of the Greek Tongue. 231 



formed by postfixing s- ; now this being, as I remarked above, 

 equivalent in import to i of the dative, it will follow that this 

 genitive is in truth analytically another dative, which is, how- 

 ever, constantly used elliptically as a genitive. The genitives 

 of the third declension, on the other hand, we shall find by 

 the insertion of o before the r, are truly and analytically geni- 

 tives. 



It is further worthy of observation respecting this article, that 

 while its radix in the singular number is of the common dialect, 

 as y), in the dual or plural it is of the Doric. This is most im- 

 portant to be attended to, as the anomaly at the first view 

 throws a difficulty in the way of the analysis. For example, I 

 said that all accusatives plural are constantly formed from the 

 accusative singular, by postfixing the plural characteristic f. 

 Now, in applying this rule to accusatives of the feminine article, 

 and nouns which follow its analogy, it will be necessary to 

 take into consideration that, with a view to the synthesis, we 

 must first take the accusative singular as of the Doric dialect, 

 as ravi then suffixing y, we have rav-s, changing v into a, on 

 account of euphony, we have raas-, which contracted is rar. 



With respect to the neuter article, I may observe, that pro- 

 perly speaking, there is no such distinct article, except in the 

 nominatives singular and plural, there being, as I said before, 

 no distinct accusatives or vocatives in neuter nouns. 



Further, it is remarkable that, while the neuter singular to 

 follows the masculine, being indeed but another and appa- 

 rently older form of it, the neuter plural follows the feminine, 

 being, in fact, the same as the nominative dual of the feminine 

 article. We need not wonder at this, when we consider that, 

 in our own language, the third person pronoun they belongs 

 to all the genders, shewing us that there is no natural and ne- 

 cessary distinction between the same. 



Having taken this view of the inflections of the article, it is 

 obvious, that little need be said upon the second and first de- 

 clensions which for the most part follow their analogy. It 

 will, however, be necessary to make a few observations upon 

 the genitives of mascufine nouns of the first declension, as 

 they are not formed after the feminines, but terminate in ou 

 instead of r^s. This anomaly, however, perhaps may be thus 

 accounted for. It is obvious, that analysis will give us the 



