10 Dec. 1815

Chre Language

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Ch.3 Noun substantive

1. Number

To the noun substantive alone, and neither to the verb nor the noun-adjective, belongs in the nature of the case, the affection or modification of plurality. It is only in the case of the substantive that the attaching to the word the sign of plurality can be of any use. Attached to the verb or even to the adjective, it is so much useless complication. Abel is a good boy. Cain and Abel are good boys. Here the adjective, when employed for giving expression to the plural number, or the state the adjective is in, differs not in any respect from the state it was in when employed for giving expression to the singular number. In Latin the adjective would, in the first case, be bonus, in the other case boni.

True, in the English, in the case where the persons meant are more than one, in the case of the verb, a word is employed different from that which is employed where one and no more is meant to be brought to view. But, even in English, some instances of superfluity in inflection may be found, and this is one of them. As by the noun-substantive alone the two numbers are sufficiently distinguished in other cases, so might they have been in this. For distinguishing the three classes of persons denoted by we, ye, and they, these pronouns serve of themselves, the verb being in the same letters in all three cases, - We love, ye love, they love. In the singular, indeed, the third person is in a different form: - not he love, but he loves. But, as we suffices to distinguish the first person from the third, in the plural, so might I have sufficed in the singular. Accordingly, in the subjunctive mood, which, in so far as it differs from the indicative, is an unnecessary one, love serves for the third person singular, and even for the second person singular, as well as for the first.

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