Whi885__Whitney_Roots-ACCENTED.pdf

PREFACE. ix
separately those forms and words which are found used
only in the commentaries, and which are therefore open to
a heightened suspicion of artificiality; but this I have not
tried to do.
- A plus-sign (+) indicates that the given formation is
found to occur from the specified period onward, even to
the latest or classical period.
Instead of a period, an individual text is sometimes
referred to — yet not upon any very definite and consistent
plan (except in the case of the Vedas, as explained above).
A ‘superior' figure (e. g. RV 1
.) indicates the number of times
a word or form has been met with — yet this, again, only
in exceptional instances, and not in the case of every
unique or very rare occurrence.
So far as the present-systepa is concerned, only so
many specimen-forms are given as suffice to illustrate the
mode of formation. It would have been space and time
thrown away to instance in each case the various sub-formations
— modes, participles, imperfect — that occur, since
one form implies clearly enough the possible existence of
the rest. The form taken as representative specimen is
ordinarily the 3d singular, as being often more characteristic
than the 1st; and that person is even occasionally
given when, in verbs of infrequent use, it is not itself
actually quotable. Irregular or exceptional forms, whether
of the earlier or of the later language, are then added in
parenthesis. Everywhere, an appended ‘etc.’ means that
other forms of the same make occur: yet I find on review
that I have not used this sign consistently, and its absence
must not be taken always as indicating more than that the
variety of forms quotable is comparatively small. The various
modes of present-formation are intended to be given in the
order of their relative regularity or frequency; to each is
prefixed in brackets the number belonging to it in the order
of the conjugation-classes as given by the Hindu grammarians
— since, however meaningless and unworthy of retention
this may be, it is still widely used, not only in the
grammars, but even by general writers on language.