THE ENGLISH VERB. 25 



the words are separately apprehended, and we expect an 

 object, such as "his campaign." The paper, however, pro- 

 ceeds: " Taft plans fall" — and we are readv to interpret 

 Taft plans as the plans of Taft, making the subject group, 

 and fall as the verb, making meagre but complete sense. 

 But the paper goes on : " Taft plans fall tours " — and again 

 we must shift the groups : fall becomes an adjective qualify- 

 ing tours and is shifted from verb group to object group, and 

 plans again is shifted from subject group to verb. 



In the course of a sentence, there is no proposition even 

 suggested until a word is reached that is apprehended as a 

 verb. Without a verb there may be naming, but there can be 

 no real thinking. As soon, therefore, as a word appears in 

 the sentence, susceptible, with what has preceded, of interpre- 

 tation as a verb, the mind seizes the opportunity so to group 

 it and thus complete the suljject and verb of the proposition. 

 The verb is the key to the sentence. 



Therefore in English where verlj, noun and adjective are so 

 frequently of like form, a tendency to discriminate the verb 

 by some peculiarity of form from other parts of speech might 

 well be expected. This would not be a retrogressive change 

 or a reversion to old inflections denoting person and such 

 agreements and accidents, but simply some formal difference 

 characterizing it as a verb in any given case. 



The English vocabulary affords words exhibiting a dis- 

 tinction of phonetic form when used as different parts of 

 speech, whereby English speakers appear to be unconsciously 

 responding to this necessity or advantage of discriminating 

 the verl) as such. In these words the verb is distinguished b}- 



(\) The place of the syllabic accent, as to record' , in 

 contrast with the record, the noun ; 



(2) A secondary accent, as the winds mod' crate" ^ in con- 

 trast with a mod' crate zi'ind, or 



(3) A sonant instead of a surd final consonant, as to use, 

 '\}i contrast with the use, the noun. 



These phonetic characteristics may be illustrated as follows : 



