TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 83 
lady ; but the English word lord Ras no feminine inflexion. Thus while in Latin a 
part of the word only is changed, in English another word is adopted. The word 
lady is not an inflexion of the word lord. Languages differ greatly in regard to 
inflexion ; some abound in inflexions, while others have but few. They are numerous 
in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin arid the Sclavonic languages, less so in English, and at the 
lowest in Chinese. 
We know how these inflexions were produced. They are not produced by any 
opening as a bud opens into a flower, but by the coalescence of another word, or 
fragment of a word, with the original word. 
We can show in many languages the word whose fragment is coalesced. Now a 
junction of two things, even when well incorporated, together cannot with propriety 
be called a develepment or evolution. 
In the Hebrew language the personal pronouns are termed separable and in- 
separable. The separable pronouns represent the person to be in the nominative 
case. The inseparable exhibit only some fragment of the separable pronoun com- 
bined with some word. 
In the Malay the plural is formed by adding some word or words which signify 
much, many, or the like, or by repeating the same word, as oran baniak or oran oran, 
many man, or man-man. s j 
In the Coptic the syllable ni or na, which is prefixed to form the plural, is, no 
doubt, says Professor Lee, the word na or naa, which means much, many or great. 
In Lee’s Hebrew Grammar the subject of the coalescence of words with fragments 
of other words is treated in a masterly manner. 
If we study human speech for ourselves, by closely observing what is going on, 
instead of merely reading books on the subject of grammar, we shall detect the 
process by which inflexions are formed. The formation of inflexions, like other 
changes in language, are not the result of a committee of learned men sitting in 
solemn council, There is no deliberation whatever in the matter. Learned men 
and grammarians do not make the changes. They only observe and record the 
changes that are taking place in the language of the mass of the people; and all 
these changes are made in the spoken language. 
The two objects of language are— 
1. To convey ideas, &c. 
2. To do so rapidly. 
In our common speech we are ever striving to convey our thoughts with rapidity, 
and in our efforts to do so, we involuntarily abbreviate many words and join those 
abbreviations or verbal fragments to other words. In this way we ceconomise sounds, 
syllables, and sometimes words. The word them is commonly imperfectly uttered 
in the rapidity of familiar discourse. It is abbreviated by cutting off the theta in 
such phrases as, I gave ’em instead of I gave them. This was observed above a 
century ago, when an attempt was made to render the written language a transcript 
of the spoken by printing the abbreviation ’em for them. The first edition of Lord 
Shaftesbury’s Characteristics was so printed. 
_ Again, in familiar talk we say I aint for I am not; I wont for I will not; I shant 
for I shall not. These examples, so far. from being exhaustive, are merely instances 
from groups of such abbreviations. The act of subordinating an auxiliary verb to the 
principal verb of a sentence seems to crush the auxiliary into a mere fragment, as in 
the sentence I have done, which is in rapid talk broken down into I’v done. Such 
cases illustrate the formation of an inflexion, and is what is passing under our daily 
observation. A number of reasons prevent the transfer of these colloquialisms from 
being transferred to writing, but no one who has studied the siibject will doubt, that 
if our language were an unwritten one ard now about to become a written one, such 
forms of inflexion would be noted and written as a part of the language. 
The author has observed similar phenofiena in several European languages: 
Hence the causes that produce such phenomena in our Own laiiguage are also 
operating with similar results in certain other living languages, and it is to such 
causes alone that we can refer the formation of inflexions in the Hebrew and other 
ancient languages. The formation of inflexions, then; is not by developing some- 
thing out of a word, but by adding something to that word. 

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