APPENDIX. 455 



pie, by whicli one element has been curtailed, another augmented, 

 and all, however seemingly discordant, made to coalesce. 



Such a language may be expected to abound in derivatives and 

 compounds ; to afford rules for giving verbs substantive, and sub- 

 stantives verbal qualities ; to concentrate the meaning of words 

 upon a few syllables, or upon a single letter, or alphabetical sign; 

 and to supply modes of contraction and augmentation, and, if I 

 may so say, short cuts, and hy-paihs to meanings, which are equally 

 novel and interesting. To arrive at its primitives, we must pur- 

 sue an intricate thread, wdiere analogy is often the only guide. 

 We must divest words of those accumulated syllables, or parti- 

 cles, which, like the molecules of material matter, are clustered 

 around the primitives. It is only after a process of this kind, that 

 the principle of comhinaiion — that secret wire, which moves the 

 whole machinery can be searched for, with a reasonable prospect 

 of success. The labor of analysis is one of the most interesting 

 and important, which the subject presents. And it is a labor 

 which it will be expedient to keep constantly in viev^, until we 

 have separately considered the several parts of speech, and the 

 grammatical laws by which the language is held together; and 

 thus established principles and provided materials Virherewith we 

 may the more successfully labor. 



1. In a general survey of the language as it is spoken, and as 

 it must be written, there is perhaps no feature which obtrudes it- 

 self so constantly to view, as the principle which separates all 

 words, of whatever denomination, into animates and inanimates, 

 as they are applied to objects in the animal, vegetable, or mineral 

 kingdom. This principle has been grafted upon most words, and 

 carries its distinctions throughout the syntax. It is the gender of 

 the language; but a gender of so unbounded a scope, as to merge in 

 it the common distinctions of a masculine and feminine, and to give 

 a twofold character to the parts of speech. The concords which it 

 requires, and the double inflections it provides, will be mentioned 

 in their appropriate places. It will be sufficient here to observe, 

 that animate nouns require animate verbs for their nominatives, 

 animate adjectives to express their qualities, and animate demonstra- 

 tive pronouns to mark the distinctions of person. Thus, if we say, 

 ''I see a man; I see a house," the termination of the verb must 

 be changed. "What was in the first instance icuh imd, is altered 



