Lectures on Language As Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

LECTURE V.

ON NOUNS AND PRO­NOUNS.

Nouns in re­spect to per­sons.--Num­ber.--Sin­gu­lar.--Plu­ral.--How formed.--For­eign plu­rals.--Prop­er names ad­mit of plu­rals.--Gen­der. --No neuter.--In fig­ura­tive lan­guage.--Er­rors.--Po­si­tion or case.-- Agents.--Ob­jects.--Pos­ses­sive case con­sid­ered.--A defini­tive word.--Pro­nouns.--One kind.--Orig­inal­ly nouns.--Specif­ical­ly ap­plied.

We re­sume the con­sid­er­ation of nouns this evening, in re­la­tion to per­son, num­ber, gen­der, and po­si­tion or case.

In the use of lan­guage there is a speak­er, per­son spo­ken to, and things spo­ken of. Those who speak are the _first_ per­sons, those who hear the _sec­ond_, and those who are the sub­ject of con­ver­sa­tion the _third_.

The first and sec­ond per­sons are gen­er­al­ly used in ref­er­ence to hu­man be­ings ca­pa­ble of speech and un­der­stand­ing. But we some­times con­de­send to hold con­verse with an­imals and inan­imate mat­ter. The bird train­er talks to his par­rots, the coach­man to his hors­es, the sailor to the winds, and the po­et to his land­scapes, tow­ers, and wild imag­in­ings, to which he gives a “lo­cal habi­ta­tion and a name.”

By metaphor, lan­guage is put in­to the mouths of an­imals, par­tic­ular­ly in fa­bles. By a still fur­ther li­cense, places and things, flow­ers, trees, forests, brooks, lakes, moun­tains, tow­ers, cas­tles, stars, &c. are made to speak the most elo­quent lan­guage, in the first per­son, in ad­dress­es the most pa­thet­ic. The pro­pri­ety of such a use of words I will not stop to ques­tion, but sim­ply re­mark that such fig­ures should nev­er be em­ployed in the in­struc­tion of chil­dren. As the mind ex­pands, no longer con­tent to grov­el amidst mun­dane things, we mount the pe­ga­sus of imag­ina­tion and soar thro the bliss­ful or ter­rif­ic scenes of fan­cy and fic­tion, and study a lan­guage be­fore un­known. But it would be an un­righ­teous de­mand up­on oth­ers, to re­quire them to un­der­stand us; and quite as un­par­don­able to brand them with ig­no­rance be­cause they do not.

Most nouns are in the third per­son. More things are talked about than talk them­selves, or are talked to by oth­ers. Hence there is lit­tle ne­ces­si­ty for teach­ing chil­dren to spec­ify ex­cept in the first or sec­ond per­son, which is very eas­ily done.

In En­glish there are two _num­bers_, sin­gu­lar and plu­ral. The sin­gu­lar is con­fined to one, the plu­ral is ex­tend­ed to any in­def­inite num­ber. The Greeks, adopt­ed a du­al num­ber which they used to ex­press two ob­jects unit­ed in pairs, or cou­ples; as, a span of hors­es, a yoke of ox­en, a brace of pis­tols, a pair of shoes. We ex­press the same idea with more words, us­ing the sin­gu­lar to rep­re­sent the union of the two. We al­so ex­tend this use of words and em­ploy what are called _nouns of mul­ti­tude_; as, a peo­ple, an army, a host, a na­tion. These and sim­ilar words are used in the sin­gu­lar re­fer­ring to many com­bined in a unit­ed whole, or in the plu­ral com­pre­hend­ing a di­ver­si­ty; as, “the armies met,” “the na­tions are at peace.” _Peo­ple_ ad­mits no change on ac­count of num­ber. We say “_many_ peo­ple are col­lect­ed to­geth­er and form _a_ nu­mer­ous peo­ple.”

The plu­ral is not al­ways to be un­der­stood as ex­press­ing an in­crease of num­ber, but of qual­ities or sorts of things, as the mer­chant has a va­ri­ety of _sug­ars_, _wines_, _teas_, _drugs_, _medicines_, _paints_ and _dye-​woods_. We al­so speak of _hopes_, _fears_, _loves_, _anx­ieties_.

Some nouns ad­mit of no plu­ral, in fact, or in use; as, chaos, uni­verse, fit­ness, im­mor­tal­ity, im­men­si­ty, eter­ni­ty. Oth­ers ad­mit of no sin­gu­lar; as, scis­sors, tongs, vi­tals, mo­lasses. These words prob­ably once had sin­gu­lars, but hav­ing no use for them they be­came ob­so­lete. We have long been ac­cus­tomed to as­so­ciate the two halves of shears to­geth­er, so that in speak­ing of one whole, we say shears, and of apart, half of a shears. But of some words orig­inal­ly, and in fact plu­ral, we have formed a sin­gu­lar; as, “one twin died, and, tho the oth­er one sur­vived its dan­ger­ous ill­ness, the moth­er wept bit­ter­ly for her twins.” _Twin_ is com­posed of _two_ and _one_. It is found in old books, spelled _twane_, two-​one, or twin. Thus, the _twi_-light is formed by the min­gling of two lights, or the di­vi­sion of the rays of light by the ap­proach­ing or re­ced­ing dark­ness. They _twain_ shall be one flesh. Sheep and deer are sin­gu­lar or plu­ral.

Most plu­rals are formed by adding _s_ to the sin­gu­lar, or, when eu­pho­ny re­quires it, _es_; as, tree, trees; sun, suns; dish, dish­es; box, box­es. Some re­tain the old plu­ral form; as, ox, ox­en; child, chil­dren; chick, chick­en; kit, kit­ten. But habit has burst the bar­ri­er of old rules, and we now talk of chicks and chick­ens, kits and kit­tens. _Ox­en_ alone stands as a mon­ument raised to the mem­ory of un­al­tered sax­on plu­rals.

Some nouns form ir­reg­ular plu­rals. Those end­ing in _f_ change that let­ter to _v_ and then add _es_; as, half, halves; leaf, leaves; wolf, wolves. Those end­ing in _y_ change that to _i_ and add the _es_; as, cher­ry, cher­ries; berry, berries; ex­cept when the _y_ is pre­ced­ed by a vow­el, in which case it on­ly adds the _s_; as, day, days; mon­ey, mon­eys (not _ies_); at­tor­ney, at­tor­neys. All this is to make the sound more easy and har­mo­nious. _F_ and _v_ were for­mer­ly used in­dis­crim­inate­ly, in sin­gu­lars as well as plu­rals, and, in fact, in the com­po­si­tion of all words where they oc­curred. The same may be said of _i_ and _y_.

“The Fad­er (Fa­ther) Almy­chty of the heven abuf (above) In the mene tyme, un­to Juno his _luf_ (love) Thus spak; and sayd.” _Dou­glas, booke 12, pag. 441._

“They lyued in ioye and in fe­lycite For eche of hem had oth­er lefe and dere.” _Chaucer, Monks Tale, fol. 81, p. 1._

“When straite twane beefes he tooke And an the aultar layde.”

The rea­son why _y_ is changed in­to _i_ in the for­ma­tion of plu­rals, and in cer­tain oth­er cas­es, is, I ap­pre­hend, ac­count­ed for from the fact that words which now end in _y_ for­mer­ly end­ed in _ie_, as may be seen in all old books. The reg­ular plu­ral was then formed by adding _s_.

“And up­on those mem­bers of the _bod­ie_, which _wee_ thinke most un­hon­est, put _wee_ more hon­estie on.” “It re­joyceth not in in­iq­ui­tie--di­ver­si­tie of gifts--all thinges ed­ifie not.” See old bible, 1 Cor., chap. 13 and 14.

Oth­er words form their plu­rals still more dif­fer­ent­ly, for which no oth­er rule than habit can be giv­en; as, man, men; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; die, dice; mouse, mice; pen­ny, pence, and some­times pen­nies, when ap­plied to dis­tinct pieces of mon­ey, and not to val­ue.

Many for­eign nouns re­tain the plu­ral form as used by the na­tions from whom we have bor­rowed them; as, cherub, cheru­bim; ser­aph, seraphim; ra­dius, radii; mem­oran­dum, mem­oran­da; da­tum, da­ta, &c. We should be pleased to have such words car­ried home, or, if they are ours by virtue of pos­ses­sion, let them be adopt­ed in­to our fam­ily, and put on the gar­ments of nat­ural­ized cit­izens, and no longer ap­pear as lone­ly strangers among us. There is great auk­ward­ness in adding the en­glish to the he­brew plu­ral of cherub, as the trans­la­tors of the com­mon ver­sion of the bible have done. They use _cherub_ in the sin­gu­lar and cherub_ims_ in the plu­ral. The _s_ should be omit­ted and the He­brew plu­ral re­tained, or the prefer­able course adopt­ed, and the fi­nal _s_ be added, mak­ing cherubs, ser­aphs, &c. The same might be said of all for­eign nouns. It would add much to the reg­ular­ity, dig­ni­ty, and beau­ty, of our ver­nac­ular tongue.

Prop­er nouns ad­mit of the plu­ral num­ber; as, there are six­ty-​four John Smiths in New-​York, twen­ty Arnolds in Prov­idence, and fif­teen Davis­es in Boston. As we are not ac­cus­tomed to form the plu­rals of prop­er names there is not that ease and har­mo­ny in the first use of them that we have found in those with which we are more fa­mil­iar; es­pe­cial­ly those we have rarely heard pro­nounced. Habit sur­mounts the great­est ob­sta­cles and makes things the most harsh and un­pleas­ant ap­pear soft and agree­able.

Gen­der is ap­plied to the dis­tinc­tion of the sex­es. There are two--mas­cu­line and fem­inine. The for­mer is ap­plied to males, the lat­ter to fe­males. Those words which be­long to nei­ther gen­der, have been called _neuter_, that is, _no gen­der_. But it is hard­ly nec­es­sary to per­plex the minds of learn­ers with _neg­atives_. Let them dis­tin­guish be­tween mas­cu­line and fem­inine gen­ders, and lit­tle need be said to them about a _neuter_.

There are some nouns of both gen­ders, as stu­dent, writ­er, pupil, per­son, cit­izen, res­ident. _Po­et_, _au­thor_, ed­itor, and some oth­er words, have of late been ap­plied to fe­males, in­stead of po­et_ess_, au­thor_ess_, ed­it_ress_. Fash­ion will soon pre­clude the ne­ces­si­ty of this for­mer dis­tinc­tion.

Some lan­guages de­ter­mine their gen­ders by the form of the end­ings of their nouns, and what is thus made mas­cu­line in Rome, may be fem­inine in France. It is ow­ing, no doubt, to this prac­tice, in oth­er na­tions, that we have at­tached the idea of gen­der to inan­imate things; as, “the sun, _he_ shines ma­jes­ti­cal­ly;” while of the moon, it is said, “_she_ sheds a milder ra­di­ance.” But we can not co­in­cide with the rea­son as­signed by Mr. Mur­ray, for this dis­tinc­tion. His no­tion is not valid. It does not cor­re­spond with facts. While in the south of Eu­rope the sun is called mas­cu­line and the moon fem­inine, the north­ern na­tions in­vari­ably re­verse the dis­tinc­tion, par­tic­ular­ly the di­alects of the Scan­di­na­vian. It was so in our own lan­guage in the time of Shak­speare. He calls the sun a “_fair wench_.”

By fig­ures of rhetoric, gen­ders may be at­tached to inan­imate mat­ter. Where things are per­son­ified, we usu­al­ly speak of them as mas­cu­line and fem­inine; but this prac­tice de­pends on fan­cy, and not on any fixed rules. There is, in truth, but two gen­ders, and those con­fined to an­imals. When we break these rules, and fol­low the undi­rect­ed wan­der­ings of fan­cy, we can form no rules to reg­ulate our words. We may have as many fan­ci­ful ones as we please, but they will not ap­ply in com­mon prac­tice. For ex­am­ple: po­ets and artists have usu­al­ly at­tached fe­male love­li­ness to an­gels, and placed them in the fem­inine gen­der. But they are in­vari­ably used in the mas­cu­line thro out the scrip­tures.

There is an ap­par­ent ab­sur­di­ty in say­ing of the ship Gen­er­al Williams, _she_ is beau­ti­ful; or, of the steam­boat Ben­jamin Franklin, _she_ is out of date. It were far bet­ter to use no gen­der in such cas­es. But if peo­ple will con­tin­ue the prac­tice of mak­ing dis­tinc­tions where there are none, they must do it from habit and whim, and not from any rea­son or pro­pri­ety.

There are three ways in which we usu­al­ly dis­tin­guish the forms of words in ref­er­ence to gen­der. 1st. By words which are dif­fer­ent; as boy, girl; un­cle, aunt; fa­ther, moth­er. 2d. By a dif­fer­ent ter­mi­na­tion of the same word; as in­struc­tor, in­struc­tress; li­on, li­oness; po­et, po­et­ess. _Ess_ is a con­trac­tion from the he­brew _es­sa_, a fe­male. 3d. By pre­fix­ing an­oth­er word; as, a male child, a fe­male child; a man ser­vant, a maid ser­vant; a he-​goat, a she-​goat.

The last con­sid­er­ation that at­tach­es to nouns, is the _po­si­tion_ they oc­cu­py in writ­ten or spo­ken lan­guage, in re­la­tion to oth­er words, as be­ing _agents_, or _ob­jects_ of ac­tion. This is termed _po­si­tion_.

There are two po­si­tions in which nouns stand in ref­er­ence to their mean­ing and use. First, as _agents_ of ac­tion, as _David_ killed Go­liath. Sec­ond, as _ob­jects_ on which ac­tion ter­mi­nates; as, _Richard_ con­quered _Hen­ry_. These two dis­tinc­tions should be ob­served in the use of all nouns. But the pro­pri­ety of this di­vi­sion will be more ev­ident when we come to treat of verbs, their agents and ob­jects.

It will be per­ceived that we have aban­doned the use of the “_pos­ses­sive case_,” a dis­tinc­tion which has been in­sist­ed on in our gram­mars; and al­so changed the names of the oth­er two. As we would adopt noth­ing that is new with­out first be­ing con­vinced that some­thing is need­ed which the thing pro­posed will sup­ply; so we would re­ject noth­ing that is old, till we have found it use­less and cum­ber­some. It will be ad­mit­ted on all hands that the few­er and sim­pler the rules of gram­mar, the more read­ily will they be un­der­stood, and the more cor­rect­ly ap­plied. We should guard, on the one hand, against hav­ing so many as to per­plex, and on the oth­er, re­tain enough to ap­ply in the cor­rect use of lan­guage. It is on this ground that we have pro­posed an im­prove­ment in the names and num­ber of cas­es, or po­si­tions.

The word noun sig­ni­fies name, and _nom­ina­tive_ is the ad­jec­tive de­rived from noun, and par­takes of the same mean­ing. Hence the _nom­ina­tive_ or _nam­ing_ case may ap­ply as cor­rect­ly to the ob­ject as the agent. “_John_ strikes _Thomas_, and _Thomas_ strikes _John_.” John and Thomas name the boys who strike, but in the first case John is the ac­tor or agent and Thomas the ob­ject. In the lat­ter it is changed. To use a _nom­ina­tive name_ is a re­dun­dan­cy which should be avoid­ed. You will un­der­stand my mean­ing and see the pro­pri­ety of the change pro­posed, as the mind of the learn­er should not be bur­thened with need­less or ir­rel­evant phras­es.

But our main ob­jec­tion lies against the “pos­ses­sive case.” We re­gard it as a false and un­nec­es­sary dis­tinc­tion. What is the pos­ses­sive case? Mur­ray de­fines it as “ex­press­ing the re­la­tion of prop­er­ty or pos­ses­sion; as, my fa­ther's house.” His rule of syn­tax is, “one sub­stan­tive gov­erns an­oth­er, sig­ni­fy­ing a dif­fer­ent thing, in the pos­ses­sive or gen­itive case; as, my fa­ther's house.” I de­sire you to un­der­stand the def­ini­tion and use as here giv­en. Read it over again, and be care­ful that you know the mean­ing of _prop­er­ty_, _pos­ses­sion_, and _gov­ern­ment_. Now let a schol­ar parse cor­rect­ly the ex­am­ple giv­en. “_Fa­ther's_” is a com­mon noun, third per­son, sin­gu­lar num­ber, mas­cu­line gen­der, and _gov­erned_ by house:“ Rule, ”One noun _gov­erns_ an­oth­er,“ &c. Then my fa­ther does not gov­ern his own house, but his house him! What must be the con­duct and con­di­tion of the fam­ily, if they have usurped the gov­ern­ment of their head? ”John Jones, hat­ter, keeps con­stant­ly for sale all kinds of _boy's hats_. Parse boy's. It is a noun, pos­ses­sive case, _gov­erned_ by hats.“ What is the pos­ses­sive case? It ”sig­ni­fies the _re­la­tion of prop­er­ty or pos­ses­sion_." Do the hats be­long to the boys? Oh no. Are they the _prop­er­ty_ or in the _pos­ses­sion_ of the boys? Cer­tain­ly not. Then what re­la­tion is there of prop­er­ty or pos­ses­sion? None at all. They be­long to John Jones, were made by him, are his prop­er­ty, and by him are ad­ver­tised for sale. He has used the word _boy's_ to dis­tin­guish their size, qual­ity, and fit­ness for boy's use.

“The mas­ter's slave.” Mas­ter's is in the pos­ses­sive case, and _gov­erned_ by slave! If gram­mars are true there can be no need of abo­li­tion so­ci­eties, un­less it is to look af­ter the mas­ter and see that he is not abused. The rid­er's horse; the cap­tain's ship; the gen­er­al's army; the gov­er­nor's cat; the king's sub­ject. How false it would be to teach schol­ars the idea of _prop­er­ty_ and _gov­ern­ment_ in such cas­es. The _teach­er's schol­ars_ should nev­er learn that by virtue of their gram­mars, or the _apos­tro­phe_ and let­ter _s_, they have a right to _gov­ern_ their teach­ers; nor the moth­er's son, to gov­ern his moth­er. Our mer­chants would dis­like ex­ceed­ing­ly to have the _ladies_ un­der­stand them to sig­ni­fy by their ad­ver­tise­ments that the "ladies' meri­no shawls, the ladies's bon­nets and lace wrought veils, the ladies' gloves and el­egant Thi­bet, silk and chal­la dress­es, were the _prop­er­ty_ of the ladies; for in that case they might claim or _pos­sess_ them­selves of their _prop­er­ty_, and no longer trou­ble the mer­chant with the care of it.

“Pe­ter's wife's moth­er lay sick of a fever.” “_His_ physi­cian said that _his_ dis­ease would re­quire _his_ ut­most skill to de­feat _its_ progress in _his_ limbs.” Phras­es like these are con­stant­ly oc­cur­ring, which can not be ex­plained in­tel­li­gi­bly by the ex­ist­ing gram­mars. In fact, the words said to be nouns in the pos­ses­sive case, have changed their char­ac­ter, by use, from nouns to ad­jec­tives, or defini­tive words, and should thus be classed. Rus­sia iron, Hol­land gin, Chi­na ware, Amer­ican peo­ple, the Wash­ing­ton tav­ern, Lafayette house, As­tor house, Hud­son riv­er, (for­mer­ly Hud­son's,) Baf­fin's bay, Van Die­man's land, John street, Harp­er's fer­ry, Hill's bridge, a pa­per book, a bound book, a red book, John's book--one which John is known to use, it may be a bor­rowed one, but gen­er­al­ly known as some way con­nect­ed with him,--Rev. Mr. Smith's church, St. John's church, Grace church, Mur­ray's gram­mar; not the prop­er­ty nor in the pos­ses­sion of Lind­ley Mur­ray, nei­ther does it _gov­ern him_; for he has gone to speak a pur­er lan­guage than he taught on earth. It is mine. I bought it, have pos­sessed it these ten years; but, thank for­tune, am lit­tle _gov­erned_ by it. But more on this point when we come to the prop­er place. What I have said, will serve as a hint, which will en­able you to see the im­pro­pri­ety of adopt­ing the “pos­ses­sive case.”

It may be said that more cas­es are em­ployed in oth­er lan­guages. That is a poor rea­son why we should break the bar­ri­ers of nat­ural lan­guage. Be­side, I know not how we should de­cide by that rule, for none of them have a _case_ that will com­pare with the En­glish pos­ses­sive. The gen­itive of the French, Latin, or Greek, will ap­ply in on­ly a few re­spects. The for­mer has _three_, the lat­ter five, and the Latin six cas­es, nei­ther of which cor­re­spond with the pos­ses­sive, as ex­plained by Mur­ray and his satel­lites. We should be slow to adopt in­to our lan­guage an id­iom which does not be­long to it, and com­pel learn­ers to make dis­tinc­tions where none ex­ist. It is an easy mat­ter to tell chil­dren that the apos­tro­phe and let­ter _s_ marks the pos­ses­sive case; but when they ask the dif­fer­ence in the mean­ing be­tween the use of the noun and those which all ad­mit are ad­jec­tives, it will be no in­dif­fer­ent task to sat­is­fy them. What is the dif­fer­ence in the con­struc­tion of lan­guage or the sense con­veyed, be­tween Hud­son'_s_ riv­er, and _Hud­son_ riv­er? Davis's straits, or Bass straits? St. John's church, or Epis­co­pal church? the sun's beams, or sun shine? In all cas­es these words are used to de­fine the suc­ceed­ing noun. They re­gard “prop­er­ty or pos­ses­sion,” on­ly when at­tend­ing cir­cum­stances, al­to­geth­er for­eign from any qual­ity in the form or mean­ing of the word it­self, are so com­bined as to give it that im­port. And in such cas­es, we re­tain these words as ad­jec­tives, long af­ter the prop­er­ty has passed from the hands of the per­sons who gave it a name. _Field's_ point, _Fuller's_ rocks, _Fish­er's_ is­land, _Ful­ton's_ in­ven­tion, will long be re­tained af­ter those whose names were giv­en to dis­tin­guish these things, have slept with their fa­thers and been for­got­ten. Blan­ner­has­sett's Is­land, long since ceased to be his prop­er­ty or tran­quil pos­ses­sion, by con­fis­ca­tion; but it will re­tain its spe­cif­ic name, till the in­un­da­tions of the Ohio's wa­ters shall have washed it away and left not a wreck be­hind.

The dis­tinc­tions I have made in the po­si­tions of nouns, will be clear­ly un­der­stood when we come to the verbs. A few re­marks up­on pro­nouns will close the present lec­ture.

PRO­NOUNS.

Pro­nouns are such as the word in­di­cates. _Pro_ is the latin word _for_; pro-​nomen, _for nouns_. They are words, orig­inal­ly nouns, used specif­ical­ly _for_ oth­er nouns, to avoid the too fre­quent rep­eti­tion of the same words; as, Wash­ing­ton was the fa­ther of his coun­try; _he_ was a valiant of­fi­cer. _We_ ought to re­spect _him_. The word _we_, stands for the speak­er and all present, and saves the trou­ble of nam­ing them; _he_ and _him_, stand for Wash­ing­ton, to avoid the monotony which would be pro­duced by a re­cur­rence of his name.

Pro­nouns are all of one kind, and few in num­ber. I will give you a list of them in their re­spec­tive po­si­tions.

_Agents._ _Ob­jects._ { 1st per­son, I, me, { 2d “ thou, thee, _Sin­gu­lar_ { 3d ” mas. { he, him, { " fem. { she, her, { it, it.

{ 1st per­son, we, us, _Plu­ral_ { 2d “ ye, or you, you, { 3d ” they, them, who, whom.

The two last may be used in ei­ther per­son, num­ber, or gen­der.

The fre­quent use of these words ren­der them very im­por­tant, in the el­egant and rapid use of lan­guage. They are so short, and their sound so soft and easy, that the fre­quen­cy of their re­cur­rence does not mar the beau­ty of a sen­tence, but saves us from the re­dun­dan­cy of oth­er words. They are sub­sti­tut­ed on­ly when there is lit­tle dan­ger of mis­tak­ing the nouns for which they stand. They are, how­ev­er, some­times used in a very broad sense; as, “_they say_ it is so;” mean­ing no par­tic­ular per­sons, but the gen­er­al sen­ti­ment. _It_ fre­quent­ly takes the lead of a sen­tence, and the thing rep­re­sent­ed by it comes af­ter; as, “It is cur­rent­ly re­port­ed, that things were thus and so.” Here _it_ rep­re­sents the sin­gle idea which is af­ter­ward stat­ed at length. “_It_ is so.” “_It_ may be that the na­tions will be de­stroyed by wars, earth­quakes, and famines.” But more of this when we come to speak of the com­po­si­tion of sen­tences.

The words now classed as pro­nouns were orig­inal­ly _names_ of things, but in this char­ac­ter they have long been ob­so­lete. They are now used on­ly in their sec­ondary char­ac­ter as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er words. The word _he_, for in­stance, sig­ni­fied orig­inal­ly _to breathe_. It was ap­plied to the liv­ing be­ings who in­haled air. It oc­curs with lit­tle change in the var­ious lan­guages of Eu­rope, an­cient and mod­ern, till at length it is ap­plied to the male agent which lives and acts. The word _her_ means _light_, but is specif­ical­ly ap­plied to fe­males which are the ob­jects of ac­tion.

Was it in ac­cor­dance with the de­sign of these lec­tures, it would give me plea­sure to go in­to a minute ex­am­ina­tion of the ori­gin, changes and mean­ing of these words till they came to be ap­plied as spe­cif­ic words of ex­ceed­ing lim­it­ed char­ac­ter. Most of them might be traced thro all the lan­guages of Eu­rope; the Ara­bic, Per­sic, Armini­an, Chaldean, He­brew, and, for ought I know, all the lan­guages of Asia. But as they are now ad­mit­ted a pe­cu­liar po­si­tion in the ex­pres­sion of thought from which they nev­er vary; and as we are con­tend­ing about philo­soph­ic prin­ci­ples rather than ver­bal crit­icisms, I shall for­bear a fur­ther con­sid­er­ation of these words.

In the prop­er place I shall con­sid­er those words for­mer­ly called “Ad­jec­tive Pro­nouns,” “Pro­noun Ad­jec­tives,” or “Pronom­inal Ad­jec­tives,” to suit the vary­ing whims of those gram­mar mak­ers, who de­sired to show off a speck of im­prove­ment in their “sim­pli­fy­ing” works with­out ev­er hav­ing a new idea to ex­press. It is a query in some minds whether the sev­en­ty-​two “sim­pli­fiers” and “im­provers” of Mur­ray's gram­mar ev­er had any dis­tinct no­tions in their heads which they did not ob­tain from the very man, who, it would seem by their con­duct, was un­able to ex­plain his own mean­ing.