with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the
original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date,
which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome.
Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly
dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding
consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in
the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops
even these. In connection with this we find that the middle voice
has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.