Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/277

 OBS. 3.--Murray says, "Perhaps the words former and latter may be properly ranked amongst the demonstrative pronouns, especially in many of their applications. The following sentence may serve as an example: 'It was happy for the state, that Fabius continued in the command with Minutius: the former's phlegm was a check upon the latter's vivacity.'"--Gram., 8vo, p. 57. This I take to be bad English. Former and latter ought to be adjectives only; except when former means maker. And, if not so, it is too easy a way of multiplying pronouns, to manufacture two out of one single anonymous sentence. If it were said, "The deliberation of the former was a seasonable chock upon the fiery temper of the latter" the words former and latter would seem to me not to be pronouns, but adjectives, each relating to the noun commander understood after it.

OBS. 4.--The sense and relation of words in sentences, as well as their particular form and meaning, must be considered in parsing, before the learner can say, with certainty, to what class they belong. Other parts of speech, and especially nouns and participles, by a change in their construction, may become adjectives. Thus, to denote the material of which a thing is formed, we very commonly make the name of the substantive an adjective to that of the thing: as, A gold chain, a silver spoon, a glass pitcher, a tin basin, an oak plank, a basswood slab, a whalebone rod. This construction is in general correct, whenever the former word may be predicated of the latter; as, "The chain is gold."--"The spoon is silver." But we do not write gold beater for goldbeater, or silver smith for silversmith; because the beater is not gold, nor is the smith silver. This principle, however, is not universally observed; for we write snowball, whitewash, and many similar compounds, though the ball is snow and the wash is white; and linseed oil, or Newark cider, may be a good phrase, though the former word cannot well be predicated of the latter. So in the following examples: "Let these conversation tones be the foundation of public pronunciation."--Blair's Rhet., p. 334. "A muslin flounce, made very full, would give a very agreeable flirtation air."--POPE: Priestley's Gram., p. 79.

OBS. 5.--Murray says, "Various nouns placed before other nouns assume the nature of adjectives: as, sea fish, wine vessel, corn field, meadow ground, &c."--Octavo Gram., p. 48. This is, certainly, very lame instruction. If there is not palpable error in all his examples, the propriety of them all is at least questionable; and, to adopt and follow out their principle, would be, to tear apart some thousands of our most familiar compounds. "Meadow ground" may perhaps be a correct phrase, since the ground is meadow; it seems therefore preferable to the compound word meadow-ground. What he meant by "wine vessel" is doubtful: that is, whether a ship or a cask, a flagon or a decanter. If we turn to our dictionaries, Webster has sea-fish and wine-cask with a hyphen, and cornfield without; while Johnson and others have corn-field with a hyphen, and seafish without. According to the rules for the figure of words, we ought to write them seafish, winecask, cornfield. What then becomes of the thousands of "adjectives" embraced in the "&c." quoted above?

OBS. 6.--The pronouns he and she, when placed before or prefixed to nouns merely to denote their gender, appear to be used adjectively; as, "The male or he animals offered in sacrifice."--Wood's Dict., w. Males. "The most usual term is he or she, male or female, employed as an adjective: as, a he bear, a she bear; a male elephant, a female elephant."--Churchill's Gram., p. 69. Most writers, however, think proper to insert a hyphen in the terms here referred to: as, he-bear, she-bear, the plurals of which are he-bears and she-bears. And, judging by the foregoing rule of predication, we must assume that this practice only is right. In the first example, the word he is useless; for the term "male animals" is sufficiently clear without it. It has been shown in the third chapter, that he and she are sometimes used as nouns; and that, as such, they may take the regular declension of nouns, making the plurals hes and shes. But whenever these words are used adjectively to denote gender, whether we choose to insert the hyphen or not, they are, without question, indeclinable, like other adjectives. In the following example, Sanborn will have he to be a noun in the objective case; but I consider it rather, to be an adjective, signifying masculine:

OBS. 7.--Though verbs give rise to many adjectives, they seldom, if ever, become such by a mere change of construction. It is mostly by assuming an additional termination, that any verb is formed into an adjective: as in teachable, moveable, oppressive, diffusive, prohibitory. There are, however, about forty words ending in ate, which, without difference of form, are either verbs or adjectives; as, aggregate, animate, appropriate, articulate, aspirate, associate, complicate, confederate, consummate, deliberate, desolate, effeminate, elate, incarnate, intimate, legitimate, moderate, ordinate, precipitate, prostrate, regenerate, reprobate, separate, sophisticate, subordinate. This class of adjectives seems to be lessening. The participials in ed, are superseding some of them, at least in popular practice: as, contaminated, for contaminate, defiled; reiterated, for reiterate, repeated; situated, for situate, placed; attenuated, for attenuate, made thin or slender. Devote, exhaust, and some other verbal forms, are occasionally used by the poets, in lieu of the participial forms, devoted, exhausted, &c.