Higher Lessons in English: A work on English grammar and composition

by Alonzo Reed; Brainerd Kellogg

DEFINITIONS.

+A Noun is the name of anything+. [Footnote: Most common nouns are derived from roots that denote qualities. The root does not necessarily denote the most essential quality of the thing, only its most obtrusive quality. The sky, a shower, and scum, for instance, have this most noticeable feature; they are a cover, they hide, conceal. This the root +sku+ signifies, and sku is the main element in the words sky, shower (Saxon scu:r), and scum that name these objects, and in the adjective obscure.

A noun denoting at first only a single quality of its object comes gradually, by the association of this quality with the rest, to denote them all.

Herein proper nouns differ from common. However derived, as Smith is from the man's office of smoothing, or White from his color, the name soon ceases to denote quality, and becomes really meaningless.]

+A Common Noun is a name which belongs to all things of a class+.

+A Proper Noun is the particular name of an individual+.

+Remark+.—It may be well to note two classes of common nouns—collective and abstract. A +Collective Noun+ is the name of a number of things taken together; as, army, flock, mob, jury. An +Abstract Noun+ is the name of a quality, an action, a being, or a state; as, whiteness, beauty, wisdom, (the) singing, existence, (the) sleep.

+A Pronoun is a word used for a noun+. [Footnote: In our definition and general treatment of the pronoun, we have conformed to the traditional views of grammarians; but it may be well for the student to note that pronouns are something more than mere substitutes for nouns, and that their primary function is not to prevent the repetition of nouns.

1. Pronouns are not the names of things. They do not, like nouns, lay hold of qualities and name things by them. They seize upon relations that objects sustain to each other and denote the objects by these relations. I, you, and he denote their objects by the relations these objects sustain to the act of speaking; I denotes the speaker; you, the one spoken to; and he or she or it, the one spoken of. This and that denote their objects by the relative distance of these from the speaker; some and few and others indicate parts separated from the rest. Gestures could express all that many pronouns express.

2. It follows that pronouns are more general than nouns. Any person, or even an animal or a thing personified, may use I when referring to himself, you when referring to the one addressed, and he, she, it, and they when referring to the person or persons, the thing or things, spoken of—and all creatures and things, except the speaker and the one spoken to, fall into the last list. Some pronouns are so general, and hence so vague, in their denotement that they show the speaker's complete ignorance of the objects they denote. In, Who did it? Which of them did you see? the questioner is trying to find out the one for whom Who stands, and the person or thing that Which denotes. To what does it refer in, it rains; How is it with you?