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.