The Grammar of English Grammars Part 255

3. The feeble or faint _y_, accentless; (like _open e feeble_;) as in _cymar, cycloidal, mercy_.

The vowels _i_ and _y_ have, in general, exactly the same sound under similar circ.u.mstances, and, in forming derivatives, we often change one for the other: as in _city, cities; tie, tying; easy, easily_.

_Y_, before a vowel heard in the same syllable, is reckoned a _consonant_; we have, therefore, no diphthongs or triphthongs _commencing_ with this letter.

XXVI. OF THE LETTER Z.

The consonant _Z_, the last letter of our alphabet, has usually a soft or buzzing sound, the same as that of _s flat_; as in _Zeno, zenith, breeze, dizzy_. Before _u primal_ or _i feeble, z_, as well as _s flat_, sometimes takes the sound of _zh_, which, in the enumeration of consonantal sounds, is reckoned a distinct element; as in _azure, seizure, glazier; osier, measure, pleasure_.

END OF THE FIRST APPENDIX.

APPENDIX II.

TO PART SECOND, OR ETYMOLOGY.

OF THE DERIVATION OF WORDS.

Derivation, as a topic to be treated by the grammarian, is a species of Etymology, which explains the various methods by which those derivative words which are not formed by mere grammatical inflections, are deduced from their primitives. Most of those words which are regarded as primitives in English, may be traced to ulterior sources, and many of them are found to be compounds or derivatives in the other languages from which they have come to us. To show the composition, origin, and literal sense of these, is also a part, and a highly useful part, of this general inquiry, or theme of instruction.

This species of information, though insignificant in those whose studies reach to nothing better,--to nothing valuable and available in life,--is nevertheless essential to education and to science; because it is essential to a right understanding of the import and just application of such words.

All reliable etymology, all authentic derivation of words, has ever been highly valued by the wise. The learned James Harris has a remark as follows: "How useful to ETHIC SCIENCE, and indeed to KNOWLEDGE in general, a GRAMMATICAL DISQUISITION into the _Etymology_ and _Meaning_ of WORDS was esteemed by the chief and ablest Philosophers, may be seen by consulting _Plato_ in his _Cratylus; Xenophon's Memorabilia_, IV, 5, 6; _Arrian.

Epict._ I, 17; II, 10; _Marc. Anton_. III, 11;" &c.--See _Harris's Hermes_, p. 407.

A knowledge of the _Saxon, Latin, Greek_, and _French_ languages, will throw much light on this subject, the derivation of our modern English; nor is it a weak argument in favour of studying these, that our acquaintance with them, whether deep or slight, tends to a better understanding of what is borrowed, and what is vernacular, in our own tongue. But etymological a.n.a.lysis may extensively teach the origin of English words, their composition, and the import of their parts, without demanding of the student the power of reading foreign or ancient languages, or of discoursing at all on General Grammar. And, since many of the users of this work may be but readers of our current English, to whom an unknown letter or a foreign word is a particularly uncouth and repulsive thing, we shall here forbear the use of Saxon characters, and, in our explanations, not go beyond the precincts of our own language, except to show the origin and primitive import of some of our definitive and connecting particles, and to explain the prefixes and terminations which are frequently employed to form English derivatives.

The rude and cursory languages of barbarous nations, to whom literature is unknown, are among those transitory things which, by the hand of time, are irrecoverably buried in oblivion. The fabric of the English language is undoubtedly of _Saxon_ origin; but what was the particular form of the language spoken by the _Saxons_, when about the year 450 they entered Britain, cannot now be accurately known. It was probably a dialect of the _Gothic_ or _Teutonic_. This _Anglo-Saxon_ dialect, being the nucleus, received large accessions from other tongues of the north, from the _Norman French_, and from the more polished languages of _Rome_ and _Greece_, to form the modern _English_. The speech of our rude and warlike ancestors thus gradually improved, as Christianity, civilization, and knowledge, advanced the arts of life in Britain; and, as early as the tenth century, it became a language capable of expressing all the sentiments of a civilized people. From the time of _Alfred_, its progress may be traced by means of writings which remain; but it can scarcely be called _English_, as I have shown in the Introduction to this work, till about the thirteenth century. And for two or three centuries later, it was so different from the modern English, as to be scarcely intelligible at all to the mere English reader; but, gradually improving by means upon which we need not here dilate, it at length became what we now find it,--a language copious, strong, refined, impressive, and capable, if properly used, of a great degree of beauty and harmony.

SECTION I.--DERIVATION OF THE ARTICLES.

1. For the derivation of our article THE, which he calls "_an adjective_,"

Dr. Webster was satisfied with giving this hint: "Sax. _the_; Dutch, _de_."--_Amer. Dict._ According to Horne Tooke, this definite article of ours, is the Saxon _verb_ "THE," imperative, from THEAN, to _take_; and is nearly equivalent in meaning to _that_ or _those_, because our _that_ is "the past participle of THEAN," and "means _taken_."--_Diversions of Purley_, Vol. ii, p. 49. But this is not very satisfactory. Examining ancient works, we find the word, or something resembling it, or akin to it, written in various forms, as _se, see, ye, te, de, the, tha_, and others that cannot be shown by our modern letters; and, tracing it as one article, or one and the same word, through what we suppose to be the oldest of these forms, in stead of accounting the forms as signs of different roots, we should sooner regard it as originating in the imperative of SEON, _to see_.

2. AN, our indefinite article, is the Saxon _oen, ane, an_, ONE; and, by dropping _n_ before a consonant, becomes _a_. Gawin Douglas, an ancient English writer, wrote _ane_, even before a consonant; as, "_Ane_ book,"--"_Ane_ lang spere,"--"_Ane_ volume."

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--The words of Tooke, concerning the derivation of _That_ and _The_, as nearly as they can be given in our letters, are these: "THAT (in the Anglo-Saxon Thaet, i.e. Thead, Theat) means _taken, a.s.sumed_; being merely the past participle of the Anglo-Saxon verb Thean, Thegan, Thion, Thihan, Thicgan, Thigian; sumere, a.s.sumere, accipere; to THE, to _get_, to _take_, to _a.s.sume_.

'Ill mote he THE That caused me To make myselfe a frere.'--_Sir T. More's Workes, pag._ 4.

THE (our _article_, as it is called) is the imperative of the same verb Thean: which may very well supply the place of the correspondent Anglo-Saxon article Se, which is the imperative of Seon, videre: for it answers the same purpose in discourse, to say.... _see_ man, or _take_ man."--_Diversions of Purley_, Vol. ii, p. 49.

OBS. 2.--Now, between _Thaet_ and _Theat_, there is a considerable difference of form, for _ae_ and _ea_ are not the same diphthong; and, in the identifying of so many infinitives, as forming but one verb, there is room for error. Nor is it half so probable that these are truly one root, as that our article _The_ is the same, in its origin, as the old Anglo-Saxon _Se_. Dr. Bosworth, in his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, gives no such word as _Thean_ or _Thegan_, no such participle as _Thead_ or _Theat_, which derivative is perhaps imaginary; but he has inserted together "Thicgan, thicgean, thigan, _to receive, or take_;" and separately, "Theon, _to thrive, or flourish_,"--"Thihan, _to thrive_,"--and "Thion, _to flourish_;" as well as the preterit "Theat, _howled_," from "Theotan, _to howl_." And is it not plain, that the old verb "THE," as used by More, is from Theon, _to thrive_, rather than from Thicgan, _to take_? "Ill mote he THE"--"Ill might he _thrive_," not, "Ill might he _take_."

OBS. 3.--Professor Hart says, "The word _the_ was originally _thaet_, or _that_. In course of time [,] it became abbreviated, and the short form acquired, in usage, a shade of meaning different from the original long one. _That_ is demonstrative with emphasis; _the_ is demonstrative without emphasis."--_Hart's E. Grammar_, p. 32. This derivation of _The_ is quite improbable; because the shortening of a monosyllable of five letters by striking out the third and the fifth, is no usual mode of abbreviation.

Bosworth's Dictionary explains THE as "An indeclinable article, often used for all the cases of Se, seo, thaet, especially in adverbial expressions and in corrupt Anglo-Saxon, as in the _Chronicle_ after the year 1138."

OBS. 4--Dr. Latham, in a section which is evidently neither accurate nor self-consistent, teaches us--"that there exist in the present English two powers of the word spelled _t-h-e_, or of the so-called definite article;"

then, out of sixteen Anglo-Saxon equivalents, he selects two for the roots of this double-powered _the_; saying, "Hence the _the_ that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon _thy_ is one word; whilst the _the_ that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon _the_, [is] another. The latter is the common article: the former the _the_ in expressions like _all the more, all the better--more by all that, better by all that_, and the Latin phrases _eo majus, eo melius_."--_Latham's Hand-Book_, p. 158. This double derivation is liable to many objections. The Hand-Book afterwards says, "That the, in expressions like _all the more, all the better_, &c., is _no article_, has already been shown."--P. 196. But in fact, though _the_ before comparatives or superlatives be no article, Dr. Latham's etymologies prove no such thing; neither does he anywhere tell us what it is. His examples, too, with their interpretations, are all of them fict.i.tious, ambiguous, and otherwise bad. It is uncertain whether he meant his phrases for counterparts to each other or not. If _the_ means "_by that_," or _thereby_, it is an _adverb_; and so is its equivalent "_eo_" denominated by the Latin grammarians. See OBS. 10, under Rule I.

SECTION II.--DERIVATION OF NOUNS.

In _English_, Nouns are derived from nouns, from adjectives, from verbs, or from participles.

I. Nouns are derived from _Nouns_ in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of _s.h.i.+p, dom, ric, wick, or, ate, hood_, or _head_: as, _fellow, fellows.h.i.+p; king, kingdom; bishop, bishopric; bailiff_, or _baily, bailiwick; senate, senator; tetrarch, tetrarchate; child, childhood; G.o.d, G.o.dhead_. These generally denote dominion, office, or character.

2. By the adding of _ian_: as, _music, musician; physic, physician; theology, theologian; grammar, grammarian; college, collegian_. These generally denote profession.

3. By the adding of _r, ry_, or _ery_: as, _grocer, grocery; cutler, cutlery; slave, slavery; scene, scenery; fool, foolery_. These sometimes denote state or habit; sometimes, an artificer's wares or shop.

4. By the adding of _age_ or _ade_: as, _patron, patronage; porter, porterage; band, bandage; lemon, lemonade; bal.u.s.ter, bal.u.s.trade; wharf, wharf.a.ge; va.s.sal, va.s.salage_.

5. By the adding of _kin, let, ling, ock, el, erel_, or _et_: as, _lamb, lambkin; ring, ringlet; cross, crosslet; duck, duckling; hill, hillock; run, runnel; c.o.c.k, c.o.c.kerel; pistol, pistolet; eagle, eaglet; circle, circlet_. All these denote little things, and are called diminutives.

6. By the addition of _ist_: as, _psalm, psalmist; botany, botanist; dial, dialist; journal, journalist._ These denote persons devoted to, or skilled in, the subject expressed by the primitive.

7. By the prefixing of an adjective, or an other noun, so as to form a compound word: as, _foreman, broadsword, statesman, tradesman; bedside, hillside, seaside; bear-berry, bear-fly, bear-garden; bear's-ear, bear's-foot, goat's-beard_.

8. By the adoption of a negative prefix to reverse the meaning: as, _order, disorder; pleasure, displeasure; consistency, inconsistency; capacity, incapacity; observance, non.o.bservance; resistance, nonresistance; truth, untruth; constraint, unconstraint_.

9. By the use of the prefix _counter_, signifying _against_ or _opposite_: as, _attraction, counter-attraction; bond, counter-bond; current, counter-current; movement, counter-movement_.

10. By the addition of _ess, ix, or ine_, or the changing of masculines to feminines so terminating: as, _heir, heiress; prophet, prophetess; abbot, abbess; governor, governess; testator, testatrix; hero, heroine_.

II. Nouns are derived from _Adjectives_ in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of _ness, ity, s.h.i.+p, dom_, or _hood_: as, _good, goodness; real, reality; hard, hards.h.i.+p; wise, wisdom; free, freedom; false, falsehood_.

2. By the changing of _t_ into _ce_ or _cy_: as, _radiant, radiance; consequent, consequence; flagrant, flagrancy; current, currency; discrepant, discrepance_, or _discrepancy_.

3. By the changing of some of the letters, and the adding of _t_ or _th_: as, _long, length; broad, breadth; wide, width; high, height_. The nouns included under these three heads, generally denote abstract qualities, and are called abstract nouns.

4. By the adding of _ard_: as, _drunk, drunkard; dull, dullard_. These denote ill character.

5. By the adding of _ist_: as, _sensual, sensualist; separate, separatist; royal, royalist; fatal, fatalist_. These denote persons devoted, addicted, or attached, to something.

6. By the adding of _a_, the Latin ending of neuter plurals, to certain proper adjectives in _an_: as, _Miltonian, Miltoniana; Johnsonian, Johnsoniana_. These literally mean, _Miltonian things, sayings_, or _anecdotes_, &c.; and are words somewhat fas.h.i.+onable with the journalists, and are sometimes used for t.i.tles of books that refer to table-talk.