Lectures on Language As Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

LECTURE IV.

ON NOUNS.

Nouns de­fined.--Things.--Qual­ities of mat­ter.--Mind.--Spir­itu­al be­ings.--Qual­ities of mind.--How learned.--Imag­inary things.-- Nega­tion.--Names of ac­tions.--Prop­er nouns.--Char­ac­ter­is­tic names.--Prop­er nouns may be­come com­mon.

Your at­ten­tion is, this evening, in­vit­ed to the first di­vi­sions of words, called _Nouns_. This is a most im­por­tant class, and as such de­serves our par­tic­ular no­tice.

_Nouns are the names of things._

The word _noun_ is de­rived from the Latin _nomen_, French _nom_. It means _name_. Hence the def­ini­tion above giv­en.

In gram­mar it is em­ployed to dis­tin­guish that class of words which name things, or stand as signs or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of things.

We use the word _thing_ in its broad­est sense, in­clud­ing ev­ery pos­si­ble en­ti­ty; ev­ery be­ing, or thing, an­imate or inan­imate, ma­te­ri­al or im­ma­te­ri­al, re­al or imag­inary, phys­ical, moral, or in­tel­lec­tu­al. It is the noun of the Sax­on _thin­can_ or _thin­gian_, to think; and is used to ex­press ev­ery con­ceiv­able ob­ject of thought, in what­ev­er form or man­ner pre­sent­ed to the hu­man mind.

Ev­ery word em­ployed to des­ig­nate things, or name them, is to be ranked in the class called _nouns_, or names. You have on­ly to de­ter­mine whether a word is used thus, to learn whether it be­longs to this or some oth­er class of words. Here let me re­peat:

1. Things ex­ist. 2. We con­ceive ideas of things. 3. We use sounds or signs to com­mu­ni­cate these ideas to oth­ers. 4. We de­nom­inate the class of words thus used, _nouns_.

Per­haps I ought to stop here, or pass to an­oth­er top­ic. But as these lec­tures are in­tend­ed to be so plain that all can un­der­stand my mean­ing, I must in­dulge in a few more re­marks be­fore ad­vanc­ing far­ther.

In ad­di­tion to in­di­vid­ual, tan­gi­ble ob­jects, we con­ceive ideas of the _qual­ities_ of things, and give _names_ to such qual­ities, which be­come _nouns_. Thus, the _hard­ness_ of iron, the _heat_ of fire, the _col­or_ of a rose, the _bit­ter­ness_ of gall, the _er­ror_ of gram­mars. The fol­low­ing may serve to make my views more plain. Take two tum­blers, the one half filled with wa­ter, the oth­er with milk; mix them to­geth­er. You can now talk of the milk in the wa­ter, or the wa­ter in the milk. Your ideas are dis­tinct, tho the ob­jects are so in­ti­mate­ly blend­ed, that they can not be sep­arat­ed. So with the qual­ities of things.

We al­so speak of mind, in­tel­lect, soul; but to them we can give no form, and of them paint no like­ness. Yet we have ideas of them, and em­ploy words to ex­press them, which be­come _nouns_.

This ac­counts for the rea­son why the great Par­ent In­tel­lect has strict­ly for­bid­den, in the deca­logue, that a like­ness of him should be con­struct­ed. His be­ing and at­tributes are dis­cov­er­able on­ly thro the medi­um of his works and word. No man can see him and live. It would be the height of fol­ly--it would be more--it would be blas­phe­my--to at­tempt to paint the like­ness of him whose pres­ence fills im­men­si­ty--whose cen­ter is ev­ery where, and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is no where. The name of this Spir­it or Be­ing was held in the most pro­found rev­er­ence by the Jews, as we shall have oc­ca­sion to men­tion when we come to treat of the verb =to be=.

We talk of an­gels, and have seen the un­hal­lowed at­tempt to de­scribe their like­ness in the form of pic­tures, which dis­play the fan­cy of the artist very fine­ly, but give a mis­er­able idea of those pure spir­its who min­is­ter at the al­tar of God, and chant his prais­es in notes of the most un­speak­able de­light.

We have al­so seen _death_ and the pale horse, the firy drag­on, the mys­tery of Baby­lon, and such like things, rep­re­sent­ed on can­vass; but they be­to­ken more of hu­man tal­ent to de­pict the mar­vel­lous, than a strict re­gard for truth. Beelze­bub, imps, and all Pan­de­mo­ni­um, may be vivid­ly imag­ined and fine­ly ar­ranged in fic­tion, and we can name them. Wiz­zards, witch­es, and fairies, may play their sportive tricks in the hu­man brain, and re­ceive names as tho they were re­al.

We al­so think and speak of the qual­ities and af­fec­tions of the mind as well as mat­ter, as wis­dom, knowl­edge, virtue, vice, love, ha­tred, anger. Our con­cep­tions in this case may be less dis­tinct, but we have ideas, and use words to ex­press them. There is, we con­fess, a greater li­abil­ity to mis­take and mis­un­der­stand when treat­ing of mind and its qual­ities, than of mat­ter. The rea­son is ev­ident, peo­ple know less of it. Its op­er­ations are less dis­tinct and more vary­ing.

The child first sees ma­te­ri­al ob­jects. It is taught to name them. It next learns the qual­ities of things; as the sweet­ness of sug­ar, the dark­ness of night, the beau­ty of flow­ers. From this it as­cends by gra­da­tion to the high­er at­tain­ments of knowl­edge as re­vealed in the em­pire of mind, as well as mat­ter. Great care should be tak­en that this ad­vance­ment be easy, nat­ural, and thoro. It should be con­stant­ly im­pressed with the im­por­tance of ob­tain­ing clear and def­inite ideas of things, and nev­er em­ploy words till it has ideas to ex­press; nev­er name a thing of which it has no knowl­edge. This is ig­no­rance.

It would be well, per­haps, to ex­tend this re­mark to those old­er than chil­dren, in years, but less in re­al prac­ti­cal knowl­edge. The re­mark is of such gen­er­al ap­pli­ca­tion, that no spec­ifi­ca­tion need be made, ex­cept to the case be­fore us; to those af­fect­ed pro­fi­cients in gram­mar, whose on­ly knowl­edge is the mem­ory of words, which to them have no mean­ings, if, in­deed, the writ­ers them­selves had any to ex­press by them; a fact we re­gard as ques­tion­able, at best. There is hard­ly a teach­er of gram­mar, whose self-​es­teem is not enor­mous, who will not con­fess him­self ig­no­rant on many of the im­por­tant prin­ci­ples of lan­guage; that he has nev­er un­der­stood, and could nev­er ex­plain them. He finds no dif­fi­cul­ty in re­peat­ing what the books say, but if called up­on to ex­press an opin­ion of his own, he has none to give. He has learned and used words with­out know­ing their mean­ing.

Chil­dren should be taught lan­guage as they are taught mu­sic. They should learn the sim­ple tones on which the whole sci­ence de­pends. Dis­tinct im­pres­sions of sounds should be made on their minds, and the char­ac­ters which rep­re­sent them should be in­sep­ara­bly as­so­ci­at­ed with them. They will then learn tunes from the com­po­si­tions of those sounds, as rep­re­sent­ed by notes. By dint of ap­pli­ca­tion, they will soon be­come fa­mil­iar with these prin­ci­ples, if pos­sessed of a tal­ent for song, and may soon pass the acme with ease, ac­cu­ra­cy, and ra­pid­ity. But there are those who may sing very pret­ti­ly, and tol­er­ably cor­rect, who have nev­er stud­ied the first rudi­ments of mu­sic. But such can nev­er be­come adepts in the sci­ence.

So there are those who use lan­guage cor­rect­ly, who nev­er saw the in­side of a gram­mar book, and who nev­er ex­am­ined the prin­ci­ples on which it de­pends. But this, by no means, proves that it is bet­ter to sing by rote, than “with the un­der­stand­ing.” These rudi­ments, how­ev­er, should form the busi­ness of the nurs­ery, rather than the gram­mar school. Ev­ery moth­er should la­bor to give dis­tinct and forcible im­pres­sions of such things as she learns her chil­dren to _name_. She should care­ful­ly pre­vent them from em­ploy­ing words which have no mean­ing, and still more strict­ly should she guard them against at­tach­ing a wrong mean­ing to those they do use. In this way, the foun­da­tion for fu­ture knowl­edge and em­inence, would be laid broad and deep. But I wan­der.

We at­tach names to imag­inary things; as ghosts, genii, imps.

To this class be­long the thir­ty thou­sand gods of the an­cients, who were fre­quent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by em­blems sig­nif­icant of the char­ac­ters at­tached to them. We em­ploy words to name these imag­inary things, so that we read and con­verse about them un­der­stand­ing­ly, tho our ideas may be ex­ceed­ing­ly var­ious.

Nouns are al­so used to ex­press nega­tion, of which no idea can be formed. In this case, the mind rests on what ex­ists, and em­ploys a word to ex­press what does not. We speak of _a hole_ in the pa­per. But we can form no idea of _a hole_, sep­arat­ed from the sur­round­ing sub­stances. Re­move the parts of the pa­per till noth­ing is left, and then you may look in vain for the hole. It is not there. It nev­er was. In the same way we use the words noth­ing, no­body, nonen­ti­ty, vac­uum, ab­sence, space, blank, an­ni­hi­la­tion, and obliv­ion. These are rel­ative terms, to be un­der­stood in ref­er­ence to things which are known to ex­ist. We must know of _some_thing be­fore we can talk of _no_thing, of an en­ti­ty be­fore we can think of nonen­ti­ty.

In a sim­ilar way we em­ploy words to name ac­tions, which are pro­duced by the changes of ob­jects. We speak of a race, of a flight, of a sit­ting or ses­sion, of a jour­ney, of a ride, of a walk, of a res­idence, etc. In all these cas­es, the mind is fixed on the per­sons who per­formed these things. Take for ex­am­ple, a race. Of that, we can con­ceive no idea sep­arate from the agent or ob­ject which _ran_ the _race_. With­out some oth­er word to in­form us we could not de­cide whether a _horse_ race, a _foot_ race, a boat race, the race of a mill, or some oth­er race, was the ob­ject of re­mark. The same may be said of flight, for we read of the flight of birds, the flight of Ma­hommed, the flight of armies, and the flight of in­tel­lect.

We al­so give names to ac­tions as tho they were tak­ing place in the present tense. “The _read­ing_ of the re­port was de­ferred;” steam­boat _rac­ing_ is dan­ger­ous to pub­lic safe­ty; _steal­ing_ is a crime; false _teach­ing_ de­serves the repro­ba­tion of all.

The hints I have giv­en will as­sist you in ac­quir­ing a knowl­edge of nouns as used to ex­press ideas in vo­cal or writ­ten lan­guage. This sub­ject might be pur­sued fur­ther with prof­it, if time would per­mit. As the time al­lot­ted to this lec­ture is near­ly ex­haust­ed, I for­bear. I shall here­after have oc­ca­sion to show how a whole phrase may be used to name an idea, and as such stand as the agent or ob­ject of a verb.

Some nouns are specif­ical­ly used to des­ig­nate cer­tain ob­jects, and dis­tin­guish them from the class to which they usu­al­ly be­long. In this way they as­sume a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter, and are usu­al­ly de­nom­inat­ed =prop­er nouns=. They ap­ply to per­sons, places and things; as, John Smith, Boston, Hy­lax. _Boy_ is ap­plied in com­mon to all young males of the hu­man species, and as such is a _com­mon noun_ or name. _John Smith_ des­ig­nates a par­tic­ular boy from the rest.

Prop­er names may be al­so ap­plied to an­imals and things. The sta­ble keep­er and stage­man has a name for ev­ery horse he owns, to dis­tin­guish it from oth­er hors­es; the dairy­man for his cows, the boy for his dog, and the girl for her doll. Any word, in fact, may be­come a prop­er name by be­ing specif­ical­ly used; as the ship Fair Trad­er, the brig Suc­cess, sloop De­light in Peace, the race horse Eclipse, Black Hawk, Round Nose, and Red Jack­et.

Prop­er names were for­mer­ly used in ref­er­ence to cer­tain traits of char­ac­ter or cir­cum­stances con­nect­ed with the place or thing. _Abram_ was changed to _Abra­ham_, the for­mer sig­ni­fy­ing _an el­evat­ed fa­ther_, the lat­ter, _the fa­ther of a mul­ti­tude_. _Isaac_ sig­ni­fied _laugh­ter_, and was giv­en be­cause his moth­er laughed at the mes­sage of the an­gel. _Ja­cob_ sig­ni­fied _a sup­planter_, be­cause he was to ob­tain the birthright of his el­der broth­er.

A ridicu­lous rage ob­tained with our pu­ri­tan fa­thers to ex­press scrip­ture sen­ti­ments in the names of their chil­dren, as may be seen by con­sult­ing the records of the Ply­mouth and Mas­sachusetts colonies.

This prac­tice has not whol­ly gone out of use in our day, for we hear of the names of Hope, Mer­cy, Pa­tience, Com­fort, Ex­pe­ri­ence, Tem­per­ance, Faith, De­liv­er­ance, Re­turn, and such like, ap­plied usu­al­ly to fe­males, (be­ing more in char­ac­ter prob­ably,) and some­times to males. We have al­so the names of White, Black, Green, Red, Gray, Brown, Olive, White­field, Black­wood, Red­field, Wood­house, Stone­house, Wa­ter­house, Wood­bridge, Swift­wa­ter, Lowa­ter, Drinkwa­ter, Spring, Brooks, Rivers, Pond, Lake, Fair­weath­er, Mer­ry­weath­er, Weath­er­head, Rice, Wheat, Straw, Greatrakes, Bird, Fowle, Crow, Hawks, Ea­gle, Par­tridge, Wren, Goslings, Fox, Camel, Ze­bra, Bear, Wolf, Hogg, Rain, Snow, Haile, Frost, Fogg, Mudd, Clay, Sands, Hills, Val­ley, Field, Stone, Flint, Sil­ver, Gould, and Di­amond.

Prop­er nouns may al­so be­come com­mon when used as words of gen­er­al im­port; as, _dunces_, cor­rupt­ed from Duns Sco­tus, a dis­tin­guished the­olo­gian, born at Dun­stane, Northum­ber­land, an op­pos­er of the doc­trines of Thomas Aqui­nus. He is a re­al _solomon_, jack tars, ju­das­es, an­tichrist, and so on.

Nouns may al­so be con­sid­ered in re­spect to per­son, num­ber, gen­der, and pos­itive, or case. There are _three_ per­sons, _two_ num­bers, _two_ gen­ders, and _two_ cas­es. But the fur­ther con­sid­er­ation of these things will be de­ferred, which, to­geth­er with Pro­nouns, will form the sub­ject of our next lec­ture.