Syn, together, as synod, “a meeting,” or “coming together,” sympathy, or “feeling together.”
CHAPTER IX.
OF CONJUNCTIONS.
A conjunction has been defined to be “that part of speech which connects words and sentences together.”
Mr. Ruddiman, and several other grammarians, have asserted, that conjunctions never connect words, but sentences. This is evidently a mistake; for if I say, “a man of wisdom and virtue is a perfect character,” it implies not “that a man of wisdom is a perfect character, and a man of virtue a perfect character,” but “a man who combines wisdom and virtue.” The farther discussion of this question, however, I shall at present postpone, as it will form a subject of future inquiry.
Conjunctions have been distributed, according to their significations, into different classes:
| Copulative, | And, also, but, (bot). |
| Disjunctive, | Either, or. |
| Concessive, | Though, although, albeit, yet. |
| Adversative, | But, however. |
| Exclusive, | Neither, nor. |
| Causal, | For, that, because, since. |
| Illative, | Therefore, wherefore, then. |
| Conditional, | If. |
| Exceptive, | Unless. |
This distribution of the conjunctions I have given, in conformity to general usage, that the reader may be acquainted with the common terms by which conjunctions have been denominated, if these terms should occur to him in the course of reading. In respect to the real import, and genuine character of these words, I decidedly adopt the theory of Mr. Tooke, which considers conjunctions as no distinct species of words, but as belonging to the class of attributives, or as abbreviations for two or more significant words.
Agreeably to his theory, and is an abbreviation for anad, the imperative of ananad, “to add,” or “to accumulate;” as, “two and two make four;” that is, “two, add two, make four.” Either is evidently an adjective expressive of “one of two;” thus, “it is either day or night,” that is, “one of the two, day or night.” It is derived from the Saxon ægther, equivalent to uterque, “each.”[114]
Or is a contraction for other, a Saxon and English adjective equivalent to alius or alter, and denotes diversity, either of name or of subject. Hence or is sometimes a perfect disjunctive, as when it expresses contrariety or opposition of things; and sometimes a subdisjunctive, when it denotes simply a diversity in name. Thus, when we say, “It is either even or odd,” or is a perfect disjunctive, the two attributives being directly contrary, and admitting no medium. If I say, “Paris or Alexander” (these being names of the same individual); or if I say, “Gravity or weight,” “Logic, or the art of reasoning;” or in these examples is a subdisjunctive or an explicative, as it serves to define the meaning of the preceding term, or as it expresses the equivalence of two terms. The Latins express the former by aut, vel, and the latter by seu or sive. In the following sentence both conjunctions are exemplified: “Give me either the black or the white;” i.e. “Give me one of the two—the black—other, the white.”