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

by Alonzo Reed; Brainerd Kellogg

(With the singular nouns use the verbs is, was, and has been; the adjectives an, one, this, and that; the pronouns he, his, him, she, her, it, and its.)

(With the plural nouns use the verbs are, were, and have been; the adjectives these, those, and two; the pronouns they, their, and them.)

Bellows, deer, fish, gross, means, series, species, heathen, trout, iron, irons, news, eaves, riches, oats, vermin, molasses, Misses, brethren, dice, head (of cattle), pennies, child, parent, family, crowd, meeting.

+Direction+.—Compose sentences in which the first three of the following adjective pronouns shall be used as singular subjects, the fourth as a plural subject, and the remainder both as singular and as plural subjects:—

Each, either, neither, both, former, none, all, any.

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LESSON 117.

NOUNS AND PRONOUNS—GENDER.

+Introductory Hints+.—The lion was caged. The lioness was caged. In the first sentence something is said about a male lion, and in the second something is said about a female lion. The modification of the noun to denote the sex of the thing which it names is called +Gender+. Lion, denoting a male animal, is in the +Masculine Gender; and lioness, denoting a female animal, is in the +Feminine Gender+. Names of things that are without sex are said to be in the +Neuter Gender+. Such nouns as cousin, child, friend, neighbor are either masculine or feminine. Such words are sometimes said to be in the Common Gender.

Sex belongs to the thing; and gender, to the noun that names the thing. Knowing the sex of the thing or its lack of sex, you know the gender of the noun in English that names it; for in our language gender follows the sex. But in such modern languages as the French and the German, and in Latin and Greek, the gender of nouns naming things without reference to sex is determined by the likeness of their endings in sound to the endings of words denoting things with sex. The German for table is a masculine noun, the French is feminine, and the English, of course, is neuter. [Footnote: In Anglo-Saxon, the mother-tongue of our language, gender was grammatical, as in the French and the German; but, since the union of the Norman-French with the Anglo-Saxon to form the English, gender has followed sex.]