some action. Hence it serves to tell the initial [i.e. the first] cause of an act.

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:

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

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.

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.

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 πovηpós and the abstract noun Tovηpía. 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

have originated in the genitive case of nouns.1 Such a genitive, after undergoing more or less modification, formed a new stem, which became attracted by mere juxta-position into a variety of inflections belonging to the nouns with which it was in attribution. Thus, for example, our possessive-adjectives are derived from the genitive of the personal pronouns, e.g. ' Mine' is the modern mode of spelling the old genitive of 'Ic' I.

=

Indeed, when we notice how an adjective can always be replaced by a genitive case, by a genitive prepositional-phrase, or by a genitive-compound [§ 12], we see that 'adjectives though highly convenient are not indispensable to a language' [Farrar].

15. An Adverb expresses the place, time, cause, or manner, of an act, or of anything else besides an act concerning which one or more of such secondary predications can in the nature of things be made. With the exception of one use of the demonstrative roots [§ 9] the earliest adverbs were nothing more than the adverbial cases of older nouns and pronouns,— just as our adverb 'whil-om' is an old dative [locative] case of the noun 'while' = time, and our pronominal adverb 'how' is an old instrumental case of the interrogative pronoun 'what.'

16. A Preposition was originally nothing but an adverb of place, which was extended by analogy or metaphor to relations of time, cause, and manner. Prepositions, as such, did not belong to the earlier stages of linguistic growth; but came into being as the cases began to lose their import, and as people tried to clear up the meaning by placing a suitable adverb before [and sometimes after] the noun or pronoun. Called in at first merely to assist the failing cases, the prepositions have at length so nearly replaced them, that we may speak of prepositions as Case-equivalents. When we go back to Greek and Latin, we find the case-system still so far in use, that an

1 See New Cratylus, § 298.

unaided adverbial case sometimes discharges its more ancient function, although in general requiring the aid of a preposition. In the still earlier Sanskrit, where the case-system is in fuller life, there are but three prepositions used with nouns. Hence we see that it is an inaccurate, though a well-established and useful expression, when we speak of prepositions' governing a case.' In reality the case is the principal, and the preposition the subordinate word standing in a sort of apposition to the

noun.

The

17. Conjunctions serve most characteristically to unite clauses so as to show their relation to one another. conjunctions are classified as co-ordinate or sub-ordinate, according as the clauses which they connect are co-ordinate or sub-ordinate, i.e. adverbial [§§ 119, 108]. Without conjunctions language would consist of little more than a number of short propositions, whose relation to one another could only be supplied by common sense. This was the condition of our Aryan speech at first; and even yet, we are not much distressed by the occasional omission of a conjunction, as in the familiar passages :

'Serve the Lord with gladness.' [and] 'Come before his presence with singing.'

'The Lord reigneth.' [therefore] 'Let the earth rejoice.' [Because] Thou takest away their breath. They die.'

6

Conjunctions have been derived from a variety of sources; but, just like the original adverbs and prepositions, the earliest conjunctions were undoubtedly the cases of nouns and pronouns -generally of the latter. Thus the co-ordinate conjunction 'and' is represented by 'que' in Latin, and 'κaí' in Greek, of which 'que' is certainly, and 'kaí' is probably, a form of the relative; and our own subordinate conjunctions where' and 'when' are old adverbial cases of the interrogative pronoun 'what.'