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

by Alonzo Reed; Brainerd Kellogg

(The numbers refer to Lessons.)

| Co-Ordinate. |
THE CONJUNCTION. +Classes+. + Subordinate + 106-107.
| |

THE PREPOSITION. No Classes (95, 98, 99).

THE INTERJECTION. No Classes (20, 21).

MODIFICATIONS OF THE PARTS OF SPEECH.

* * * * *

LESSON 112.

+Introductory Hints+.—You have learned that two words may express a thought, and that the thought may be varied by adding modifying words. You are now to learn that the meaning or use of a word may be changed by simply changing its form. The English language has lost most of its inflections, or forms, so that many of the changes in the meaning and the use of words are not now marked by changes in form. These changes in the form, the meaning, and the use of the parts of speech we call their +Modifications+. [Footnote: Those grammarians that attempt to restrict number, case, mode, etc.—what we here call Modifications—to form, find themselves within bounds which they continually overleap. They define number, for instance, as a form, or inflection, and yet speak of nouns "plural in form but singular in sense," or "singular in form but plural in sense;" that is, if you construe them rigorously, plural or singular in form but singular or plural form in sense. They tell you that case is a form, and yet insist that nouns have three cases, though only two forms; and speak of the nominative and the objective case of the noun, "although in fact the two cases are always the same in form"—the two forms always the same in form!

On the other hand, those that make what we call Modifications denote only relations or conditions of words cannot cling to these abstract terms. For instance, they ask the pupil to "pronounce and write the possessive of nouns," hardly expecting, we suppose, that the "condition" of a noun will be sounded or written; and they speak of "a noun in the singular with a plural application," in which expression singular must be taken to mean singular form to save it from sheer nonsense.

We know no way to steer clear of Scylla and keep out of Charybdis but to do what by the common use of the word we are allowed; viz., to take Modifications with such breadth of signification that it will apply to meaning and to use, as well as to form. Primarily, of course, it meant inflections, used to mark changes in the meaning and use of words. But we shall use Modifications to indicate changes in meaning and use when the form in the particular instance is wanting, nowhere, however, recognizing that as a modification which is not somewhere marked by form.]