230 Mr. Sankey on the Analysis and Structure 



declension of Greek, somewhat similar to the nominative plural, 

 "\ve may perhaps be enabled to trace the origin of the connec- 

 tion between these two cases of the singular with the nomi- 

 native plural. It is obvious, then, that the idea common 

 to the genitive singular and nominative plural must be 

 that of belonging to in the genitive singular, implying 

 belonging to in the way of possession, in the nominative 

 plural implying belonging to, as to a class of objects denoted 

 by the noun, which is manifestly the distinguishing character- 

 istic idea, which we mentally attach to the plural, as, for 

 example, to the sheep, when by the context we are led to look 

 upon the expression as plural rather than singular. Hence, 

 then, we see that the t in the nominative plural, as well as in 

 the dative singular, denotes to, and is probably connected with, 

 or a fragment of ets-, to, as the nominative plural termination zs 

 of the third declension is none other than the poetic form of 

 SIS, while the s, which we find terminating genitives singular of 

 the feminine article, and those of the first declension which 

 follow its analogy, as also all those of the third declension, 

 seems to be another fragment of zis, its import being very nearly 

 the same as that oft, and, like it, it is no less a characteristic of 

 plural number, occurring as such, as we shall see, always in 

 the datives and accusatives plural. Thus, by postfixing s to 

 the old dative singular rot, we have the dative plural naturally 

 formed, by simply adding to the singular the characteristic of 

 the plural. The further addition of * final, as in use among the 

 poets, seems to have arisen solely from the ear being accustomed 

 to a final i in datives plural of the third declension. In like 

 manner the accusative rovs is formed by adding the plural cha- 

 racteristic s to the accusative singular, thus, tov, tov.s-. The 

 Greek ear, however, not bearing the collision of v and r, the 

 former was changed into a, according to a very common ana- 

 logy of this tongue (as ri^Bxroti Ionic for Tt9evrat), thus giving 

 us roocs, which regularly contracts into rous. Hence, we shall 

 see that the invariable rule for forming the accusative plural 

 is by postfixing s as the characteristic of the number. 



With respect to the feminine article ^, what we have ob- 

 served on the masculine will in general suffice. It is neces- 

 sary, however, to say a word or two on its genitive singular, 

 which does not follow the analogy of the masculine, but is 



