual.

We have found the root of ‘us’ in a reduced form of nos; but ‘we’ seems an older form of vos. This form appears in the Skt. vām, the enclitic acc. for ‘you two’, in vayam, the Skt. nom. pl. for ‘we’, and in āvām and yuvām, the nom. duals for ‘we two’ and ‘you two’, as also in vas, the enclitic acc. for ‘you’. We may begin with vām, according to Brugmann for va-am, the va being the same word as is used to form the 1st dual aorist, to which is added -am after the analogy of aham, tvam, vayam, and yūyam. This va ‘two’ is our ‘we’ and the Latin vos, got from the same root and in the same way as the Skt. vas, and being the plural form. The root va ‘two’ has become ‘we two’ by association with verbal forms in the first pl. and ‘you two’ by association with verbal forms in the second pl.

This vām (= two) is joined to the root yu- in yuvām, the Skt. nom. dual ‘you two’. The root yu-, also found in the Skt. nom. pl. yūyam ‘you’, is the root of our ‘you’, and seems the same as the root of Latin iuvo ‘I help’. In Greek we have the Aeolic ὕμμε, and the Doric ὕμε, corresponding phonetically to the Skt. yuṣma- in the instr. yuṣmābhis ‘with you’. It passes to the Attic ὑμεῖς, formed like ἡμεῖς, except that the rough breathing is not got by analogy, but represents the Skt. y. The ν added in νῶιν, σφῶιν, ἡμῖν, and ὑμῖν is probably the same that we have in ποσίν and ἀνδράσιν, though that does not explain it, for it seems older in νῶιν.

Nos and vos, then, are to be associated in derivation with the Skt. enclitic duals nau and vām, and with the Skt. enclitic plurals nas and vas. Brugmann notes that they, too, are used as enclitics at times, as in: ob vos sacro, old for obsecro vos, and: Quo nos cumque feret melior fortuna parente (Od. 1. 7. 25). Both of them have a double genitive, one with a singular ending and a singular meaning: nostri—vestri; and the other a plural in form and meaning: nostrum—vestrum. It is worth noting that these twin genitives are formed, not from nos and vos directly, but from the dual possessive forms noster and vester; so that here again we have a balancing of singular and plural in connexion with the dual, such as we have repeatedly observed.

When we turn to the 2nd and 3rd dual forms we get a balancing, not of number but of person. We noticed how in the aorist tenses of the verb the 3rd dual is used at times for the 2nd, and the 2nd for the 3rd; while in the present tenses the 2nd is used throughout, when we turn to dual pronouns of the 2nd and 3rd persons, we have the 3rd person with a slight variation used throughout. We have seen how νῶϊ and νῶε are used for ‘we two’; σφῶϊ is used for ‘you two’, and σφῶε for ‘they two’. Brugmann’s idea, that in σφῶϊ the φ is for an older ϝ and that it must be connected with σύ, seems most improbable. Both σφῶϊ and σφῶε are dual forms got from σφι after the analogy of νῶϊ and νῶε. Brugmann shows us (Vergl. Gr. II² p. 413) how from οὗ (=σϝοῦ) we get an instrumental σφι or σφιν, mistaken later for a dative and expanded to σφίσι or σφίσιν; how this develops a genitive σφέων, an accusative σφέας or σφέα, and a nominative σφεῖς. There can be little doubt that σφῶϊ and σφῶε are variant duals developed from the same instrumental, and that the problem here is much the same that we have in the German use of Sie for Ihr, and later for Du.

The use of ἡμεῖς and nos for ἐγώ and ego is very common in Greek and Latin, and we shall speak of it presently when dealing with the Plural of Modesty. That of ὑμεῖς and vos for σύ and tu is not developed in either classical Greek or Latin, though we find uses approaching it from which the later uses in Low Latin and French are derived. These consist in the choice of a single person out of the number addressed, so that he or she alone of that number is indicated by the noun or pronoun used in the address; as in: νῆα ἰθύνετε, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ (Od. 12. 82), προσέλθετ’ ὦ παῖ (Soph. O. C. 1104), heus foras exite huc aliquis (Pl. Epid. 399), ibitis Aegaeas sine me, Messala, per undas (Tibull. 1. 3.1), vos, O Calliope, precor, adspirate canenti (Aen. 9. 525).

The use of Sie for Ihr probably arose from a substitution of indirect for direct address, similar to that which substitutes ella for voi in Italian; and in Greek, too, it is likely that, in addressing a herald or a vassal chief, the king feeling that the absent ruler, and not the present herald, should determine the form of address, used ‘they two’, and not ‘you two’, in addressing him and his lord. Latin prefers the second person to the third in such a case, but the Greek use here seems to follow the lines of modern courtesy.