date

19 Nov r. 1815 Chrestomathia or Language
19 Nov r. 1815

Chrestomathia or Language

Universal Grammar

Exhaustiveness whence

Grammar Sketch

{A part of Speech (the collection of these being understood as composed of the above list).

The[?] Parts of Speech.

A part of speech is either, 1. Aplonoctic, simple in its[?] import, or 2. syncrationoctic, composite in its import.

A part of speech, simple in their[?] import are[?] either - 1. significant by itself, or 2. Not significant by itself.

The only part of speech which is perfectly simple in its import and at the same time integrally significant of itself is the noun Substantive: the noun Substantive, not as it exists in Greek and Latin complicated with liberal modifications indicative of logical relations - such as Gender, and Case and number, but such as it exists in English: as in the words Man, Woman, Horse.}

A noun substantive, as in the Latin the word noun truly imports, is a name.

The entity of which it is the name belongs either to the class of real entities or to the class of fictitious entities.

{Incorporeal as well as corporeal substances being included,} real entities are those and those alone which belong to that universal class designated by the logicians by the name of substances.

Substances are divided by them into corporeal and incorporeal. Under the noun of incorporeal are included all masses of matter howsoever circumstanced in respect of form, bulk, and place.  In a note give the contents of the Porphyrian tree.

Corporeal substances the existence is made known to us by sense, they may on that account be termed perceptible: of corporeal no otherwise than by ratiocination: they may on that account be termed informative. To the class of inferential entities belong, 1. The soul of man in a state of separation from the body. 2. God. 3. All other and inferior spiritual entities.
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    Description: 25 Sept. 1814

    Logic

    Ch. Ontology

    Entities real fictitious

    7

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    Of ideas our perception is still more direct and immediate than that which we have of corporeal substances - of their existence our persuasion is more necessary and irresistible than that which we have of the existence of corporeal substances.

    Speaking of Entities, ideas might perhaps accordingly be spoken of as the sole perceptible ones; substances, those of the corporeal class, being, with reference, and in contradistinction to them, no other than inferential ones.

    But if substances themselves be the subject of the division, and for the designation of the two branches of the division the words perceptible and inferential be employed, it is to corporeal substances that the characteristic and differential attribute, perceptible, cannot but be applied: the term inferential being thereupon employed for the designation of incorporeal ones.

    The more correct and complete the consideration bestowed, the more clearly will it be perceived, that from the existence of perceptions, viz. of sensible ones, the inference whereby the existence of incorporeal entities is inferred from the existence of perceptible entities, alias corporeal substances alias

    bodies. Suppose the non-existence of corporeal substances, of any hard corporeal substance that stands opposite to you, make this supposition, and as soon as you have made it, act upon it, pain, the perception of pain, will at once bear witness against you; and that by your punishment, your condign punishment. Suppose the non-existence of any inferential incorporeal substances, of any one of them, or of all of them, and the supposition made, act upon it accordingly, - be the supposition conformable to the truth of the case, at any rate no such immediate counter-evidence, no such immediate punishment will take place /follow/.
  • Title: [12 Nov r. 1815 Chrestomathia Language]
    Description: 12 Nov r. 1815

    Chrestomathia Language

    IV. Universal Grammar

    Parts of Speech Tabulated

    The following are the accessory ideas of which the principal ones expressed by the several parts of speech in question must be divested. - Why? Answer. Because of these several accessory ideas, the import conveyed will be found to be equivalent to the import of so many entire propositions.

    I. Noun Substantive - Accessory ideas attached to it in some languages.

    1. The ideas respectively designated by the words - 1. Gender. 2. Number. 3. Case.

    II. Noun adjective - the same.

    III. Verb - Accessory ideas attached to it as above in some languages.

    1. Person (relation had to the speaker and the being spoken to).

    2. Number.

    3. Tense i.e. {sign of} Time.

    4. Mood or Mode, which is either, 1. Absolute, or 2. Conditional.

    The proposition involved in the import of the termination by which Gender, i.e. Sex, is designated.

    I. Gender.

    1. The person in question, viz. the person in the designation of whom the Noun Substantive to which the termination is attached is employed, is of the sex thus designated: viz. either male or female. Applied to human and most other animated beings, the proposition thus expressed may always be true.

    2. The thing in question is of the sex so designated. Applied to unorganized beings, this is never true: and so among organized beings with[?] few exceptions if applied to vegetables. By this absurd falshood, unless complication to a vast amount; conception not only erroneous but pernicious to a considerable amount, is /are/ infused into the composition of the languages in which this execresence is contained: and in particular the Latin, the Greek and the indian languages of which these[?] mutual languages form respectively the main roots.

    In the copiously inflected languages (Ex.gr. Greek, Latin, Selavenia[?] and their derivatives) all three these accessory ideas are, all three of them, designated by terminations: letters or combinations of letters added or substituted to those expressive of the principal object. In the sparingly inflected languages for example, Gender, no; Number, yes. Case: the genitive and no other.

    In the Russian, a dialect of the Selavenian[?], instances are not wanting in which not only the noun but the verb is encumbered with variations of termination indicative of sex.
  • Title: [14 Nov r. 1815 Chrestomathia]
    Description: 14 Nov r. 1815

    Chrestomathia

    IV Nomenclature

    Grammatical Sketch

    Adjuncts of place and time, whether reducible to qualities? ex.gr. The quality (momentary[?]) of being in such a place, at such a time?

    Among names of fictitious entities, the foremost, and these the designation of which is of most immediate necessity to mind-expressing converse are qualities.

    Note (a)?

    qualities being taken in the largest sense of which the word is susceptible: Is it that which in its import is coextensive with the applicability of the word so much used in the Aristotelian Logic School - prædication.

    Taking the word proposition in its simplest acceptation, by every proposition the existence of some quality in some subject is asserted. A proposition is any portion of discourse by which the existence of some quality in some subject is asserted. The name of the substance is the noun substantive: the name of the quality is the noun adjective. The word by which the relation between the quality and the substance is indicated - viz. the existence of the one or the other is by logicians called the copula.

    By grammarians, on some of the occasions in which by logicians the term copula is employed, the term verb is employed. But it would not by any means be true to say that the word copula and the word Verb are interconvertible - indicative of precisely the same object and nothing more. By the word copula, no more than one single class of words is indicated, viz. the class of words by which intimation is conveyed that in the opinion of the speaker the quality named by him exists in the subject the name of which is pronounced by him at the same time. By the word verb is indicated the cluster of objects the names of which are by grammarians put together and spoken of as constituting all of them together but one Verb: