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.