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Show 98 Additional Notes. latter of which has also four or five varieties. These nouns therefore may properly be termed the abbreviation of sentences; as th~ c?njunctions and prepositions arc termed by Mr. Tooke the abbreviatiOn of words; anll if the latter arc called the wings affixed to the feet of Hennes, the form r may be called the wings aHixcd to his cap. III. A l!jecti:oes, ATtictes, Participles, A d't.'erbs. 1. The third class of ~words consi ts of those, which in their simple t form suo·o· st two i(lcas; one of them is an abstracted idea of the quality of an oLjcct, but not of the object itself; and the other is an abstracted idea of its appertaining to some other noun called a substantive, or a name of an entire thing. These words are t rmed ADJ EcTrvE::~, are undecliued in our language in re pect to cases, number, or gender; but by three changes of termination they stwg st the secondary ideas of greater, greatest, and of le s; as the word sweet changes into sweeter, sweetest, and sweetish; which may be termed three degrees of compa1·ison besides the positive meaning o~\the word; which terminations of er and est are seldom add cl to words of more than two yllablcs; as those degrees are then most frequently denoted by the prepositions more and mo t. Adjectives s.eem originally to have been derived from nouns substantive, of which they express a quality, as a musky rose, a beautiful lady, a stormy clay. Some of them arc formed from the correspondent sub tauti,,e by adding the syllable ty, or like, as a lo,rely child, a warlike countenance; and in our language it is frequently only necess~-i.ry to put a hyphen between two nouns sub tautivc for the purpose of converting the former one into an adjective, as an eag·le-eye, a Mayday. 'And many of our adjective arc substautives uuchangt:cl, and only known by their situation in a sentence, as a German, or a German gentleman. Adjectives therefore are names of qualities, or parts of thincrs; as substantives are the names of entire things. In the Latin and Greek languages these adjectives possess a great variety of terminations; which suggest occasionally the ideas of number, gender, anll the various cases, agreeing in all these with the Tlte Tlwory and Structure if Language. 99 SUUSta.llti \'e, ~0 wh~ch they belong; besides the two original or primary 1deas of qual1ty, and of their appertainino- to some other word which must be adjoined to make them sense. 0 lnsomuch that som~ of these adjectives, when dccli11ed throngh all their ca es, and genders, an<l numbers, in their P?Sitiv e, comparative, and superlative degrees, enumerate fifty or sixty terminations. All which to one, who wi. hes to learn these language , arc so many new words, and add much to the difficulty of acquiring them. Though the English adjectives are undcclined, having neither case, gen~lcr, nor .number; and with this implicity of form possess a degree of compn.nson by the additional termination of ish, more than th generality of Latin or Greek adjectives, yet arc they lc. s adapted to poetic mea ure, as they must accompany their correspondino· substantives; from ·which they are perpetually separated in Grcc 0 k and Latin poetry. 2. There is a second kind of adjectives, which abound in our language, and in the Greek, but not in the Latin, which are called ARTICLES by the writers of grammar, as the letter a, and the word the. These, like the adjectives above described, suggest two primary ideas, and suffer no change of termination in our language, and therefore suggest no secondary ideas. l\1r. Locke observes, that languages consist principally of o-eneral . 0 terms; as it would have been impo siblc to give a name to every individual object, so as to communicate an idea of it to other ; it would be like reciting the name of every individual soldier of an army, instead of using the general term, army. Now the usc of the article a, and the in English, ancl o in Greek, converts general terms into particular ones; this idea of particularity as a quality, or property of a noun, is one of the primary ideas suggested by these articles; and the other is, that of its appertaining· to some particular noun substantive, without which it is not intelligible. In both these respects these articles correspond with adjectives; to which may be added, that our article a may be expressed by the adjective one or any; and that the Greek article o is declined like other adjectives. The perpetual use of the article, besides its converting general terms into particubr ones, contributes much to the force and beauty |