Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/298

276 French bonnement, 'kindly,' is bonâ mente, 'with kind intent'); the ōs which forms Greek adverbs (for example, kakōs, 'ill,' from kakos, 'bad') is the original ablative case-ending: and we are doubtless to infer that both the general classes of adverbs, made by means of apparent adverbial suffixes, and the more irregular and obscure single words, of kindred meaning and office, which we trace in the earliest vocabulary of the family, are of like derivation. Those parts of speech which we call prepositions were originally such, not in our present understanding of the term, but according to its etymological signification; they were adverbial prefixes to the verb, serving to point out more clearly the direction of the verbal action; it was only later, and by degrees, that they detached themselves from the verb, and came to belong to the noun, furthering the disappearance of its case-endings, and assuming their office. The earliest of them, as was to be expected from their designation of direction, trace their origin chiefly to pronominal roots; but in part, also, they come from verbal. Conjunctions, connectives of sentences, are almost altogether of comparatively late growth; the earliest style was too simple to call for their use: we have seen examples already (in the third lecture  ) of the mode in which they were arrived at, by attenuation of the meaning of words possessing by origin a more full and definite significance. Other products of a like attenuation, made generally at a decidedly modern date, are the articles: the definite article always growing out of a demonstrative pronoun; the indefinite, out of the numeral one.

The interjections, finally, however expressive and pregnant with meaning they may be, are not in a proper sense parts of speech; they do not connect themselves with other words, and enter into the construction of sentences; they are either the direct outbursts of feeling, like ''oh! ah! or else, like st! sh!'' mere "vocal gestures," immediate intimations of will—in both cases alike, substitutes for more elaborate and distinct expression. They require, however, to be referred to here, not merely for the sake of completeness, but also because many words come to be employed only