THE VERB 314 guished by an a of the middle ending, but examples like Av. dazde 3 du. pf. and Skt. ciMthe indicate that this is an innova- tion. It can only have come from formations of roots in d like dad&the , daddte where the d is originally part of the root as in 2 sg. daddtha (beside daditkd) and 2 pi. dddhdtana (beside dhattana ) . §7. Structure and Origin of the Terminationai. System A comparison of the primary and secondary endings shows that from the historical point of view they are incorrectly named. It is the ' secondary ' endings that are primary, and vice versa. The relation of the series -m, -s, -t, - an(t ) with the primary -mi, -si, -ti, - anti can only be explained by the assump- tion that in the latter series a particle -i indicating present time has been secondarily added. In the same way in the imperative endings -tu, -antu, a particle -« is added to the same basic ter- minations. This is made clear, among other things, by the fact that these same elements -i and -11 may appear by themselves in formations that have no personal termination, e.g. in Gk. <f>ep€i (fcpe + i), Hitt, sakki ' knows ' and in Hittite imperatives of the -hi class : aku , ddu ( ak - f to die dd- 1 to take '), This addition of -i to -t, etc., implies an earlier period when secondary terminations alone existed ; the ‘ primary ' system, and there- fore the present tense is formed on the basis of the * secondary ' system of the preterites. The unaugmented preterite and the ' injunctive ' form the primary basis of the IE present-aorist system. It does not seem that the distinction between primary and secondary terminations was fully worked out in the IE period. For instance in the 1 plur. and in the 2 plur. Greek makes no distinction (P. S. and this indifference is shared by other languages (O. SI. nesemu, nesomu, Goth, bindam , witum, -budum). The distinction appears in Hittite and Indo-Iranian, but it is effected by quite different means. In Hittite -went, -meni beside -wen, -men is clearly a private innovation modelled on the three persons of the present and the 3 plur. In Indo- Iranian the distinction is effected by the choice of two different forms of the suffix (1 masjma , similarly du. vasjva ) and there is no evidence to show that this variation was connected with the distinction between secondary and primary in the IE period.
