CIIAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



Number. 



The noun book, for instance, is applicable to an 

 indefinite number of objects individually. If it is 

 wished to speak of several of these objects at one 

 time, this is indicated by adding an s to the simple 

 form of the name. Books is then called the 

 Plural Number, and book the Singular Number. 



To add s to the singular is now the nearly uni- 

 versal rule of the English language ; but it was 

 not always so. In the oldest form of our tongue, 

 called Anglo-Saxon, only one class of nouns formed 

 the plural in s ; some took a, others u, and a 

 large class took n. We see a relic of this ancient 

 plural in n, in oven, children, brethren, and in old 

 English, several more occur as hosen (in the 

 Bible), eyne (for eyai), shoon, some of which still 

 survive in Lowland Scotch. 



A few words of Teutonic origin form the plural 

 by changing the vowel sound. They are man, 

 men ; woman, iconic n; foot, feet; goose, geese; 

 louse, lice; tooth, teeth ; mouse, mice. Kinc or kyne 

 (for kyen}, the old plural of cow, combines the two 

 changes. In Scotch, kye (without the ) is used. 

 These vowel changes were not originally made to 

 express the plural ; the words had once a plural 

 ending, the effect of which was to change the 

 radical vowel, and when the ending or affix was 

 lost, the change of vowel remained, and now serves 

 as a mark of the plural. 



When the singular ends in a sibilant or hissing 

 <ound (s, sh, ch, x), e is added before the j- of the 

 plural as, (fas, gases ; church, churches, &c. 

 This is no arbitrary irregularity it is a necessity 

 for the pronunciation. Some nouns ending in o 

 also insert e before s ; but this seems a mere 

 caprice of English orthography. 



Nouns in y, preceded by a consonant, change 

 the y into fes to form the plural as duty, dztttes. 

 But those having a vowel before y as boy, valley, 

 are regular boys, valleys. 



The following words loaf, half, wife, life, calf, 

 leaf, sheaf, knife, shelf, self, wolf -change f or fe 

 into ves; as wife, wives. Staff, also, in its usual 

 sense, has staves ; but in a military sense, staffs. 

 Beeves is the plural of beef, in its original sense of 

 ox. 



Words borrowed from other languages, and not 

 yet naturalised, often retain their original plurals. 

 Ex., Focus, foci ; genus, genera ; beau, beaux ; 

 cherub, cherubim. 



Some nouns, from their very nature, cannot 

 take a plural. It is only general or common 

 nouns that can. A proper name in the plural is 

 a kind of contradiction. When we sny, ' One of 

 the Browns,' Brown has ceased to be a true proper 

 name ; it has here a meaning ' belonging to the 

 family called Brown.' In ' Ther3 are no Ciceros 

 in our age,' Ciceros is equivalent to great ora- 

 tors. 



Names of materials, in the strict sense, can 

 have no plural. There can be a plural only where 

 there are individual things to count. Since we 

 cannot say, ' a gold,' ' a butter,' we cannot say 

 ' golds,' ' butters.' With regard to substances of 

 varying quality, the use of the plural is becoming 

 common, in mercantile language, to signify the 

 several varieties ; as, teas, wines. 



Some nouns are used only in the plural ; as, 

 tongs, scissors, news, mathematics, riches. For 

 words like tongs, the reason lies in the nature of 



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the object ; in other cases, it is to be sought in 

 the history of the word. 



Is the plural necessary? Could we make our- 

 selves understood without changing the words ? 

 In the case of some words, we do ; as, dt'ei\ 

 sheep, swine. Several words omit the s when 

 used with a number, although they take it in other 

 positions ; as, head, pound, horse, brace, stone, 

 dozen. 



Case 



is an inflection indicating the relation of one thing 

 to another thing. Some languages have a variety 

 of cases indicating different relations (see LAN- 

 GUAGE, II. p. 29). In English, nouns suffer only one 

 change of this kind, which is called the Possessive 

 Case ; as, ' Mary's descendants.' The same rela- 

 tion may be expressed by the preposition of: 

 ' The descendants of Mary.' The change consists 

 in adding an apostrophe (') and an s to the 

 singular noun. To form the possessive plural, an 

 apostrophe only is added to the plural noun ; as, 

 ' Their fathers' memory.' The s is here omitted 

 for the sake of euphony or easy pronunciation ; 

 and, therefore, when the plural does not end in s, 

 the s of the possessive is retained ; as, men, men's 

 minds. The s is omitted even in the singular 

 when too many hissing sounds would come to- 

 getheras Socrates' wife, for Jesus' sake. 



Gender. 



Names of animals of the male kind are said to 

 be of the masculine gender ; those of the female 

 kind, of the feminine gender ; all others, of the 

 neuter gender. 



Few, if any, nouns in English can be said to 

 undergo inflection to mark distinction of sex. The 

 words themselves are different ; as, boy, girl; 

 king, queen; husband, wife; cock, hen. This is a 

 question of the meaning of words, and not of 

 grammar. 



Almost the only grammatical use made of the 

 distinction of sex in English is to determine what 

 pronoun whether he, she, or it shall be used for 

 any noun ; and as we attend only to real or 

 natural gender, this is a very simple matter. But 

 in other languages it is far otherwise. In French, 

 for instance, there are only two genders ; so that 

 every object, be it animate or inanimate, is either 

 a he or a she; nor has any intelligible principle 

 presided in determining this conventional gender. 

 In German, again, there are three genders, but 

 applied in the most capricious way. At table, 

 for example, you must speak of your spoon as he, 

 of your knife as //, and of your fork as she. 



In a few nouns, mostly of foreign origin, the 

 feminine name is formed from the masculine, in a 

 regular way ; as, poet, poetess ; mayor, mayoress ; 

 actor, actress; abbot, abbess, &c. This belongs to 

 Derivation, perhaps, as much as to Inflection. 



INFLECTION OF PRONOUNS. 



Pronouns are more fully inflected than nouns. 

 Besides a possessive case, they have a distinct 

 form called the objective case, used when they 

 stand as the objects after a verb or preposition ; 

 as, / saw him ; he saw me, and spoke to me. A 

 pronoun has thus three cases, the form used when 

 it is the subject or nominative to the verb, being 

 called the nominative case. 



