VERBS.
Verbs are either simple or compound. The simple are those springs or energic signs in human speech, which, mark the relation and connection of the subject and attribute of a proposition; and affirm or deny the agreement or disagreement betwixt things, as, man is an animal. Compound or concrete verbs also include adjectives and participles; or the qualities and attributes of the subject of a proposition, as, man thinks or think is; sometimes only the subject, as mae, eimi, I am, or sum; and frequently the subject, affirmation and attribute, as, walketh, man is upon action. In some dialects verbs have been so modified, as to denote or imply the modes, times, persons, genders, and numbers of the things affirmed; and nominally distinguished, as verbs active, passive, neuter, personal, impersonal, regular, irregular, auxiliary, and substantive; tho’ according to their real use and signification, all verbs seem to be substantive and auxiliary, and either singly, or conjunctively, with adjectives or participles, formed into attributive or compound verbs, express all modes of actions and affirmations, as appears by the following instances; sum, I am, or, it is man’s existence, es, the second person created or the feminine gender, est, the second, first, and a third person born of the first and second, fui, I have lived or been, fuisti, thou hast lived or been, fuit, he the person born, hath lived or been; amo, I love or am for a woman, the first person, amas, the feminine the second person, amat, the third person produced, the third person, am-avi for ui in fui, he has loved or been loved, the past tense; doceo, I teach or give the lowering action to man, the first person, doc-es, the second person or feminine gender, doc-et the third proceeding from the other two, doc-ui, as in fui, I have lived or been taught, the past tense; lego I read or recall, the first person, leg-is the second, leg-it the third, and leg-i, man read the past; audio, I hear, or, spring the passive sense, au-di-is, au-di-it and au-di-vi, I have lived or been heard; and the conjugating particles seem to be the degrees of comparison, as, a, e, i, or as, es is, male, female, mankind, or earth, water and fire, or motion and existences in general; and the persons of U man, and thence all things of the masculine gender the first person, as, es, or is signifying the feminine in different degrees and qualities, the second, and at, et, it, the rest of mankind and things, the third person, am-us, em-us, im-us, all men of the male kind of the first person plural, atis, etis, itis, all except the first person singular of the second, and ant, ent, int, all mankind and things in different degrees, except the first and second person singular, of the third person plural; and thus may be explained all the Latin and Greek modes of conjugating verbs.
Verbs are farther distinguished by grammarians into active, passive, and neuter, as being expressive of actions, passions, or neither the one or the other, but mere being or existing, as, I love, am loved, live, walk, or stand; tho’ according to the signification of words, there does not seem to be any real ground for the latter distinction, for to love, to be loved, to live, sleep or rest, must signify either actions, active passions and energies, or their privation and passiveness. So that the distinction in this respect might be more properly made into active and passive only, agreeable to the masculine and feminine, the only proper distinction of nouns as to genders; all actions, substances, and things, at least, as having relation to mankind, being either masculine or feminine, and the distinctions made by the Greeks and Romans being mostly arbitrary and contrary to the meaning of words which ought to determine the genders of nouns.
Verbs have a designation of person, corresponding with the personal pronouns; of number with the singular and plural of nouns, of tenses as representing present, past, and future actions and things; and of modes or the manner in which they ought to be expressed. But whatever necessity there may be for a great variety of modes and tenses in dialects, constructed upon arbitrary principles, it does not appear that any more than one is needful for a natural language, or that the modes of conjugating verbs or any other, are in fact expressible by human speech any otherwise than by the whole form or order of inflection and things. And tho’ present, past, and future, seem to be necessary expressions, according to our present mode of conception, yet they are not in reality any representation of time, but of our manner of dividing or reckoning the changes of motions or number of actions in extension, which in the eternal state of spirits, or perhaps in a vacuum, might be deemed as one intire action or the present tense.
Simple verbs or affirmatives are all substantive and incapable of being inflected themselves, but serve as auxiliaries in the affirmations and inflections of compound verbs, tho’ alone, without the assistance of compound verbs sufficient to express every mode of affirmations, of actions and things, and fully correspond with the nouns and pronouns, as for instance, I am doing, have done, may, can, will, shall, must, or ought to do; thou, art doing, hast done, &c; he, she, a man, or, John is doing, hath done, speaks, speaketh, &c. We are or were doing, have done, &c; besides, id, ed, with their inflections ith and eth, and also is, added as affirmations in the third person singular to compound verbs; which express attributes, affirmations, and persons, and sometimes the subject and number, tho’ the number is commonly implied by the noun or pronoun. In the following specimen of conjugating verbs, the persons, number, and actions or tenses are expressed by different words, with very few variations of terminations.
The Modes of Conjugating VERBS.
| Numbers. | Persons. | The present, | past, | and future tenses. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute. | Conditional. | Absolute. | Conditional. | Absolute. | Conditional. | |||
| Singular. | 1 | I | am, be, have, do, love, teach, hear. | may, can, would, should or ought, to be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear. | was, have been, had, did, loved, taught or teached, read, heard. | might, could, would, should, ought to have been, had, done, loved, taught or teached, read, heard. | shall, will, or must be, had, done, loved, taught, read, heard. | shall, will, or must have been, had, done, loved, taught, read, heard. |
| 2 | you | are, be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear. | ||||||
| 3 | he | is, hath, doth, loveth or loves, teaches, reads, hears. | was, or hath been, had, done, loved, taught, read, heard. | |||||
| Plural. | 1 | we, | are, be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear. | were, or have been, had, done, loved, taught, read, heard. | ||||
| 2 | ye, | |||||||
| 3 | they, | |||||||
| Imperative. | ||||||||
| Singular. | 1 | Let me be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear. | Let us be, have, &c. | Plural. | ||||
| 2 | Be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear thou | Be, have, &c. ye | ||||||
| 3 | Let him be, have, do, love, teach, hear. | Let them be, have, &c. | ||||||
| Infinitive. | Participle. | |||||||
| To be, have, do, love, teach, read, hear. | Being, having, doing, loving, &c. | present. | ||||||
| To have been, had, done, loved, taught, read, heard. | Been or having, had, &c. | past. | ||||||
The feminine or endearing inflections of the second persons thou and ye have been omitted, as needless, since they all agree with the pronouns you and ye, and the only changes are from are and be to art and beest, have to hast, were to wert, shall and will to shalt and wilt, and might to mightest, and do to dost; but to make use of them in the masculine gender, would be depreciating it. And the participle perfect, being superfluous, it has been likewise omitted; for as ing the present is compleat, so is ed for the past or the privative of springs or actions.
The signification of the conjugating verbs in the four languages is as follows, viz. 1. Am, mae, ειμι, sum, in full form of existence; be, fi, φυω, fio, I live; can, dichon, δυναμαι, possum, in act or able to act; may, amhay, ωμει, sim, about acting; would, could, should, might, ought, buasun, ειην, essem, the will or act sprung or past; shall, will, must, byddaf, εσομαι, ero, the lower acting up, the spring of human light, the lower things sprung up; was oeddun, ῆν, eram, man or spring past; have been, bum, ῆμην, fui, acted in life. 2. Are, ere, or art, beest, wit, or idwit, εις, es, the lesser spring, and it is the spring of life. 3. Is, it is, fi, id, idiu, εστι, est, it is seen, sounded, smelt, &c; hath, it acts; had or ha-ed, action past; hadst, a female action past; do or dost, motion past. 4. Are, ym, εσμην, sumus, men in the spring; were, buasom, εμεθα, eramus, men sprung. Let, bydd, εστο, esto, extend or take thy place; to be, bod, ειναι, esse, the property of motion to beings, which converts substantives into adjectives; ing, in action; it is not, nid, ουκ εστι, non est, there is no motion.
All English verbs which vary from this mode of inflection being erroneous and irregular, ought not to be established by grammatical rules, but restored to the primitive state in the present tense, and marked in the past tense with the proper accent; or if it should appear to be necessary, to add proper conjugations. But as verbs lose their qualities or active state in the past tense, the English verbs ending in d and t in the past tense, have been very properly diminished and substantived, and accordingly contracted in their sounds, of ed to that of d and t, as taught from teached, when the ch was accented hard, and a like the German a or o, felt for feeled, checkt for checked, slept for sleeped, left for leaved, gilt for gilded, bled for bleeded, fed for feeded, had for haed, fed for feeded, fled for flyed, sold for selled, and such others as are so contracted without any other variation, that are capable of a past tense, except, let, put, do, think, and other imperatives, which can form no perfect past tense, without the aid of the auxiliary verb have, to express some degree of human energy or return to the creative fiat. And as all other tenses seem to be arbitrary and indefinite, the best way of expressing the minuter divisions of actions must be by adverbs or numerals.
And as there is no sort of foundation or necessity for the participle perfect, the best way of correcting those verbs which are supposed to be irregular therein, would be to drop it as superfluous, and fully as well expressed by the past tense, as help, helped, without holpen, cleave, cleaved, or cleft, instead of cleave, clave, clove and cloven, hang hanged, for hang hung. And as to the forming a regular past tense, by reducing irregular verbs to their primitive state in the present tense, the following may perhaps be no improper observation, viz. all in fall, before the corrupt sound of the northern a, as that of o, was, as it ought to be, accented, like ale in pale, and marked with a long accent, as signifying from high; its past tense accented short, as all in shall; and wrote fall and not fell; the e not having then taken the place of a, nor a, that of o; shake, signifying a passionate action of a subject, is properly accented and wrote in the present tense, but its past tense having partaken of the northern accent, it then came to be wrote and accented shook, instead of shaked, which, notwithstanding its long establishment by vulgar custom ought to be rectified accordingly; and so as to swear, heave, freeze, abide, strike, dig, and various other instances, where the e has assumed the place of a, a of o, o of a, e, i, or u, of i, or any other change of vowels from the present, to form the past tense; except such as do and did, which are different words, and of themselves incapable of any inflection. And the English terminations an and en, borrowed from the northern dialects, add nothing to the meaning of our names, but the English, or Engli-Saxon names, are of a southern or Celtic origin, and as fully expressive of the meaning to which they are applied without them; except where they are added to form the singular number, or to active names as substantiving articles, as in all other Celtic dialects.