Page images
PDF
EPUB

herein follow nature, and make all inanimate things and abstract ideas of the neuter gender.

IV. Whatever action is performed must be either done or suffered by some individual; unless indeed by a metaphor we attribute agency to an inanimate object: for we say that the knife cuts, although we very well know that if left untouched it can do nothing of the kind. This difference of action makes what is technically called a voice-that is, what the man does is expressed by the ACTIVE VOICE; what he suffers by the PASSIVE VOICE; a distinction retained in all languages: in many, other voices are added, implying not only doing and suffering, but causing to do or suffer, &c. as in the Hebrew; or as sometimes in the Middle Voice of the Greek, and in the reflected verb of the French, signifying an action of the individual on himself.

V. Whatever action is performed must be performed in some time, and as relates to the speaker it must be either past, present, or future: and this distinction is universally found in the times or tenses of the verb, which are more or less complicated according to the genius of the different nations; but the broad distinction exists everywhere, with this slight variation,

that some few do not acknowledge the present as a sufficiently durable time to be worthy of an especial expression. The Hebrew has only a past and a future time.

VI. As action cannot take place without an agent and patient, i. e. a person or thing undergoing the action, so by virtue of that action, the person or thing is placed in some peculiar relation to the other. Thus a thing belongs to, or is given to, or is taken from, a person, or it is subject to some action, or it is simply named as the agent; or it is called to; and if these varieties of situation are implied in the word itself, it is said to be in such and such a case; and this relation of things must always exist, though in some modern languages the distinction by an especial inflection is abandoned. For it is clear that when I say I have sold my horse, I mean to imply a different relation between myself and the animal from that implied in, my horse has thrown me :-in the Latin, in the first example, the word horse would be in the accusative case with a distinct termination :-in the English and many modern languages the termination is the same; but as the relation between the man and the animal is still understood to be expressed in the substantive, without the aid of

any preposition, it must be considered to be in the accusative case, albeit the inflection be wanting. In the second example, the horse is the agent, or nominative case, and the man is in the accusative; but here, even in the English, the case has its peculiar form, for me is the accusative case of I.

VII. As all qualities are found to exist in more or less intensity, so adjectives and adverbs admit of what are called degrees of comparison, namely, the POSITIVE, as wise, far; the coмPARATIVE, as wiser, farther; the SUPERLATIVE, as wisest, farthest.

Such are the fundamental distinctions of universal grammar, or to speak technically, such is its accidence. It has also its Syntax, or mode of putting words together, and here again the rules are broad and comprehensive. The three concords, as they are termed by grammarians, are well known; and with a few modifications are universally applicable. They are

1. That of the nominative and verb: namely the agreement of the verb, or action, in number and person with the agent. Thus, if the nominative or agent be I, the verb must agree with it by being in the singular number, and the first person; or

if the agent be some person or thing which is addressed, it is in the second person; or if it be some person or thing which is spoken of, and not addressed, it is in the third person. One remarkable exception to this rule exists in the Greek, where a neuter noun plural requires the verb to be in the singular number; a peculiarity not easily to be accounted for, unless the Greeks perhaps considered that there could be no individuality where there was no gender, and that therefore these things could only be spoken of collectively.

2. That of the substantive with its adjective, namely the agreement of the adjective in gender, number, and case with the noun, or, which is the same thing, with the pronoun to which it belongs; and here there appears to be an exception in the English where the adjective is universally indeclinable, yet this is but an apparent exception, for though the adjective admits of no inflection, nobody doubts that a perfect agreement with the substantive is implied. The strong men, implies that all the men are strong, and therefore the adjective is in fact plural: the good father's kindness

implies that the kindness is a quality belonging to a father in so far as he is good; therefore good is here in the same case as father.

3. That of the relative with the antecedent; namely, the agreement of the relative pronoun,* with the person or thing which it refers to, in gender, number, and person; though here the English relative being alike in both numbers, appears, at first sight, to be anomalous.

As universal is the rule that the verb substantive + shall have the same case after as before it for this is a rule originating in the very nature of things, since simple existence terminates in the individual, and has no relation to any other being. Verbs transitive, on the contrary, i. e. actions which have relation to other persons or things, are universally followed by an accusative case, and this whether it be marked by any inflection or not. For the thing acted upon cannot be in the same condition as the actor; and the same great distinction which, we have already seen, exists between the active and passive voice of verbs, exists as naturally and ne

Englished by who or which. t In English, to be..

« PreviousContinue »