38 H. L. BROOM ALL : 



by their form their relation to one another and to the proposi- 

 tion. This idea constituted those " governments " and " agree- 

 ments " of the parts of speech in number, gender, person and 

 case, so perplexing to the English speaker. Where French 

 has 7(n bon homme and une bonne femme, English says simply 

 "a good" in either case. Un bon and iine bonne are not 

 exactly equivalent to the English words. The French words 

 have a compound meaning : bonne is good and something 

 more, because it means good with the idea of the feminine 

 character of the following substantive added to the simple 

 adjective meaning. The fundamental grammatical notion is 

 the same where verbs agree with their subjects in person and 

 number. Where, as in Latin, this grammatical idea was 

 highly developed, adjectives included ideas of number, gender 

 and case, which logically are characteristics of nouns alone, 

 and verbs included ideas of number, person, tense and mood, 

 all combined in one word. 



Old English also was of this general stnicture. Now 

 grammatical gender has disappeared. Agreements of verb 

 and subject in person and number are exceptional. Case of 

 nouns is indicated by their position before or after the verb or 

 preposition. Tense and mood are expressed more and more 

 frequently by auxiliary words. This great grammatical change 

 is the product of the differentiative motive, separating the ele- 

 ments of the compound meaning of a word and selecting a 

 particular word for each. 



Thus, Anglo-Saxon ic beo, like Latin si in, in contrast with 

 ic eoni (now / am) and iv^w, contained three ideas — the per- 

 son "I," the mood "may" or "if" and the substantive 

 "be." In modern English ic bco has become //' / be or / may 

 be. So, the past indicative was ic wa-s and past subjunctive ic 

 wcrre : hence our present forms / 7C'as and z/ I were. But the 

 differentiation of ic beo into /'/" / be and ic wcrre into //' / xcere 

 leaves be and were respectively the exact equivalents of the 

 indicative form, the subjunctive idea being fully expressed in 

 //. Hence, we are beginning to say if I am and if I icas. 



