24 Nov r. 1815

Chrestomathia or Language

Ch.9. Thought the basis

The ideas in the designation of which language is employed are reducible to two heads: viz. 1. ideas of subjects (i.e. of entities real or fictitious considered as subjects) and 2. ideas of relations, of relations between subject and subject.  (Quære as to adjuncts and modifications?)

For the designation of ideas of relation attached to the principal idea, the idea of the subject, two modes are employed in language, viz. 1. separate accessory words. 2. modifications of the sign of the principal idea or subject - the principal word.

For the giving an account of these different modifications of idea, the most commodious of all languages will be that in which the greatest use is made of separate words. Why? Because in this case, for the separate designation of each such modification, there is a separate and apposite words already provided by the language.

The language in which for this purpose the greatest use is made of separate words is, it is believed, the English.

The more of these separate words a language possesses, the less demand it has for, and naturally in[?] the less the numbers it will have of, the abovementioned verbal modifications.

These modifications have by grammarians been termed inflections.

In proportion as the number which it furnishes of this modification or inflection is small, a language may be said to be a sparingly inflected;- in the opposite case, a copiously inflected language.