BOOK II. OF THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE; OR GRAMMAR. CHAPTER I. OF THE SEVERAL PARTS OF WHICH SPEECH OR LANGUAGE IS COMPOSED. 45. THE structure of language is extremely artificial; and there are few sciences in which a deeper, or more refined logic is employed, than in grammar. Obs. Without discussing the niceties of language in the several parts of speech of which it is composed, we shall now take a popular, but philosophical view of the chief principles, and component parts of speech, as far as they are necessary to illustrate general grammar, and to ascertain the maxims of correct taste and elegant composition. 44. The essential parts of speech are the same in all languages. There must ever be some words which denote the names of objects, or mark the subject of discourse; other words which denote the qualities of those objects, and express what we affirm concerning them: and other words, which point out their connexions and relations. Corol. The most simple and comprehensive division of the parts of speech, is, therefore, into substantives, attributes, and connectives. 45. The common division, or arrangement of all the words of our own language, comprises the ARTICLE, NOUN, VERB, PREPOSITION, CONJUNCTION. Obs. But the following paragraph will instruct us to direct our at tention chiefly to the noun and the verb, as a few observations will illustrate those other parts of speech, to which our ears have been familiarized. 46. Every thing about which our minds can be employed in thinking, every thing which can be the subject of our knowledge, must relate to substances that exist, either in reality, or in the imagination; or to actions, operations, and energies, which these substances produce on themselves, or on one another. Corol. Language communicates knowledge; its divisions of words, therefore, correspond with the divisions of our knowledge; its chief business is consequently reduced to two heads: First, to exhibit names for all the substances with which we are ac quainted, that we may be able to distinguish and recognize them, when they are mentioned by ourselves, or others: and, Secondly, to denote the actions, operations, and energies, which these substances generate upon themselves, or on one another. 47. NAMES are expressed by what grammarians call Nouns; OPERATIONS are denoted by what they call Verbs ; the other parts of speech explain, modify, extend, restrict, connect, or disjoin, the noun and the verb. Corol. The two former are, therefore, the essential ingredients, or the columns of language; the latter are only occasional ingredients, or appendages of these pillars of the fabric. (Art. 44.) 48. The first process in the communication of knowledge is to contrive names for all the substances about which our knowledge is conversant, and by common consent to impose the same names on the same substances. (Art. 17. and 18.) Illus. As substantives are the ground work of all language, a language is perfect in respect to them, when a name has been given to every material or immaterial substance about which the people who use the language have occasion to speak or write. As their knowledge enlarges, as they obtain more ideas of substances than they have names to express, new names will be imposed on these new substances, which will consequently throw into their vocabulary as many new substantives, as may render their language adequate to the purposes of ready communication. Corol. Hence, if every substance in nature required a particular name to distinguish it from all other substances; every mineral, plant, animal, and every part of every animal, should obtain a distinct name, which would increase the substantives of a language beyond all computation. But nature has reduced her productions into classes: the individuals of every class, resemble one another, in many particulars; and therefore it is that language hath not assigned a name to every substance. Even her different classes are formed with some common properties; and thus, in some particulars, the different classes resemble one another. Thus, the generic word plant, expresses the common qualities of all vegetables; animal, the common qualities of all living creatures. 49. These GENERA are divided into what we term species, and these species are again divided into inferior species, or become genera to other species. Illus. Thus the word plant, is a general term, which indicates trees, shrubs, grasses, and all vegetables which spring from a root, and bear Classification of Substantives into Genera, &o. 39 branches and leaves. And under the comprehensive term animal, we range men, horses, lions, sheep, and, in short, all living creatures. But trees are again divided into oaks, pines, palms; and men into white, black, tawny, &c. 50. This arrangement abridges the number of nouns, and gives names only to classes of substances, compelling one name to point out a whole class. Illus. Thus, tree expresses a whole genus of plants; each of the words oak, pine, palm, denotes a whole species. But language stoops not to give a name to every oak, and she hath left it to beings of a sentient nature, to particularize each other. (Corol. Art. 48.) 51. To characterize individuals by names, language departs from its ordinary analogy. Illus. This necessity-a mere refinement in the communication of thought-extends to countries and cities, to all the individuals of the human race, and sometimes to the inferior animals. For example: Italy, Ron:e; Greece, Athens; Alexander, Bucephalus, are all individuals; and the particular names which we appropriate to each of them, prevents ambiguous and disagreeable circumlocutions, or descriptions, to make it known. 52. We deduce, from these observations, the meaning of the grammatical division of nouns into COMMON and PROPER. The COMMON NOUNS are, (by the illustration to Article 50) the names of classes of individuals. The PROPER NOUNS. (by the Illustration and Example of Article 51,) are all names of individuals. 53. The noun tree denotes any individual of the whole species in the singular number; and, in the plural, all the individuals of the species. Alexander, on the contrary, is a particular name, and is restricted to distinguish him alone. Illus. On this principle, are all common nouns susceptible of num ber, singular or plural, as they denote one, or more than one, of a species; and hence, also, it appears plain, why proper nouns do not take a plural form, except in some instances, when they express more than one individual of a species, and of the same name; as "the twelve Cæsars," "the Henries of England." Corol. The only nouns of language are, therefore, common nouns; proper nouns being local and occasional, appropriated to persons and places, make no part of general communication. (Compare Art. 52. and Illus. to Art. 50. and 51.) 54. NUMBER, which distinguishes objects as singly or collectively, must have been coeval with the very infancy of language, because there were few things which men had more frequent occasion to express, than the difference between one and many. Obs, The distinctions of number are signified, in most languages, by some change in the terminations of the nouns, and it rarely hap pens that the change is extended further than to denote, whether one individual, or all the individuals of the species, be understood. The Greek dual is not more necessary for the purposes of communication, than a triple, a quadruple, a centuple, or any other plural number, where the richness of a language would furnish it, to denote a given number of individuals of the species. 55. Substantives are susceptible of other concomitant circumstances, besides their capacity to denote difference of number. These circumstances are the variations of the terminations, and are called CASES. Illus. 1. This peculiarity of substantives or nouns, is a necessary provision for expressing the circumstances attending them, and has been accomplished in two ways, either by varying their terminations, or by preferring auxiliary words. The ancient languages employed the former of these methods; the modern languages accomplish the same end, by prefixing particles or prepositions. 2. These methods are perhaps nearly equal, in respect of perspicuity; but that of antiquity is preferable, in point of melody. Particles and prepositions are mostly monosyllables, and the frequency with which they must be used, impairs the modulation of language. 3. The Greek language has five cases in the singular, two in the dual, and four in the plural number. 4. The Latin tongue has sometimes six, but generally five, in the singular, and four in the plural. 5. No cases appear in the Italian, the French, and the Spanish lan guages; and there are not more than twʊ in the English. 56. GENDER, another peculiarity of substantive nouns, in the grammatical structure of language, arises out of the difference of sex, discernible only in animals. It will therefore admit of two varieties, the MASCULINE and FEMININE genders, agreeably to the distinction of living creatures into male and female. All other substantive nouns ought to belong to what grammarians call the neuter gender, which is a negation of the other two. Illus. 1. In the structure of language, a remarkable singularity hath obtained with respect to this distribution. In most languages, men have ranked a great number of inanimate objects under the distinctions of masculine and feminine. This is remarkably the case in the Greek and Latin languages, which admit this capricious assignation of sex to inanimate objects, from no other principle than the casual structure of those languages, which refer to a certain gender, words of a certain termination; yet even termination does not always govern this distribution into masculine and feminine, but many nouns in those languages are classed, where all of them ought to have been classed, under the neuter gender. 2. In the French and Italian tongues, the neuter gender is wholly unknown; and all their names of inanimate objects are put upon the same footing with living creatures, and distributed, without exception, into masculine and feminine. 3. In the English language, there obtains a peculiarity quite opposite. In the English, when we use common discourse, all substantive nouns, that are not names of living creatures, are neuter without exception. He, she, it, are the marks of the three genders; and we always use it, in speaking of any object where there is no sex, or where the sex is not known. In this respect, our own language is pre-eminently philosophical in the application of its genders, or of those words which mark the real distinctions of male and female. Yet the genius of the language permits us, whenever it will add beauty to our discourse, to make the names of inanimate objects masculine or feminine in a metaphorical sense; and when we do so, we are understood to quit the literal style, and to use what is termed a figure of speech. By this means, we have it in our power to vary our style at pleasure. By making a very slight alteration, we can personify any object we choose to introduce with dignity; and by this change of manner, we give warning that we are passing, from the strict and logical, to the ornamental, rhetorical style. 4. Of this advantage, not only every poet, but every good writer and speaker in prose, avails himself; and it is an advantage peculiar to our own tongue; no other language possesses it. Every word in other languages has one fixed gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter, which cannot on any occasion be changed: agro for instance, in Greek; vertus in Latin; and la vertu in French; are uniformly feminine. She must always be the pronoun answering to the word, whether you be writing in poetry or in prose, whether you be using the style of reasoning, or that of declamation; whereas, in English, we can either express ourselves with the philosophical accuracy of giving no gender to things inanimate; or, by giving them gender, and transforming them into persons, we adapt them to the style of poetry, and, when it is proper, we enliven prose. 5. On this general principle, we give the masculine gender to those substantive nouns used figuratively, which are conspicuous for the attributes of imparting or communicating; which are by nature strong and efficacious, either to good or evil, or which have a claim to some eminence, whether laudable or not. Those again we make feminine, which are conspicuous for the attributes of containing and of bringing forth, which have more of the passive in their nature, than of the active; which are peculiarly beautiful or amiable; or which have respect to such excesses, as are rather feminine than masculine. 57. ARTICLES are little words prefixed to substantives, or to other parts of speech, used as substantives, to enlarge or circumscribe their meaning. Illus. 1. When we survey any object we never saw before, or speak about an object with which we are not intimately acquainted, the first thing which we do to distinguish or ascertain it, is, to refer to its species, or to class it with some other objects of its species, of which we have some knowledge. (Art. 49. Illus.) Example. We would say, a tree, a house, a horse, a man, when we wished to denote any individual of these classes which we had never seen before, and of which, from its appearance, we knew nothing, but its species. These objects are individuals of the species called trees, horses, houses, or men; and must therefore possess the common qualities of their respective species. (Art. 50, Illus.) |