The Grammar of English Grammars Part 256

III. Nouns are derived from _Verbs_ in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of _ment, ance, ence, ure_, or _age_: as, _punish, punishment; abate, abatement; repent, repentance; condole, condolence; forfeit, forfeiture; stow, stowage; equip, equipage; truck, truckage_.

2. By a change of the termination of the verb, into _se, ce, sion, tion, ation_, or _ition_: as, _expand, expanse, expansion; pretend, pretence, pretension; invent, invention; create, creation; omit, omission; provide, provision; reform, reformation; oppose, opposition_. These denote either the act of doing, or the thing done.

3. By the adding of _er_ or _or_: as, _hunt, hunter; write, writer; collect, collector; a.s.sert, a.s.sertor; instruct, instructer_, or _instructor_. These generally denote the doer. To denote the person to whom something is done, we sometimes form a derivative ending in _ee_: as, _promisee, mortgagee, appellee, consignee_.

4. Nouns and Verbs are sometimes alike in orthography, but different in p.r.o.nunciation: as, a _house_, to _house_; a _use_, to _use_; a _reb'el_, to _rebel'_; a _rec'ord_, to _record'_; a _cem'ent_, to _cement'_. Of such pairs, it may often be difficult to say which word is the primitive.

5. In many instances, nouns and verbs are wholly alike as to form and sound, and are distinguished by their sense and construction only: as, _love_, to _love; fear_, to _fear; sleep_, to _sleep_;--to _revise_, a _revise_; to _rebuke_, a _rebuke_. In these, we have but the same word used differently.

IV. Nouns are often derived from _Participles_ in _ing_; as, a _meeting_, the _understanding, murmurings, disputings, sayings_, and _doings_: and, occasionally, one is formed from such a word and an adverb or a perfect participle joined with it; as, "The _turning-away_,"--"His _goings-forth_,"--"Your _having-boasted_ of it."

SECTION III.--DERIVATION OF ADJECTIVES.

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

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

1. By the adding of _ous, ious, eous, y, ey, ic, al, ical_ or _ine_: (sometimes with an omission or change of some of the final letters:) as, _danger, dangerous; glory, glorious; right, righteous; rock, rocky; clay, clayey; poet, poetic_, or _poetical; nation, national; method, methodical; vertex, vertical; clergy, clerical; adamant, adamantine_. Adjectives thus formed, generally apply the properties of their primitives, to the nouns to which they relate.

2. By the adding of _ful_: as, _fear, fearful; cheer, cheerful; grace, graceful; shame, shameful; power, powerful_. These come almost entirely from personal qualities or feelings, and denote abundance.

3. By the adding of _some_: as, _burden, burdensome; game, gamesome; toil, toilsome_. These denote plenty, but do not exaggerate.

4. By the adding of _en_: as, _oak, oaken; silk, silken; wheat, wheaten; oat, oaten; hemp, hempen_. Here the derivative denotes the matter of which something is made.

5. By the adding of _ly_ or _ish_: as, _friend, friendly; gentleman, gentlemanly; child, childish; prude, prudish_. These denote resemblance.

The termination _ly_ signifies _like_.

6. By the adding of _able_ or _ible_: as, _fas.h.i.+on, fas.h.i.+onable; access, accessible_. But these terminations are generally, and more properly, added to verbs. See Obs. 17th, 18th, &c., on the Rules for Spelling.

7. By the adding of _less_: as, _house, houseless; death, deathless; sleep, sleepless; bottom, bottomless_. These denote privation or exemption--the absence of what is named by the primitive.

8. By the adding of _ed_: as, _saint, sainted; bigot, bigoted; mast, masted; wit, witted_. These have a resemblance to participles, and some of them are rarely used, except when joined with some other word to form a compound adjective: as, _three-sided, bare-footed, long-eared, hundred-handed, flat-nosed, hard-hearted, marble-hearted, chicken-hearted_.

9. Adjectives coming from proper names, take various terminations: as, _America, American; England, English; Dane, Danish; Portugal, Portuguese; Plato, Platonic_.

10. Nouns are often converted into adjectives, without change of termination: as, _paper_ currency; a _gold_ chain; _silver_ knee-buckles.

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

1. By the adding of _ish_ or _some_: as, _white, whitish; green, greenish; lone, lonesome; glad, gladsome_. These denote quality with some diminution.

2. By the prefixing of _dis, in_, or _un_: as, _honest, dishonest; consistent, inconsistent; wise, unwise_. These express a negation of the quality denoted by their primitives.

3. By the adding of _y_ or _ly_: as, _swarth, swarthy; good, goodly_. Of these there are but few; for almost all the derivatives of the latter form are adverbs.

III. Adjectives are derived from _Verbs_ in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of _able_ or _ible_: (sometimes with a change of some of the final letters:) as, _perish, perishable; vary, variable; convert, convertible; divide, divisible_, or _dividable_. These, according to their a.n.a.logy, have usually a pa.s.sive import, and denote susceptibility of receiving action. 2. By the adding of _ive_ or _ory_: (sometimes with a change of some of the final letters:) as, _elect, elective; interrogate, interrogative, interrogatory; defend, defensive; defame, defamatory; explain, explanatory_.

3. Words ending in _ate_, are mostly verbs; but some of them may be employed as adjectives, in the same form, especially in poetry; as, _reprobate, complicate_.

IV. Adjectives are derived from _Participles_, not by suffixes, but in these ways:--

1. By the prefixing of _un_, meaning _not_; as, _unyielding, unregarded, unreserved, unendowed, unendeared, unendorsed, unencountered, unenc.u.mbered, undisheartened, undishonoured_. Of this sort there are very many.

2. By a combining of the participle with some word which does not belong to the verb; as, _way-faring, hollow-sounding, long-drawn, deep-laid, dear-purchased, down-trodden_. These, too, are numerous.

3. Participles often become adjectives without change of form. Such adjectives are distinguished from participles by their construction alone: as, "A _lasting_ ornament;"--"The _starving_ chymist;"--"Words of _learned_ length;"--"With _counterfeited_ glee."

SECTION IV.--DERIVATION OF THE p.r.o.nOUNS.

I. The _English_ p.r.o.nouns are all of _Saxon_ origin; but, in them, our language differs very strikingly from that of the Anglo-Saxons. The following table compares the simple personal forms:--

Eng. I, My or Me; We, Our or Us.

Mine, Ours, Sax. Ic, Min, Me or We, Ure or Us.

Mec; User, Eng. Thou, Thy or Thee; Ye, Your You.

Thine, or Yours, Sax. Thu, Thin, The or Ge Eower, Eow or Thec; Eowie.

Eng. He, His Him; They, Their or Them.

Theirs, Sax. He, His or Him or Hi or Hira or Heom or Hys, Hine; Hig, Heora, Hi.

Eng. She, Her or Her; They, Their or Them.

Hers, Theirs, Sax. Heo, Hire or Hi; Hi or Hira or Heom or Hyre, Hig, Heora, Hi.

Eng. It, Its, It; They, Their or Them.

Theirs, Sax. Hit, His or Hit; Hi or Hira or Heom or Hys, Hig, Heora, Hi.

Here, as in the personal p.r.o.nouns of other languages, the plurals and oblique cases do not all appear to be regular derivatives from the nominative singular. Many of these p.r.o.nouns, perhaps all, as well as a vast number of other words of frequent use in our language, and in that from which it chiefly comes, were very variously written by the Middle English, Old English, Semi-Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon authors. He who traces the history of our language, will meet with them under all the following forms, (or such as these would be with Saxon characters for the Saxon forms,) and perhaps in more:--

1. I, J, Y, y, i, ay, ic, che, ich, Ic;--MY, mi, min, MINE, myne, myn;--ME, mee, me, meh, mec, mech;--WE, wee, ve;--OUR or OURS, oure, ure, wer, urin, uren, urne, user, usse, usser, usses, ussum;--Us, ous, vs, uss, usic, usich, usig, usih, uz, huz.

2. THOU, thoue, thow, thowe, thu, tou, to, tu;--THY or THINE, thi, thyne, thyn, thin;--THEE, the, theh, thec;--YE, yee, yhe, ze, zee, ge, ghe;--YOUR or YOURS, youre, zour, hure, goure, yer, yower, yowyer, yorn, yourn, youre, eower;--You, youe, yow, gou, zou, ou, iu, iuh, eow, iow, geow, eowih, eowic, iowih.

3. HE, hee, hie, se;--His, hise, is, hys, ys, hyse, hus;--HIM, hine, hiene, hion, hen, hyne, hym, im;--THEY, thay, thei, the, tha, thai, thii, yai, hi, hie, heo, hig, hyg, hy;--THEIR or THEIRS, ther, theyr, theyrs, thair, thare, theora, hare, here, her, hir, hire, hira, hiora, hiera, heora, hyra;--THEM, thym, theym, thaym, thaim, thame, tham, em, hem, heom, hiom, eom, hom, him, hi, hig.

4. SHE, shee, sche, scho, sho, shoe, scae, seo, heo, hio, hiu, hoo, hue;--HER, (possessive,) hur, hir, hire, hyr, hyre, hyra, hera;--HER, (objective,) hire, hyre, hur, hir, hi. The plural forms of this feminine p.r.o.noun are like those of the masculine _He_; but the "_Well-Wishers to Knowledge_," in their small Grammar, (erroneously, as I suppose,) make _hira_ masculine only, and _heora_ feminine only. See their _Principles of Grammar_, p. 38.

5. IT, yt, itt, hit, hyt, hytt. The possessive _Its_ is a modern derivative; _His_ or _Hys_ was formerly used in lieu of it. The plural forms of this neuter p.r.o.noun, _It_, are like those of _He_ and _She_.

According to Horne Tooke, who declares _hoet_ to have been one of its ancient forms, "this p.r.o.noun was merely the past participle of the verb HAITAN, _haetan_, nominare," _to name_, and literally signifies "_the said_;" (_Diversions of Purley_, Vol. ii, p. 46; _W. Allen's Gram._, p.

57;) but Dr. Alexander Murray, exhibiting it in an other form, not adapted to this opinion, makes it the neuter of a declinable adjective, or p.r.o.noun, inflected from the masculine, thus: "He, heo hita, _this_"--_Hist. of Lang._, Vol. i, p. 315.

II. The relatives and interrogatives are derived from the same source, the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and have pa.s.sed through similar changes, or varieties in orthography; but, the common relative p.r.o.noun of the Anglo-Saxons being like their article _the_,--or, with the three genders, _se, seo, thaet_,--and not like our _who, which_, and _what_, it is probable that the interrogative use of these words was the primitive one. They have been found in all the following forms:--