Ill 



CONJUGATION. 



cdN.irM : 



114 



English termination ttt in tumrarf, Xrital. But u the Latin i.-nn ha* 



I iiutead of an , ( not M, so the I occasionally appears u in Greek, 

 ttpt-dt, ~ you strike ; * Latin, cribiti-t, " you write ; " and in the 

 English, an. " thou art." 



The third person U an indefinite torn, and the luffiz which denote* 

 it U derived bom to, signifying tJkit, which in the full form of il. 

 article ; and again appear*, on the one hand in Latin, in the derivative* 

 /<IM, lalit, lanttu, tot, (MM ; and uu the other, in tin- Kngli-h tltr, lint. 

 to-day. It i* therefore ai general an the English article thr, and may 

 denote indifferently, ikt mam, tkt woman. At Mmj ; in other word*, lie, 

 ke, il. It apptsn as a suffix in the U reek f<r-n, " he U " (Sanscrit, 

 o*4i) ; Tvrr-cr-sj, " lie strike* himself ; " in the Latin, -/, he in ; " 

 crib-it, " he write* ;" and in the obsolete form of the English language, 

 iro/i'-rM, now corrupted into traltt. 



Suffix of number. If a sign be employed to denote plurality, the 

 aheence of that sign will be a sufficient indication of the singular. Sow 

 the suffixes of plurality in Engliah are i and en, as in rfo.y*, osm. '!'!.. 

 amme are employed in Greek and Latin, as, first person, Greek, TWTT-OM- i, 

 or rvrr-p-i> ; Latin, *m'6imH-<; second person, Latin. jrn&iVi-i. The 

 Greek has dropped the , as in rvrr-trt, a corruption probably of 

 rvrr-m-i; just as the Latin imperative tcribilt must be looked upon 

 ax minced from rriliitit. For the third person we must have in view 

 the older form, fault (jam), " they say ;" or rather /an/in, for this 

 final is an essential part of the word, and not, as is commonly taught, 

 a meaningless addition. Thus the four letters i/in represent the suffix, 

 of which the final letter denotes plurality, and the remainder is but a 

 variety of the article to, " this." The change of the ( to n in this pro- 

 noun is not rare, as may be seen in the Latin nniii and IIMUI (mine), 

 which in origin are but varities of (am and (inn (tune) ; and if n and t 

 are interchangeable, a fortiori in n< interchangeable with cither. 



Time or tense (Fr. fmtpt) divides itself into past, present, and future, 

 where again the idea of present time will not require any peculiar dis- 

 tinction, if the ideas of past and future have their proper symbols. 

 The past time appears to have hud for its characteristic either the 

 prefix, e, or the suffix, a. The former appears in the Greek, e-lujil-uii, 

 " I was striking ; " e-tup-ta, " I struck ; " e-Mn]Ji-ea, " I had struck." 

 The second appears in two of the Greek forms just enumerated, and in 

 the Latin terioeb-a-m, " 1 was writing ; " er-a-m, " I was." A very dis- 

 tinct example of a future suffix appears in those European languages 

 which are derived from the Latin. Thus, in the French, tmr-ai, we 

 have really two distinct words, the infinitive, (crire, and at, the present 

 tense of arotr, forming altogether, eerir-ai, " I have to write," that is, 

 " I shall write." This origin of the French future U placed beyond a 

 doubt by a comparison with the Spanish and Italian. (See Key's 



Alphabet,' p. 123, &c.) 



By the term state, which stands forth in the series of suffixes which 

 have been included in the definition of conjugation, it was intended to 

 denote the notions of perfect and imperfect action. Here again one 

 suffix is sufficient, and the notion of completeness U variously marked : 

 1st. By a doubling of the verb upon itself. The purest example of this 

 i* presented in the Gothic, as fata, " I laugh ; " laM, " I laughed ; " 

 ftauta. "I strike;" ttaittaut, " I struck." The Greek have |rfecte 

 formed upon this principle in te-tupha, ge-grapha ; the Latin in te-lnl-i, 

 ile-d-i, ijm-pond-i (for the less easily pronounced tpo-tpond-i). And in 

 our own language there is strong reason for believing that such is the 

 origin of did, the perfect of do. Out of the same principle grows the 

 formation of the perfect by a long vowel, rfiii being probably a con- 

 traction from rf-rrn-i. 2nd. By adding the simple tenses of the v,-rlj 

 it, "be," with an interposed , which by a bold yet highly probable 

 theory may be regarded as the ordinary genitival suffix signifying 



from." Thus, xriji-i-eram would be " I was from writing," or " I had 

 written;" tcrip-t-ero, "I shall be from writing," or "I shall have 

 written." So tcrip-t-ittit (ittit for tit!* 1 ), " ye are from writing," or "ye 

 have written." As * is a letter very apt to vanish from language, we 

 must not be surprised at its non-appearance in such words as veu-eram. 

 Again, the r, which presents itself in so many perfects of the Latin 

 language, as amarerinn, mnnuemtn, is probably but the old ic, which 

 once formed a part of the verb a, " be ; " witness the German utt-en, 

 " existence," and our own mu. 



The HiiffixeH of the moods could not be placed in a distinct point of 

 view without a detailed investigation. It may be sufficient to point 

 out that to U distinctly observable as a suffix in one portion of the 

 Latin imperative. That the suffixes of the potential, subjunct i-. 

 optative moods, in the Greek and Latin, were originally distinct \v. n .!-. 

 and perhaps verbs, like our own may, can, tc., i probable from general 

 principle*, and is confirmed by the appearance of the separate particles 

 ken, If. >i. in the Greek language, which are used to denote a sort of 

 potential mood, mid bear a marked resemblance to our owi 



The last miltix for consideration is that which denotes the mice. 

 The Greek grammarians acknowledge a middle or reflective voice ; but 

 the Latin language in fact possesses the same, as, for instance, in 

 r," I gird myself for the contest;" nilo-r, " I support myself;" 

 laro-r, " I wash myself," " I bathe." And in both languages the middle 

 voice is the parent of the passive. This may be illustrated by such 

 phrases as the French la bat it rendent id, " stockings sell themselves 

 here," that is, " are sold ; " the Italian n dice, " it U said," strictly it 

 tayi itt'lf. Now, the suffix of the Latin passive appears in the various 

 forms wr, as monet-vr, cr as mvntri-er, r as m<mw; but the attentive 



Latin student in ever ready to suspect when h. ih an r, that 



an older form of the word contained an ; and in fact we find an in 

 the form mnrr-it, where, moreover, the first jiart nonfr it another 

 example of the corruption in question, for it supplies the place of 

 mo*a. If, then, is the original consonant of this suffix, we are forth- 

 with directed to the reflective pronoun te ; nor ought we to be stopped 

 by the fact that this pronoun in Latin is confined to the third person. 

 In the Russian and oili.T s.-l.iv,.ni.- languages, still more in tin- 

 Lithuanian, the connection of all which with the Teutonic languages 

 and with those of Greece and Rome is indisputable, the reflect* > 

 noun, containing in fact the very same root as w, is applicable alike to 

 all the persons ; and indeed there was nothing in the nature of things 

 to limit the Latin pronoun as to prrton, when it is confessedly 

 unlimited as to gender and number. 



The division of verbs into several conjugations depends upon the last 

 vowel or consonant of the verb in its simple -T crude stile. Tims, in 

 the Latin language, all verbs ending in a are said to be of the first con- 

 jugation, all that end in e of the second, those in a contanl or u of the 

 third, and those in i of the fourth or last ; for it accidentally happens 

 that the Latin language possesses no verbs in o, except the fragmentary 

 forms ynori, ynotta, pitta, terrain*, which appeal- to imply the existence 

 of stems in o, namely, gno (in English. " know "), ;M> (compare the Greek 

 pr-iut-ta), irifra. The Greek language is not without a class of 

 having u for the final letter, as </-./, " enslave," &c. The divi- 

 verba into conjugations is founded upon the fact that the union of tin- 

 final letters in the crude form of the verb with the initial letters in the 

 suffixes leads to changes dependent upon these letters. We will not 

 enter here into the origin of these letters, a, e, i, as affixed to 

 That they form no essential part of the root is clear, and a writer in 

 the ' Transactions of the Philological Society ' contends that they have 

 all one common origin in a suffix ayh, still found in the Gaelic lan- 

 guages with an iterative power, or what may perhaps be better 

 expressed by the Latin paalatim. We will here merely note that 

 such verbs are often called by grammarians ireak verbs, in opposition 

 to the simpler or strong verbs. As specimens of these, we may give 

 the Latin ton-en (obsoL) and eona-re. 



CONJUNCTIONS. Under this term grammarians commonly in- 

 clude several classes of words which have little similarity of meaning, 

 and which, in their etymological origin, may be verbs, substantives, 

 adjectives, or prepositions. The old definition of a conjunction, that 

 it was a word which connected sentences together, will certainly not 

 apply in all coses, if at least the word " and " is to be included. It in 

 true, as Home Tooke observes, that " the sentence ' You and I and 

 Peter rode to London ' may be resolved into three: ' You ro 

 rode,' ' Peter rode.' But try some other instances : ' two and two are 

 four;' 'AB, BC, CA form a triangle ;' 'John and Jane are a li.nvl 

 some couple.' Does AB form a triangle ? Is John a couple ? Are 

 two four ? " (' Diversions of Purley,' Taylor's edition, i. p. 210.) 



On the etymological origin of conjunctions, which is a distinct question 

 from their use, some remarks will presently be made; in refer* : 

 their employment in the construction of a simple or compound sen- 

 tence they may perhaps be divided into the following classes : 1. Con- 

 junctions which unite either individual words, or phrases, or sentences, 

 without, in the last case, implying any subordination of one sentence to 

 the other. Such are the words : anil, or, nor ; or the double i 

 both and , either or , tckethtror , neither nor . With 

 respect to this class it may be useful to point out the great advantage 

 which the Greek, and more particularly the Latin, language possessed 

 in the variety of their forms for and : as KOI, T in thr t' >i inn , ft, qiu, 

 atquc or ac in the latter. This superiority over modern languages, 

 simple as it is in itself, gave to the longest Latin sentence a perspicuity 

 of arrangement, which in a great measure superseded the ucces 

 a cumbersome punctuation. (' Journal of Education,' vol. iv.. p. 135.) 

 2. Conjunctions, which in themselves simply meaning '/</.-. l., i 

 fixed to a secondary sentence or phrase, direct the atteni 

 secondary phrase as a unit, and thus prepare it for subjection to some 

 preceding word. This usage of the pronoun is as nearly as possible 

 equivalent to the use of the bracket or viuculum in algebra, which 

 connects the separate elements of any compound or polynomial 

 and subjects it as a new unit to the algebraical operation, the 

 which U attached to the vinculutn. Home Tooke, in his remarks upon 

 the so-called conjunction thai, furnishes many examples : as, " I v. i,h 

 you to believe that I would not willingly hurt a fly," which is r< 

 by him into " I would not willingly hurt a fly: 1 wish you to ' 

 that." A mathematician would have expressed it by " I wish you to 

 believe [I would not willingly hurt a fly]," where the words within the 

 brackets must be considered as a compound accusative or object after 

 the verb beliere. The Latin nt and </nW in their origin are > 

 neuters of the relative, and the original meaning of the relit 

 must be recollected, was thu. [ARTICLE.] Hence they too ap 

 in the same way as the English that ; for example : miatlfo ut nbcat, 

 "I recommend thit, you should go away ; " latatur quod redierit, "he 

 rejoices at tln'i, you have returned." Other examples may be found in 

 the use of the Greek on, which is again the neuter of a relative, as : 

 Ary on Tfli/7!K, " I say thw ; he is dead." In Greek there is some- 

 times a double accusative after the verb, one of which simply denotes 

 the object of the verb, and the other points to the condition or state of 

 the object, as explained by the words that follow it : thus, opa at ori 



