may become nouns, as 'What a go!' Participles may become. conjunctions, as I will consent supposing you really wish.' The adjectival and adverbial cases of nouns and pronouns are [as we have already seen] continually turning into adjectives and adverbs. The cases of nouns and pronouns, and even the persons of verbs, are liable to be used as stems, and to receive a secondary set of inflections belonging possibly to an altogether different part of speech; thus the O.E. genitive of Ic [= I] was mín [ of me], this was turned into the adjective mín [mine] and received inflections, e.g. 'mín-es faeder (gen.)' of my father. = = There are many illustrations of metamorphosis still more curious than these; but the only two of which we need to take special notice here are the Verbal-adjectives and Verbal-nouns, -which are of course chiefly derived from verbs. 24. Verbal-adjectives or Participles, though possessing many verbal qualities, are in reality attributive words, inasmuch as they discharge all the functions of adjectives. As adjectives, they may be either epithetic [e.g. running water], subordinating ' [e.g. we met him walking], co-ordinating [e.g. entering the room, he sat down], or complementary [e.g. he was writing]. Again, so long as the declension of nouns continued, the participles, like other adjectives, received the case inflections, which served to indicate the noun with which they were in attribution; thus the Gothic for 'He saw Simon and Andrew... casting a net" Gasahw Seimonu jah Andraian . . . wairpandans [acc. plu.] nati. Lastly, the participles, like other = 1 The subordinating [i.e. adverbial] participle has in some languages acquired certain idiomatic uses not clearly attributive. Thus the fact that the cause of a perception is also its object, has allowed the causal participle in Greek to become an object [i.e. a substantival] after a verb of perception, e.3. οἶδα θνητὸς ὤν I know that I am mortal [lit. I know being mortal]. There are several other idiomatic uses, but they all appear to have grown out of subordinating attributes, telling of the time, cause, or manner of an action. = adjectives, have sometimes come to be used absolutely, as a noun or verbal-noun [e.g. being vanquished is humiliating]. With the exception of mood and person, the participles possess all the qualities of verbs. Hence they are modified by adverbs,—are completed by the same objects and complements as their corresponding verbs, and have both voices and tenses. In voice the participles are Active, Passive, or Middle, according to the state of the person or thing with which they are in attribution and in tense they are Simple, Perfect, Imperfect, or Inceptive, according as the action or state of the action is represented as entire from beginning to end, as completed, as progressing, or as impending. Properly speaking, the tenses of the participles do not tell us of the time of an action, but only of its state. That the temporal idea [which often seems to belong to them] is only infused from the finite verb with which they are associated, is best seen, when we notice how the most commonly used participles are only past, present, or future according to the tense of the main verb. thus in 'I saw him falling,' where the state of falling is in the past. It is 'She saw him fallen,' where the state of fallenness is in the past. 'She sees him fallen,' where the state of fallenness is in the present. 'She will see him fallen,' where the state of fallenness is in the future. From this we see that a complete system of participles would exist, if for each voice there were four distinct forms, viz. a Simple, a Perfect, an Imperfect, and an Inceptive, serving to express the state, but not the time, of an action. In Greek and Latin there are near approaches to such a system; but in our Teutonic speech we have only two non-periphrastic participles, viz. an active Imperfect [e.g. falling, sinking, loving], and a Perfect [e.g. fallen, sunk, loved]. Of these, the former is sometimes [see Obs.] used with the force of an active Simple1; and the latter constantly used as either active or passive Perfect, as passive Simple, and possibly even as a passive Imperfect. Thus : 'We heard her singing' [act. Imperfect]. 'Entering [act. Simple] the room, she sat down.' "They had the dinner cooked' [pass. Perfect]. 'I saw the casket sunk [pass. Simple] before I left.' In the following table of modern English participles both the periphrastic and non-periphrastic forms are included. 1 It sometimes appears to be also used as a pass. Impf., but such is not really the case; for though ‘The house was preparing' = The house was being prepared, yet the word 'preparing' is not a participle at all, but a = a As to the origin of participles,-i.e. the origin of the stems of these once inflected adjectives, we might guess that they were the oblique cases of nouns or verbal-nouns, and that guess would be supported when we noticed that 'A ship in sail' ship sailing, and an object of dread' a dreaded object. But a minute examination of the Aryan participles serves to show that the stem of at all events the Imperfect participle is most commonly of the same form as the third person plural of the present indicative, as may be seen in Greek, Latin, and Gothic. Our modern English termination -ing' has replaced the O.E. '-ende,' which last, if formed on the above principle, points us back to some prehistoric time, when our ancestors had a 3rd pers. plu. in '-end' v. '-and,' instead of the O.E. '-að' common to all the pers. plur. The English terminations '-en' [of strong verbs] and '-ed' [of weak verbs] are of adjectival origin. Obs.—The act. Imperfect Participle can only have the force of an active Simple when it serves as a co-ordinating attribute, e.g. 'Entering the room, gerund governed by an elliptical preposition, as we see in the A.V., 'While the ark was a [= in v. on] preparing,' and 'Forty and six years was this temple in building.' 1 Modified into TúπTOUσι in classic Greek. she sat down' = She entered the room and sat down. Hence it is only when they are co-ordinating attributes that we can render the Greek Simple [i.e. aoristic] participles by our imperfect participle. Otherwise we should render them either by a clause containing a simple tense,-by a preposition with a gerund or noun,— -or by a simple infinitive. For more on this, see an able article by Professor Evans in the Expositor for March, 1882. When in Luke x. 18, Ulphilas rendered the Greek aoristic participle by the Teutonic [Gothic] imperfect participle, he made our Lord speak of seeing Satan 'falling' instead of 'fall' [simple infin.] from heaven. 25. Verbal-nouns, ¿e. Infinitives, Gerunds, and Supines, although possessing many of the qualities of verbs, are in reality abstract nouns, inasmuch as they discharge the functions of nouns. As nouns, they present us with a variety of declensions, all more or less incomplete. Thus the Latin Supines in '-um' and '-u' represent the acc. and loc. cases of the most ancient known form of the Aryan verbal-noun.1 Again, the Latin Gerund has the acc., gen., and dat., cases. Again, the classical Infinitives were probably all modifications of dat. and loc. cases. In English we have only two verbal-nouns, viz. the Infinitive and what [but see Obs.] we shall here term our Gerund. This so-called Gerund originates in an O.E. noun ending in '-ung' [e.g. seo huntung = the hunting], which ending has now been modified into '-ing.' But, as such a form is indistinguishable from our modern imperfect participle used absolutely, we shall, for convenience sake, include under the head of Gerund all verbals in -ing' which may chance to be discharging the functions of nouns, as may be seen either from their being preceded by a preposition [N. B.-not subordinate conjunction] or from being capable of replacement by an infinitive. By the aid of prepositions our gerund may be made to discharge every possible case function; but the infinitive very rarely discharges more than four. The case function of the infinitive 1 The Latin Supine in '-um' is identical with the so-called Infinitive in Sanskrit. |