JB_102_519.xml

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.

JB_102_517.xml

Title: [13 Nov r. 1815 Chrestomathia]

Description: 13 Nov r. 1815

Chrestomathia

IV. Nomenclature

Exhaustiveness whence Horne's

Grammat Sketch

Ranged in the order of simplicity and conceptibility, and denominated by their usual names, the several parts of speech that are essentially different from one another, and not included any one of them under any other, will stand as follows.

1. Substantive (Noun Substantive).

2. Adjective (Noun Adjective).

3. Verb (Verb Substantive) called also the (Copula).

4. Proposition.

5. Conjunction.

If considered as distinct from all the aboves[?] and not including in itself the import of several of them, the interjection does not form a part of organized language. It is no more than part and parcel of that unorganized language which is common to man and the inferior animals.

In the above list, the word substantive must be understood, considered as unfurnished from those several additionments[?] and modifications by which the relations designated by the words gender, case and number are expressed.

So likewise the Noun adjective.

So likewise the Verb as distinct from those by which the relations designated by the words person, number, Moodes[?] and Tense are expressed.

The Pronoun substantive will be found to coincide in its import and proportion with the Noun Substantive:- and that as perfectly as any one Noun Substantive with another Noun Substantive, that is the sort of relation it bears to the several other parts of speech is the same. The Pronoun Adjective will in like manner be found to coincide in its import and proportion with the Noun Adjective.

The article, whether definite or indefinite, will be found in like manner to be but a species of Noun Adjective.

JB_102_520.xml

Title: [12 Nov r. 1815 Chrestomathia]

Description: 12 Nov r. 1815

Chrestomathia

IV. Nomenclature

Parts of Speech Tabulated

II. Number - Proposition, the import of which is indicated. Objects of the same kind more than one are meant to be indicated by the noun substantive to which the termination in question is attached.

In the same way may be brought to view the propositions respectively indicated by the terminations or other modifications expressive of Tense and Mood or Mode.

Two cases there are in and by the import of which no such adjectitious and accessory idea is necessarily involved. These are 1. The Nominative. 2. The Accusative. In these cases there is not any preposition of the import of which the designation is added to that of the import of the Noun to which[?] the termination or other modification is attached.

Those in the instances of which there is always some preposition, the import of which the designation is always involved in that of the termination in question are, 1. the genitive. 2. the dative. 3. the ablative.

In certain sparingly inflected languages, the import of the genitive is indeed expressed by a termination. But in these same languages it is in every instance expressed also by a preposition.

In every language in which it has place the substitutive mode of terminations[?] or other inseparable modifications to separate words, for example such as prepositions, is on several accounts a great blemish. 1. It is a source of prodigious complication, the whole of it useless. 2. It is a most copious source of ambiguity. One such modification being in these copiously inflected languages applied of necessity to convey indiscriminately [a] multitude of different imports, which being essentially different, present a correspondently urgent demand for these instruments of distinction of which such correct and compleat a stock is afforded by the sparingly inflected languages.