The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

Dignity, i, 155. "Witness Homer's speaking horses, scolding goddesses, and Jupiter enchanted with Venus' girdle."—Ib., i, 184. "Dr. Watts' Logic may with success be read and commented on to them."—Ib., p. 156. "Potter's Greek, and Kennet's Roman Antiquities, Strauchius' and Helvicus' Chronology."—Ib., p. 161. "Sing. Alice' friends, Felix' property; Plur. The Alices' friends, The Felixes' property."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 46. "Such as Bacchus'es company,"—"at Bacchus'es festivals."—Ainsworth's Dict., w. Thyrsus. "Burn's inimitable Tam o'Shanter turns entirely upon such a circumstance."—Scott's Lay, Notes, p. 201. "Nominative, Men. Genitive, Mens. Objective, Men."—Cutler's Gram., p. 20. "Mens Happiness or Misery is most part of their own making."—Locke, on Education, p. 1. "That your Sons Cloths be never made strait, especially about the Breast."—Ib., p. 15. "Childrens Minds are narrow and weak."—Ib., p. 297. "I would not have little Children much tormented about Punctilio's, or Niceties of Breeding."—Ib., p. 90. "To fill his Head with suitable Idea's."—Ib., p. 113. "The Burgusdiscius's and the Scheiblers did not swarm in those Days, as they do now."—Ib., p. 163. "To see the various ways of dressing—a calve's head!"—Shenstone, Brit. Poets, Vol. vii, p. 143.

   "He puts it on, and for decorum sake
    Can wear it e'en as gracefully as she."—Cowper's Task.

LESSON III.—MIXED.

"Simon the witch was of this religion too."—Bunyan's P. P., p. 123.

[FORMULE.—Not proper, because the feminine name witch is here applied to a man. But, according to the doctrine of genders, on page 254th, "Names of males are masculine; names of females, feminine;" &c. Therefore, witch should be wizard; thus, "Simon the wizard," &c.]

"Mammodis, n. Coarse, plain India muslins."—Webster's Dict. "Go on from single persons to families, that of the Pompeyes for instance."—Collier's Antoninus, p. 142. "By which the ancients were not able to account for phænomenas."—Bailey's Ovid, p. vi. "After this I married a wife who had lived at Crete, but a Jew by birth."—Josephus's Life, p. 194. "The very heathen are inexcusable for not worshipping him."—Student's Manual, p. 328. "Such poems as Camoen's Lusiad, Voltaire's Henriade, &c."—Blair's Rhet., p. 422. "My learned correspondent writes a word in defence of large scarves."—SPECT.: in Joh. Dict. "The forerunners of an apoplexy are dulness, vertigos, tremblings."—ARBUTHNOT: ib. "Vertigo changes the o into ~in=es, making the plural vertig~in=es."—Churchill's Gram., p. 59. "Noctambulo changes the o into =on=es, making the plural noctambul=on=es."—Ib., p. 59. "What shall we say of noctambulos?"—ARBUTHNOT: in Joh. Dict. "In the curious fretwork of rocks and grottos."—Blair's Rhet., p. 220. "Wharf makes the plural wharves."—Smith's Gram., p. 45; Merchant's, 29; Picket's, 21; Frost's, 8. "A few cent's worth of maccaroni supplies all their wants."—Balbi's Geog., p. 275. "C sounds hard, like k, at the end of a word or syllables."—Blair's Gram., p. 4. "By which the virtuosi try The magnitude of every lie."—Hudibras. "Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre."—Pope's Dunciad, B. i, l. 162. "Perching within square royal rooves."—SIDNEY: in Joh. Dict. "Similies should, even in poetry, be used with moderation."—Blair's Rhet., p. 166. "Similies should never be taken from low or mean objects."—Ib., p. 167. "It were certainly better to say, 'The house of lords,' than 'the Lord's house.'"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 177. "Read your answers. Unit figure? 'Five.' Ten's? 'Six.' Hundreds? 'Seven.'"—Abbott's Teacher, p. 79. "Alexander conquered Darius' army."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 58. "Three days time was requisite, to prepare matters."—Brown's Estimate, ii, 156. "So we say that Ciceros stile and Sallusts, were not one, nor Cesars and Livies, nor Homers and Hesiodus, nor Herodotus and Theucidides, nor Euripides and Aristophanes, nor Erasmus and Budeus stiles."—Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, iii, 5. "Lex (i.e. legs) is no other than our ancestors past participle læg, laid down."—Tooke's Diversions, ii, 7. "Achaia's sons at Ilium slain for the Atridæ' sake."—Cowper's Iliad. "The corpse[167] of half her senate manure the fields of Thessaly."—Addison's Cato.

   "Poisoning, without regard of fame or fear:
    And spotted corpse are frequent on the bier."—Dryden.

CHAPTER IV.—ADJECTIVES.

An Adjective is a word added to a noun or pronoun, and generally expresses quality: as, A wise man; a new book. You two are diligent.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—Adjectives have been otherwise called attributes, attributives, qualities, adnouns; but none of these names is any better than the common one. Some writers have classed adjectives with verbs; because, with a neuter verb for the copula, they often form logical predicates: as, "Vices are contagious." The Latin grammarians usually class them with nouns; consequently their nouns are divided into nouns substantive and nouns adjective. With us, substantives are nouns; and adjectives form a part of speech by themselves. This is generally acknowledged to be a much better distribution. Adjectives cannot with propriety be called nouns, in any language; because they are not the names of the qualities which they signify. They must be added to nouns or pronouns in order to make sense. But if, in a just distribution of words, the term "adjective nouns" is needless and improper, the term "adjective pronouns" is, certainly, not less so: most of the words which Murray and others call by this name, are not pronouns, but adjectives.

OBS. 2.—The noun, or substantive, is a name, which makes sense of itself. The adjective is an adjunct to the noun or pronoun. It is a word added to denote quality, situation, quantity, number, form, tendency, or whatever else may characterize and distinguish the thing or things spoken of. Adjectives, therefore, are distinguished from nouns by their relation to them; a relation corresponding to that which qualities bear to things: so that no part of speech is more easily discriminated than the adjective. Again: English adjectives, as such, are all indeclinable. When, therefore, any words usually belonging to this class, are found to take either the plural or the possessive form, like substantive nouns, they are to be parsed as nouns. To abbreviate expression, we not unfrequently, in this manner, convert adjectives into nouns. Thus, in grammar, we often speak of nominatives, possessives, or objectives, meaning nouns or pronouns of the nominative, the possessive, or the objective case; of positives, comparatives, or superlatives, meaning adjectives of the positive, the comparative, or the superlative degree; of infinitives, subjunctives, or imperatives, meaning verbs of the infinitive, the subjunctive, or the imperative mood; and of singulars, plurals, and many other such things, in the same way. So a man's superiors or inferiors are persons superior or inferior to himself. His betters are persons better than he. Others are any persons or things distinguished from some that are named or referred to; as, "If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you."—Lacon. All adjectives thus taken substantively, become nouns, and ought to be parsed as such, unless this word others is to be made an exception, and called a "pronoun."

   "Th' event is fear'd; should we again provoke
    Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find."
        —Milton, P. L., B. ii, l. 82.

OBS. 3.—Murray says, "Perhaps the words former and latter may be properly ranked amongst the demonstrative pronouns, especially in many of their applications. The following sentence may serve as an example: 'It was happy for the state, that Fabius continued in the command with Minutius: the former's phlegm was a check upon the latter's vivacity.'"—Gram., 8vo, p. 57. This I take to be bad English. Former and latter ought to be adjectives only; except when former means maker. And, if not so, it is too easy a way of multiplying pronouns, to manufacture two out of one single anonymous sentence. If it were said, "The deliberation of the former was a seasonable chock upon the fiery temper of the latter" the words former and latter would seem to me not to be pronouns, but adjectives, each relating to the noun commander understood after it.

OBS. 4.—The sense and relation of words in sentences, as well as their particular form and meaning, must be considered in parsing, before the learner can say, with certainty, to what class they belong. Other parts of speech, and especially nouns and participles, by a change in their construction, may become adjectives. Thus, to denote the material of which a thing is formed, we very commonly make the name of the substantive an adjective to that of the thing: as, A gold chain, a silver spoon, a glass pitcher, a tin basin, an oak plank, a basswood slab, a whalebone rod. This construction is in general correct, whenever the former word may be predicated of the latter; as, "The chain is gold."—"The spoon is silver." But we do not write gold beater for goldbeater, or silver smith for silversmith; because the beater is not gold, nor is the smith silver. This principle, however, is not universally observed; for we write snowball, whitewash, and many similar compounds, though the ball is snow and the wash is white; and linseed oil, or Newark cider, may be a good phrase, though the former word cannot well be predicated of the latter. So in the following examples: "Let these conversation tones be the foundation of public pronunciation."—Blair's Rhet., p. 334. "A muslin flounce, made very full, would give a very agreeable flirtation air."—POPE: Priestley's Gram., p. 79.

   "Come, calm Content, serene and sweet,
    O gently guide my pilgrim feet
    To find thy hermit cell."—Barbauld.

OBS. 5.—Murray says, "Various nouns placed before other nouns assume the nature of adjectives: as, sea fish, wine vessel, corn field, meadow ground, &c."—Octavo Gram., p. 48. This is, certainly, very lame instruction. If there is not palpable error in all his examples, the propriety of them all is at least questionable; and, to adopt and follow out their principle, would be, to tear apart some thousands of our most familiar compounds. "Meadow ground" may perhaps be a correct phrase, since the ground is meadow; it seems therefore preferable to the compound word meadow-ground. What he meant by "wine vessel" is doubtful: that is, whether a ship or a cask, a flagon or a decanter. If we turn to our dictionaries, Webster has sea-fish and wine-cask with a hyphen, and cornfield without; while Johnson and others have corn-field with a hyphen, and seafish without. According to the rules for the figure of words, we ought to write them seafish, winecask, cornfield. What then becomes of the thousands of "adjectives" embraced in the "&c." quoted above?

OBS. 6.—The pronouns he and she, when placed before or prefixed to nouns merely to denote their gender, appear to be used adjectively; as, "The male or he animals offered in sacrifice."—Wood's Dict., w. Males. "The most usual term is he or she, male or female, employed as an adjective: as, a he bear, a she bear; a male elephant, a female elephant."—Churchill's Gram., p. 69. Most writers, however, think proper to insert a hyphen in the terms here referred to: as, he-bear, she-bear, the plurals of which are he-bears and she-bears. And, judging by the foregoing rule of predication, we must assume that this practice only is right. In the first example, the word he is useless; for the term "male animals" is sufficiently clear without it. It has been shown in the third chapter, that he and she are sometimes used as nouns; and that, as such, they may take the regular declension of nouns, making the plurals hes and shes. But whenever these words are used adjectively to denote gender, whether we choose to insert the hyphen or not, they are, without question, indeclinable, like other adjectives. In the following example, Sanborn will have he to be a noun in the objective case; but I consider it rather, to be an adjective, signifying masculine:

"(Philosophy, I say, and call it He; For, whatsoe'er the painter's fancy be, It a male-virtue seems to me.")—Cowley, Brit. Poets, Vol. ii, p. 54.

OBS. 7.—Though verbs give rise to many adjectives, they seldom, if ever, become such by a mere change of construction. It is mostly by assuming an additional termination, that any verb is formed into an adjective: as in teachable, moveable, oppressive, diffusive, prohibitory. There are, however, about forty words ending in ate, which, without difference of form, are either verbs or adjectives; as, aggregate, animate, appropriate, articulate, aspirate, associate, complicate, confederate, consummate, deliberate, desolate, effeminate, elate, incarnate, intimate, legitimate, moderate, ordinate, precipitate, prostrate, regenerate, reprobate, separate, sophisticate, subordinate. This class of adjectives seems to be lessening. The participials in ed, are superseding some of them, at least in popular practice: as, contaminated, for contaminate, defiled; reiterated, for reiterate, repeated; situated, for situate, placed; attenuated, for attenuate, made thin or slender. Devote, exhaust, and some other verbal forms, are occasionally used by the poets, in lieu of the participial forms, devoted, exhausted, &c.

OBS. 8.—Participles, which have naturally much resemblance to this part of speech, often drop their distinctive character, and become adjectives. This is usually the case whenever they stand immediately before the nouns to which they relate; as, A pleasing countenance, a piercing eye, an accomplished scholar, an exalted station. Many participial adjectives are derivatives formed from