date

12 Dec. 1815 Chrestom. or Language
12 Dec. 1815

Chrestom. or Language

'.3 Noun substantive

2. Gender

1

2. Gender.

Gender is the sign either of sex or the absence of it. Masculine and feminine of the two sexes: neuter of the absence of sex.

When the form given to a noun is that which causes it to be said to be of the masculine gender, an assertion which it expresses is, that the object of which the noun is the sign is of the male sex; and so, in the case of the feminine gender, of the female sex. When it is that which causes it to be said to be of the neuter gender, the assertion which it conveys is, that the object of which the noun is the sign is not of either sex.

Applied, as it is, to common names, this modification, wherever it is employed, is altogether an useless one, and not merely useless, but replete with absurdity and pregnant with inconvenience.

The English language is, in relation to this point, a perfect model. It attributes not, on this occasion, sex to any object that is not endowed with it. By the entire name, and not by any particular modification of the name, it attributes sex to such objects as are really endowed with that quality.

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    Case, gender, number - of none of these affections of the noun substantive has the noun adjective any need. In all these particulars its import is determined, determined with perfect clearness by the connexion it has with the noun-substantive, by the connexion which the sign of a quality has with the sign of the subject in which it is meant to be represented as inhering.

    In this particular, again, the English may be seen presenting a model of perfection. In the English the adjective is everywhere altogether undeclinable.

    The substantive has but two declensions two signs of modification, - the sign of the genitive case in the singular number, and the sign of the plural number in all cases. In the adjective even these modifications are unnecessary: accordingly, in the English, they have not either of them any place.

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    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.

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

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

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

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    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.
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    Proper names come before common names. Common names are the result of generalization; every common name is the name of a general idea.

    The pronoun I is a sort of common name, being applicable by any person as well as any other; the pronouns he, she, and it, more manifestly so. Languages, it is said, are in existence, in which there are no such pronominal names. Instead of I, the speaker employs his own name; instead of you, the name of the person spoken to; instead of he or she, that of the person spoken of. A different sign for the third person, when of a different sex, must have been a superior refinement; so likewise the difference between animals endued with the organs of sex, and other substances - whence the distinction between masculine and feminine, on the one hand, and neuter on the other.

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    147