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nouns are really stems, when we notice that the plural inflection is not added, even when a plural is meant. Thus in the compound 'starencircled' we do not say 'stars-encircled' although we mean 'encircled with stars.'

Obs. 2.-In Sanskrit the stems generally remain unchanged; but in Greek and Latin the final vowel is frequently altered or a connecting vowel is introduced. See Monier Williams's Sanskrit Gr. § 734, and Abbott and Mansfield's Primer of Greek Gr. § 178.

13. A Noun or Substantive is the name of anything, whether actually possessed of, or only regarded as if possessed of, independent existence. The origin of this part of speech has already been touched upon [§ 10] but its growth in Aryan speech must now be briefly sketched. We have seen that man in possessing Roots possessed sounds, at first significant of his own actions, but which were inevitably soon applied to the same actions when performed, or supposed to be performed, by other animate or inanimate objects.

When we

firmly grasp the principle that 'all ancient nouns expressed activities' [Müller], we have no difficulty in understanding how the naming of objects was at first achieved. It was done by predicating of them some human action, which they were observed or were supposed to be performing. Thus the most primitive nouns may always be expanded into sentences, of which the suffixed Pointing Root forms the subject and the prefixed Predicative Root forms the predicate. For example, amongst the earliest names for river, plough, and moon, we have nouns which mean, 'This runs or is running,' 'This divides or is dividing,' 'That measures or is measuring.' The addition of a noun formative suffix [§ 11] was the next step in advance. This was most probably soon followed by the habitual appropriation of one of the Demonstrative Roots to the indication of the Subject of an action and of another to the indication of the Object; thus forming the Nominative and Accusative cases, and originating what is commonly called the Declension of the

Noun. The Vocative, which is not properly a case, would of course be represented by the uninflected stem.

When once the habit of indicating the relation of nouns to verbs by inflectional suffixes was started, there was no theoretic reason why the new crop of cases should not become as numerous as the prepositions, which have recently replaced them. The Aryan case system is however seen at possibly its maximum point of development in Sanskrit, although there are non-Aryan languages [e.g. the Basque and Finnish] with a still greater number of cases. The most characteristic functions of the Aryan so-called cases may be approximately arrived at by a comparison of various Aryan languages. They may with tolerable accuracy be taken to be as follows:

The Nominative case marks the subject of a verb.

The Accusative case marks the cognate [§ 40] and direct object [§ 49] of a verb, and has also acquired a distinctly. adverbial force, expressive of the course, progress, direction, and duration of an action. Hence we may speak of both a substantival and of an adverbial accusative [see § 46].

The Vocative [not a case] is a stem used interjectionally. The Genitive case marks one noun or pronoun as occupying some adjectival relation to another noun. As its many uses include that of expressing reference [§ 82], we shall occasionally allow ourselves to speak of an adverbial, as distinguished from the adjectival, genitive.

The Dative case marks the end of an action. Hence it comes to indicate the remoter object affected by or even interested1 in an act; and also the purpose, motive, or final cause which actuates the mind of the actor.

The Ablative case marks the starting-point or origin of

1 When the dative is used to mark the person interested in an act it is called the Ethical dative. e.g. 'Es lief mir ein hund über den weg' = There 'With trial-fire touch me his finger-end.'

ran me a dog across the way. Shakspere. See § 83, Obs. 2.

some action.

cause of an act.

Hence it serves to tell the initial [i.e. the first]

The Locative case marks the place or sphere of an action. The Instrumental case marks the instrumental means by which something is done.

These so-called cases discharge the functions of no less than four separate parts of speech, viz. the noun, adjective, adverb, and interjection, and may be tabulated as follows :—

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It is many ages since the irremediable decay of the old Aryan declensions commenced in the confusion of the cases.

1 The adverbial idea of Reference may be conveyed by a true adjective [e.g. A popish scare a scare concerning the pope]. Hence when the adverbial genitive is attached to a noun we shall treat it as an adjectival.

Both the sounds and senses of the terminations often ran into one another; and when the meaning of a verb had changed, while the case conventionally associated with it remained, a still further cause of confusion arose. It is easy to illustrate the progress of the collapse of the case system by a comparison of three leading Aryan languages. Taking Sanskrit as the standard form, we see how the cases which it still possesses have run together in the Latin and the Greek —

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If instead of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, we make the comparison between our Old and Modern English, we have only a further illustration of the collapse of the case system.

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Thus, except so far as the Possessive case answers for the Genitive, modern English has lost every case of the noun, although still possessing three cases among the pronouns, With the exception of the Possessive case, and the mark of the plural, our nouns are merely the Stems of words, which were

once declined. Thus the noun 'end' was declined in O.E.

as follows:

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From what has been said in this section, as well as from what is to follow in the immediately ensuing sections, the student will observe that although adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, are known to have been formed in many various ways, yet all these parts of speech may be safely regarded as having in the first place originated in the declension of nouns and pronouns.

Obs. Although it is quite incorrect to speak of cases in respect of our modern uninflected nouns, yet we may allow ourselves to describe some of their substantival, adjectival, or adverbial functions by a reference to the functions of the old Aryan cases as given above. Thus we shall often speak of a modern noun as discharging a 'nominative function,' a ' dative function,' a 'locative function,' &c. &c. Such terminology forms however no essential portion of this book, and need not be adopted by the student, who has in the Table of Adverbials given in § 82 ample suggestions for an alternative description of at all events the adverbial case-functions.

14. An Adjective expresses an un-abstracted quality; which quality, when abstracted [i.e. when spoken of as if possessing an independent existence], becomes an abstract noun [§ 2]. Thus the adjectives 'high' and 'good,' when abstracted, turn into the abstract nouns 'height' and 'goodness'; but there is frequently no difference of form between the adjective and its corresponding abstract noun, e.g. our word 'evil' which represents both the Greek adjective rovnos and the abstract noun ovηpía. It is beyond the scope of this work to say much about the peculiarities of form belonging to adjectives, but there can be no doubt that many adjectives

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