In Sanskrit, “I give” takes just one word: dadāmi. Unlike English “I give” or Japanese, there’s no separate word standing in for “I” anywhere in sight. Where did that “I” go? Bopp’s answer was a surprising one — it never disappeared. It survives, reshaped, inside the ending.
What the ending “-mi” really is
Bopp traces the origin of the verb ending -mi (the “-mi” in dadāmi) like this:
…so halte ich mi für eine Schwächung der Sylbe ma…, welche im Sanskrit und Zend den obliquen Casus des einfachen Pronomens als Thema zum Grunde liegt. (…I hold mi to be a weakening of the syllable ma…, which in Sanskrit and Zend underlies, as the stem, the oblique case [any case other than the subject] of the simple pronoun [“I”].)
Sanskrit has a stem, ma, that shows up in the non-subject forms of the pronoun for “I” — the form you’d find behind English “me,” as opposed to “I.” Bopp’s claim is that the verb ending -mi is that very ma, worn down and fused onto the verb. In other words, dadāmi was, originally, two separate words: “give” plus “I.” Over a very long stretch of time, the “I” at the end lost its standing as an independent word and wore down into a mere ending — that’s the story Bopp reconstructs.
An ending as a grammatical fossil
What this discovery shows is that a verb’s personal ending was, originally, an independent word — a pronoun. Compressing “I give” into a single word, “give-I,” is actually a perfectly natural outcome seen across many languages. Used together, over and over, in the same combination, the boundary between the two words stops registering in speakers’ minds; the second word loses its standing as independent and reshapes itself into an “ending” stuck onto the first. Recall the idea read in another article in this feature — “language is a living thing.” An ending, on this view, is a fossil of grammar: an organ that once moved on its own, fused into the main body over a very long stretch of time.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| The starting puzzle | dadāmi (“I give”) has no independent word standing for “I” |
| Bopp’s discovery | The ending -mi is a worn-down form of ma, the stem of the pronoun “I” |
| The theory this yields | dadāmi was originally two words: “give” plus “I” |
| The generalized idea | A verb’s personal endings were originally independent pronouns |
In a nutshell — “I” never disappeared. It lives on, reshaped, inside the verb’s own ending.