Grammar. ception from the particular. It seems therefore, to be improperly ranked among the principal or necessary parts of speech. Participle. Verbs. Accessory parts. Simple sentence. Complicated senLeuce. The participle is clearly a noun adjective, which includes the idea of action, and consequently of time; for the "bright sun," and the "shining sun," differ but little in signification, except, that in the latter, the sun is considered as producing brightness by its own act. And if the phrase be varied, and an assertion be introduced, the assertive power depends not at all on the participle, but on the verb, which must necessarily be added, as the sun is bright," the sun is shining." 64 66 With respect to the other principal or necessary part of speech, the verb, it is only material now to remark, that those who confound it with the adjective and the participle, overlook its peculiar function, which is that of asserting; as the function of the noun, is that of naming. As to the separate classes of verbs, the verb substantive, the transitive, the active, the passive, &c. since these have not been treated of by grammarians as separate parts of speech, it will not be necessary to notice them in this part of our work. 66 But the great dispute, especially in modern times, has been with respect to the accessory parts of speech, the nature of which has been illustrated by a variety of similes. They have been said to be like stones in the summit or curve of an arch, or like the springs of a vehicle, or like the flag of a ship, or the hair of a man, or like the nails and cement uniting the wood and stones of an edifice; and hence some persons have contended that they are only significant by relation; some that they are not parts of speech; and some that they are not even words but particles. Thus APULEIUS says, they are no more to be considered as parts of speech than the flag is to be considered a part of the ship, or the hair a part of the man; or, at least, in the compacting and fitting together of a sentence, they only perform the office of nails, or pitch, or mortar." PRISCIAN, however, an acute and intelligent grammarian, observes, that if these words are not to be considered as parts of speech because they serve to connect together others which are parts, we must say that the muscles and sinews of a man are no parts of a man; and he, therefore, concludes by declaring his opinion, that the noun and verb are the principal and chief parts of speech, but that these others are the subordinate and appendant parts. The decision of this and similar questions will be easily made, if we only advert to the mental operations which these accessory words express; and in order to explain this, we must first ask, what words in a sentence are accessories. This question again is answered by referring to what we have said of sentences. In a simple sentence, all the words are principals. Thus "Man is fit," contains two nouns, which are the names of two conceptions, viz. "man" and "fitness," and the assertion of their coincidence by the verb "is ;" and moreover, since the conception of fitness is regarded as existing not separately but in the other conception, man, the word "fit" is an adjective and "man" is a substantive. The same would be the case if the place of the noun "man" were supplied by the pronoun "he," and that of the adjective" fit," by the participle suited. Such is the case when the sentence is simple; but we are next to consider how a simple sentence is ren dered complex; and this is no otherwise done than by Chap. 1. engrafting on it other sentences; but in these latter the conceptions only are expressed, and the assertive part is assumed or understood. Thus, if referring to the passage before quoted from Shakespeare, we say "Man is fit," we may be asked, What is the fitness or aptitude of which you are speaking? The answer must be "it is treasonable." And again if we are asked, What is the man of whom you make these assertions? We may say "he is unmusical; and suppressing the assertions in the two secondary sentences we may form of the whole one complex sentence, thus, "unmusical men possess treasonable aptitudes." In this first process of complication we find only Further words capable of being used as principals, viz. nouns, complicasubstantive or adjective; pronouns, participles, and tion. verbs; but suppose we again resolve these into their constituent conceptions and assertions; suppose we ask what do you mean when you speak of a treasonable. fitness, or aptitude? We may answer, we mean that the fitness looks to treason; treason is before the fitness (as its mark or object), the fitness is for treason. Here it is plain that the word "for" involves the conception of foreness (or objectiveness), and applies that conception to the other conception of treason: but it does so still more rapidly and obscurely, than in the cases before supposed; and hence it is that in this second process of complication we meet with words which are no longer thought significant, and therefore no longer called nouns or verbs, but articles, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions; and these words are the more numerous and frequent of occurrence, in proportion as sentences are rendered more complex by subdividing the primary truth into many others. Thus, as the word "treasonable" may be supplied by the words "for treasons," so the word "unmusical" may be supplied first by the words "hath no music in himself," and secondly, by the words "is not moved with concord of sweet sounds;" both which, and many similar modes of speech, consist of various aggregations of sentences in which the subordinate assertions are assumed by the mind in the manner already shown. tion. The words, which, by use, come to be most fre- Change of quently employed in any particular language for these significasecondary purposes, often lose their primary signification, and perhaps undergo some little change of sound; from which circumstances a great dispute has arisen among grammarians whether they are significant words or not. Thus the preposition for, which, as we have shown, conveys the conception of foreness, is nothing more than the word fore in foremost, before, fore and aft, and the like words and phrases; but by use, and by the slight change which it has undergone, it has come to lose the property of forming a principal part in a sentence. These circumstances, however, it must be observed, are merely accidental; they may happen to the same conception in one language and not in another; and, therefore, they cannot form a just scientific criterion between the parts of speech; but on the other hand, those parts may, and must, be distinguished by the different operations of mind which they express; and as we have seen that the operations, expressed by the articles, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, are clearly distinguishable from those expressed by the nouns, pronouns, verbs, and participles, inasmuch as they relate to a subordinate step in fear the analysis of thought; so there can be no great difficulty or impropriety in calling them accessories, with reference to the others, which we call principals. From what we have said, it will not appear strange, ry that the accessory words should be for the most part traceable to their origin as principals; that is to say, that the parts of speech last mentioned should in general be found to have been once used (with little or no difference of sound) as nouns and verbs. It has been supposed that this was a new discovery of Mr. HORNE TOOKE's, and in many parts of his work he seems to have entertained that notion himself; how justly may be seen from the very title of a little treatise, by C. KOERBER, printed at Jena, in 1712, and called " Lexicon Particularum Ebræarum, vel potius Nominum & Verborum, vulgò pro particulis habitorum." This writer says, in his preface, that his tutor Danzius taught that "most, if not all the separate particles, were in their own nature nouns ;" that this was indeed a "new and unheard of hypothesis;" but that on investigation the reader would find reason to conclude universally (in respect to the Hebrew language at least) that "all the separate particles are either nouns or verbs.". His words are these: "Particula separatæ si non omnes certé plerœsque suâ naturá sunt nomina”—“hanc thesin hactenus nocam & inauditam ;" and again, “Omnes omninò Ebraorum particulas separatas aut nomina esse aut verba." Lerber. Take. Koerber illustrates his position by comparing the Hebrew particles with radical words, both in that and the cognate languages, particularly in the Arabic. Among the instances which he gives, are the following, viz. Juxta, near, being the same as Latus, side. Præter, beside or beyond Inter, between . Vel, or Defectus, deficiency. He even explains the interjection Lo! as being identical with the pronoun of the third person; and suggests that the termination of the accusative case is a noun, signifying object. Whether or not Mr. Tooke ever saw this little treatise of Koerber's, or any other of similar import, is immaterial. It may, probably, have been a bona fide discovery, so far as regarded his own reflections, though not one that was entirely new to the world. But he seems to us to have connected with it a very material error in Grammar, namely, that because a word was once a noun, it always remained so, and consequently that adverbs, conjunctions, &c. expressed no new or different operation of the mind, and were not to be considered as separate parts of speech, so far at least as related to their signification. Had Mr. Tooke been as well acquainted with the writings of Plato, as he was with those of the old English and Saxon authors, which he studied with such meritorious industry, he would hardly have fallen into this error; for he would have perceived that speech received its forms from the mind; he would have acknowledged with that great philosopher that "thought and speech are the same; only the internal and silent discourse of the mind with herself, is called by us Aávoia, thought, or cogitation; but the effusion of the mind, through the lips, in articulate sound, is called Aóyoç, or rational speech." It is, therefore, the mind that shapes the sentence into its Chap. I. principal parts and accessories: it is the mind which distributes alike the principal and the accessory parts into subdivisions, according as they are necessary to its own distinguishable operations. Those ancient grammarians who acknowledged only Ancients. three parts of speech, viz. the noun, verb, and conjunction, ranked some of the parts which we here call accessories under the principal parts. Thus Apollonius of Alexandria, and Priscian, rank the adverb under the verb, and with them agrees Harris, who calls the adverb a secondary attributive; but Alexander Aphrodisiensis, who is followed by Boethius, observes, that it is sometimes more properly referred to the class of nouns; and so Tooke asserts some adverbs to be nouns and some verbs. The preposition which was referred by Dionysius and Priscian to the conjunctions, is on a similar principle included by Harris with the common conjunction in the class of connectives; and Tooke distributes both prepositions and conjunctions (in most instances rightly, as far as their etymology is concerned) among the verbs and nouns. Lastly, the article appears to have most disturbed the grammarians in their arrangements; for Fabius says it was first reckoned among conjunctions; and we have seen that, when Aristotle divided speech into four parts, he separated the article from the conjunction, making of it a class apart from the three other parts of speech. Vossius inclines to rank it among nouns, like a pronoun; but Harris having divided the accessory parts of speech into definitives and connectives, makes the article a branch of the former. Tooke says that our article the is the imperative mood of the Anglo-Saxon verb thean, to take! Lastly, Scaliger says, the article does not exist in Latin, is superfluous in Greek, and is, in French, the idle instrument of a chattering people. ed. Since in this diversity of opinions, we find no com- New princimon view of any principle which connects itself with ple proposthe idea of language before laid down, we are compelled to seek a new division. We say, therefore, that the accessory parts of speech represent operations of the mind, which from their frequent recurrence have become habitual, and from their absolute necessity in modifying other thoughts, must be found more or less in all languages. It is true, that these operations are not performed by all men with the same distinctness, and therefore do not exist among all nations in the same degree of perfection; and lastly, it is true, that in some languages they are expressed by separate words, and in other languages by different inflections of the same word. Hence a close connection is found between the prepositions of one language, and the cases of another; between the auxiliary verbs of one language, and the tenses of another. Hence too, the comparison of adjectives, always effected in Latin by different terminations, is sometimes effected in English by adverbs prefixed to the adjective. In short, numberless illustrations of this remark will easily occur, to the recollection of any person at all acquainted with different languages, ancient or modern, barbarous or refined. Of the operations, that we have described, one, and Article, that not the least essential, consists in determining whether we view any given conception as an universal, or a particular; and if as a particular, whether as a Grammar. certain, or an uncertain one; and if certain, whether of one known class, or another known class; and so forth. Thus there is a certain conception of the mind expressed by the word "man;" but if we employ that expression for the purpose of communicating the conception, it is necessary that those who hear us should know with what degree of particularity it is to be applied; for it would be one thing to say, that, according to our idea of human nature, man is universally benevolent; and another to say, that men in general are so; and a third to say that any individual man, under given circumstances, is so; and a fourth to say, that this or that man is so. Of these different degrees of limitation some may be marked by separate words; and of those words, some may express a conception so distinct and self evident, as to be capable of forming a simple sentence, in which case we should reckon them as pronominal adjectives, among the principal parts of speech; as when we say, "this is good," "that is bad," the words this and that, are pronominal adjectives. But since we cannot say "the is good," or "a is good," and since these words the and a, serve no other purpose but to define and particularize some other conception, and do not even perform this function completely, without reference to some further conceptions, we may, in those languages in which they exist, reckon them as a separate part of speech, under the name of the article. may constitute a separate word, as "to leap over a Chap. I. As the preposition connects conceptions, the con- Conjunc- Duller should'st thou be than the fat weed, where, if rendered into the more common expression, More doubt may perhaps exist as to the adverb, a Adverb. Preposition. The word preposition is badly chosen, as Vossius WORDS 1. principal words, 2. accessory words, 1. defining the extent of a conception as universal or particular (the article), 2. expressing the relation of one substantive to another (the preposition), 3. Connecting one assertion with another (the conjunction), 4. Modifying either a conception of quality or action, or else an assertion (the 2. used either in passionate sentences, or as separate expressions of passion (the inter jection). The mental operations which these various classes of words represent, are obviously distinct, but it by no means follows from thence that the words themselves are so; that a word which has been employed as a substantive may not also be employed as a conjunction; or that the very sound by which we have expressed an assertion may not be used as a preposition or an inter jection. In short, there is no reason why one word should not successively travel through all the different classes which we have here stated; for we must observe, that words do not communicate thought by their separate power and effect only; but infinitely more so by their connection: and consequently the mode of connecting the signs, and not the signs themselves, Grammar, determines their place in any given class. The first exercise of the reasoning power, we have seen, is conception; and of all our mental operations, whether relative to the external world, or to the laws of mind itself, conceptions may be formed; and to all the conceptions which we form, names may be given; and those names are nouns; and therefore it is not surprising that all other words, except interjections, should be historically traceable to nouns as their origin; and since reason and passion are so complicated in man, we must not wonder that a connection is often to be found between interjections and nouns; or that the Latin va, probably pronounced in ancient times wae, should be the Scottish substantive wae, and our Surely this affords no proof, or shadow of a proof, that the different uses of the same, or different words, do not depend on the different exercise of the mental faculties; but, on the contrary, it absolutely demonstrates the necessity of some mental operation to distinguish between the different meanings, force, and effect of the same sign, as employed on different occasions. The noun. Its origin. woe. § 3. Of nouns. Having thus settled the classes of words, we shall attempt to explain them in order: and first we begin with that which, according to all systems, stands first in importance; that is to say, the noun. "It is by the nouns," says CoUR DE GEBELIN, "that we designate all the beings which exist. We render them known instantly by these means, as if they were placed before our eyes. Thus, in the most solitary retreat, in the most profound obscurity, we are able to pass in review the universality of beings, to represent to ourselves our parents, our friends, all that we have most dear, all that has struck us, all that may instruct or amuse us; and in pronouncing their names we may reason on them with our associates. We thus keep a register of all that is, and of all that we know; even of those things which we have not seen, but which have been made known to us by means of their relation to other things already known to us. Let us not be astonished, then, that man, who speaks of every thing, who studies every thing, who takes note of every thing, should have given names to all things that exist, to his body and its different parts, to his soul, to his faculties, to that prodigious number of beings which cover the earth or are hid in its bosom, which fill the waters, and move in the air; that he gives names to the mountains, the rivers, the rocks, the woods, the stars, to his dwellings, to his fields, to the fruits on which he feeds, to the instruments of all kinds with which he executes the greatest labours, to all the beings which compose his society, or, that the memory of those illustrious persons who deserve well of mankind by their benefactions, and their talents, is perpetuated by their names from age to age. Man does more. He gives names to objects not in existence, to multitudes of beings, as if they formed but a single individual, and often to the qualities of objects, in order that he may be able to speak of them in the same manner as he does of objects really existing." This great power of the noun is to be attributed solely to that faculty of the mind by which it is formed: and that power we have called conception. Every act of this power produces one thought, presents to our view one object, more or less distinct. We conceive a Chap. 1. certain impression to which we give a name, be it "red" or " white," "John" or "Peter," "man" or "woman," "animal or" vegetable," "virtue" or "vice;" or whatsoever else we can distinguish from the mass of continued consciousness which constitutes our being. We do not name every impression that we receive, or every act that we perform. In truth, we do not name any one separately and distinctly from all others. It would be useless to do so, in a single instance: it would be impossible to do so, in all. But we name what often occurs to us. We have often a sensation of colour; we call it "white" we have often a feeling of pleasure; we call it "joyous :" we often see an object which affects us with peculiar sentiments of regard or aversion; we call it "father" or "enemy:" we often meditate on thoughts, which appear to us amiable or the reverse: we call them "benevolence" or hatred." In this manner it is that our catalogue of names is formed. Each of these thoughts or conceptions has its natural and proper limits; but these we do not always very accurately observe. No man confounds "red" with "white," but he confounds "whitish" with "reddish." A boy does not think his hoop square, but he knows not whether it is circular, or elliptical. Thus it is, that men do not agree in their opinions of many things, to which they nevertheless agree in giving some common names; otherwise it would be impossible for them to communicate to each other any thing like the thoughts or feelings which they respectively entertain. Every noun, then, is the name of a class of similar, Classificaor identical thoughts. Let us see how these classes tion of may themselves be classed. "Many grammarians," says nouns. Vossius, "and among them some of the highest celebrity, first distribute the noun into proper and appellative, and then into substantive and adjective; but erroneously; since even the proper noun is a substantive, inasmuch as it subsists by itself in speech. But let us seek our method from the schools. Our great Stagirite first divides rò öv (or that which is) into that which subsists by itself, and is therefore called substance, and that which exists in another as in its subject, and is therefore called attribute. Afterwards he proceeds to distinguish substance into primary and secondary, the primary being an individual, the secondary a genus or species. By parity of reason, therefore, we should divide the noun first into that which subsists by itself in speech, and is called substantive, and that which needs the addition of a substantive in speech, and is called adjective; and afterwards we should distribute the substantive into that which belongs to a single thing, and is called proper, and that which comprehends many, and is commonly called appellative." It is to be observed, that some ancient writers gave the name of noun only to the substantive proper, and that of vocable (vocabulum) to the appellative; which latter has been, in modern times, erroneously called an abstract noun. We adopt the distribution of Vossius. We call both substantives and adjectives nouns; for they are both names of conceptions, and they are nothing more. They do not imply any assertion respecting these conceptions; and herein they are clearly distinguished from verbs. It is true that the adjective agrees with the verb in expressing, not substance, but attribute; Grammar. and therefore it is, that Harris, and some other grammarians rank these two classes of words together under the title of attributives. We do not deny that this arrangement is so far correct; but we say that it interferes with the method which we conceive it most advisable to pursue, as the most direct and scientific. As Vossius justly postpones the consideration of the classes of substantives, to the distinction between substance and attribute; so we postpone the consideration of the assertion of an attribute, to the consideration of those conceptions both of substance and of attribute, which must necessarily precede all assertion. This we conceive to be strictly the order of science. Language is a communication of the mind; the mind, as far as it is capable of communication, consists of thoughts and feelings. Thoughts are formed by the reasoning power. The reasoning power is divided into three faculties, conception, assertion, and deduction; but conception necessarily precedes assertion, because we cannot assert that any thing exists until we know what that thing is. Substantive tive. The noun, then, is the name of a conception: indeed the English word noun is nothing but a corrupt pronunciation of the French nom, which, like the Italian nome, was again a corruption of the Latin nomen, and this latter was of common origin with the Greek ovopa, and answered exactly to our word name. It is of consequence to observe, that the proper function of the noun is to name, and nothing more; for red is as much the name of a certain colour, as Peter is the name of a certain man, or England of a certain country; and in like manner virtue is as much the name of a certain thought, as a ship is the name of a certain thing; all these, therefore, and whatever other words serve to name any conception of the mind are nouns. These conceptions, as has been repeatedly shown, and adjec- are either conceptions of substance, or conceptions of attribute. This distinction, however profound it may be, is nevertheless, and, perhaps, for that very reason, so perfectly obvious in practice, that no man, however ignorant, can possibly confound the kinds of conception to which it relates. No man can imagine, that in the phrase "a white horse," the word "white" does not denote a quality belonging to the "horse;" or that in the phrase "glorious victory," the word "glorious" does not denote a quality belonging to victory. No man, when he says "the sun is shining," thinks of the sun as an attribute of shining; but, on the contrary, he considers "shining" to be an energy, or property, or quality, or attribute of the sun. Not convertible. It has been contended that " the substantive and adjective are frequently convertible without the smallest change of meaning," and in proof of this, it is asserted that we may indifferently say a perverse nature, or a natural perversity:" now surely, although we would not assert, that the person advancing such an illustration was altogether of " a perverse nature" we might without offence attribute his opinion, on this particular point, to a little "natural perversity." In the one case, the friends of the person in question would understand us to assert, that his whole mind was tainted with the vices of obstinacy and selfwilledness, that he wilfully shut his eyes against the truth, and maintained opinions which he knew to be wrong in literature, in philosophy, in politics, and in religion--a description of his character, which would naturally occasion them to take great offence. Chap. I. In the other case, they would understand us to give him credit for such reading and literary acquirements, as might well have corrected what we look upon as an error; and they could hardly take it amiss that we attributed that error, rather to a slight defect, from which the best natures are not wholly exempt, than to gross ignorance, or total want of understanding. So much for the particular expressions quoted as proof that substantives and adjectives may be convertible without the smallest change of meaning: on the other hand, the well known instance of a "chesnut horse," and a "horse chesnut," affords a ludicrous example of a change of meaning produced by such convertibility. The fact is, that in all such instances, the views taken by the mind are different, according as it regards the one conception, or the other as principal; just as the man who is on the eastern side of the street considers the western to be the opposite side; whilst he who is on the western side thinks the same of the eastern. We may speak of a "religious life," or of "vital religion." In the one case, we are considering the conception of "life" in the largest extent, as that which must necessarily form the basis of our assertion, and which may be differently viewed, according as it is put in connection with the secondary conceptions of religion, irreligion, business, pleasure, or the like: in the other case, we take the conception of "religion" as the most comprehensive object of thought, and then limit it by the conception of life, or vitality. It is objected, that this limitation may as regularly be effected by a substantive as by an adjective; and that " man's life," or "the life of man" is exactly equivalent to "human life"; which we by no means deny; but then it must be observed, that the sentence takes a different form, and instead of simple becomes complex; the introduction of the casual termination s, in one instance, and of the preposition of, in the other, effecting such complexity. Dr. WALLIS, indeed, in his valuable English Grammar, first published in 1653, treats the genitive "man's" as an adjective. He says, " Adjectivum possessivum fit à quovis substantivo (sive singulari, sive plurali) addito s —— ut man's nature, the nature of man, natura humana vel hominis; men's nature, the nature of men, natura humana vel hominum." But no other grammarian has adopted this notion, and the principle on which it rests, would equally go to prove that all the oblique cases of substantives,in all languages, should be considered as adjectives; for Mr. Tooke has justly observed, that these cases cannot stand alone; although he has not noticed that this is owing to the complexity of the sentences in which they are used. 66 The last mentioned writer contends, that "the ad- Depend jective is equally and altogether as much the different name of a thing, as the noun substantive." If he views of conceptic means by thing, a conception of the mind, he is perfectly right; but if he means by thing, what, probably nineteen-twentieths of his readers suppose him to mean, namely, an external substance, such as horse," or "a man," or "the globe of the sun," or grain of the light dust of the balance," he is as clearly wrong. "Red" and "white," "soft" and " hard," "good" and "bad," "virtuous" and "wicked" do not represent any such things as the latter; but they do represent conceptions of the mind, some of which conceptions may be considered as belonging exclusively to a a |