apyS grammatical disquisitions. Aug. 29> 



rived from our nouns bj another mode of inflection^ 

 calling them, not nouns, but adjectives. Of this kind 

 are some of the words above enumerated ; as also 

 the words hra%en, wooden, golden, &c. which sig-- 

 nifr nearly the same thing as of gold, of brafs, of 

 wood. Thus, a golden crown, is equivalent to a 

 crown of gold ; a brazen trumpet to a trumpet of" 

 brafs ; a wooden mallet to a mallet of wood,. If the 

 reason usually afsigned be sufficient to constitute a 

 genitive, it would be difficult to fliow why this clafs 

 fhould not be intitled to the same denomination*. 



/^tb. If our grammarians have denominated cer-- 

 tain words adjectives, which, according to their own 

 mode of reasoning fhould have been called genitives, . 

 so they have ranked as pronouns other words, which 

 ought, with still greater propriety, to have been cal- 

 led genitives. The words my, thy, our, your, their, 

 mine, thine, ours, yours, theirs, his, her, hers, its, and 

 ■t-heirs, ■arc always ranged in the list of pronouns;. 

 though it is plain they bear exactly the same rela- 

 tion to the original pronouns from which they are 

 derived, as that variation of the noun which has 

 been called a genitive, bears to the noun from which 

 it has been derived; Thus, supposing John to be the 

 speaker, who says, in the first person, my house, this 

 phrase is of the same import as if he had said the 

 house of me i and differs not in the smallest degree 

 from the phrase John's house, if it had been expref- 

 sed in the third person by another speaker. For 



• I must again repeat it that I do not contend, that any of these are ge- 

 r'ttives, I mean only to fliow the impropriety of ever having adopted that 

 ■ term, in any case, in the Englifh language. 



