INFLECTION OF THE PRONOUN. Pronouns are inflected in person, number, gender, and case. There are three persons,-first, second, and third. The First person denotes the speaker; as, I, we. The Second person denotes the person spoken to; as, Thou, you. The Third person denotes the person or thing spoken of; as, He, them. Number, gender, and case have already been treated of. Which, what, and that are indeclinable. The possessive of which is of which, not whose. The Indefinite pronouns are declined like nouns; as, Nom. one others. others'. • Take notice that the forms corresponding to these possessive cases, viz., my, thy, his, her, our, your, their, which cannot be used absolutely, are generally called possessive pronouns. The word its is, comparatively, a recent form in the language, being introduced about the end of the 16th century. It never occurs in the authorised translation of the Bible, and but seldom in Milton and Shakspere; his was used instead of it. INFLECTION OF THE VERB. (See the definitions of the different kinds of Verbs, page 5.) Verbs are inflected in Voice, Mood, Tense, Number, Person There is really very little inflection of English Verbs, but the want of it is more than made up by the use of Auxiliaries. 1. Voice is the form of the verb which shows whether the subject does the action or suffers it. There are two voices, Active and Passive. A verb is in the Active Voice when the subject does the action; as, I struck him. A verb is in the Passive Voice when the subject suffers the action; as, I was struck by him. The Passive Voice is made up of some part of the verb to be, joined to the perfect participle of a transitive verb. Intransitive verbs have, usually, no passive voice. 2. Mood or Manner is the form of the verb according to the manner in which the assertion is made. There are four moods in English; Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive, Infinitive. The Indicative mood simply asserts the action as a matter of fact; as, I go, they spared him. The Imperative mood asserts the action in the form of a command or entreaty; as, go; spare me. The Subjunctive mood asserts the action as uncertain or conditional; as, If he go we shall be sure to meet; though he spare me I shall hate him. The Infinitive mood is the name of the action without any limitation; as, To go; to spare. To these forms a fifth is generally added which is called the Potential mood. It asserts the action as a wish, or it implies the power, permission, or obligation to do it. As, however, it has no separate form, but is entirely made up of certain auxiliaries joined to the infinitive of the principal verb, it belongs to syntax rather than etymology; e. g., I can go the auxiliary can joined to the infinitive go.* = 3. Tense, or time, is the form of the verb which shows when the action takes place; as, I go, I went, I shaM go. There are three tenses, the Present the Past, and the Future; but in English there are only two which are distinguished by a separate form-the present and the past; as, I write, I wrote; I talk, I talked, The future tense is formed by the use of shall and will. To express all the relations of time, each of these three tenses is divided into two-a perfect and an imperfect. The tenses may therefore be arranged as follows :— Present Past Future Imperfect-I walk, or am walking. Perfect-I have walked, or have been walking. Perfect-I had walked, or had been walking. 4 and 5. Number and Person. These present no difficulty, as they depend upon the nominative to the verb. The whole question of mood in English grammar has given rise to much diversity of opinion. Some declare that we should recognise six different moods; others contend that, by supplying ellipses, all forms of the verb can be reduced to the indicative or simply assertive mood. We shall find, however, by a careful survey of all our verbs, that we have four distinct forms by which we express the various modes of actions, not existing in every verb, but certainly existing in some; and, therefore, taking language as we find it, four different moods must be recognised, as above. This subject will be again alluded to, and further exemplified under the head of conjugation. PARTICIPLES. Besides the forms mentioned above, nearly all verbs have other parts which are called participles. A participle is a part of a verb which partakes of the nature of an adjective as well as of a verb; as, She was screaming (verb); a screaming child (adjective). Verbs have two participles, an imperfect and a perfect. When used as verbs, participles are always joined to auxi- The real nature of infinitives and participles presents difficulties with which the pupil cannot be too soon made acquainted. The infinitive is really a noun, and was formerly declined as such. The sign to belonged only to the dative case, which was, and still should be, called the gerund, the distinguishing feature of which is that it expresses purpose or fitness, &c., and always is preceded by a preposition. It sometimes has the form of the infinitive, and sometimes of the imperfect participle. What therefore is often called the infinitive mood of a verb is the gerund, to being no distinctive mark of the former, but nearly always of the latter. Formerly there was a separate ending to the infinitive, the gerund, the imperfect participle, and the participial noun; e. g. writ-an (inf.), writ-enne (gerund), writ-ende (part.), and from some verbs a noun in ung; but all these different terminations have, at length, given way to ing. Even the infinitive frequently takes the form ing, while the sign to may mark the gerund, or the infinitive. Some little light may be thrown upon this rather intricate question by the following examples :Lying is deceiving. To lie is to deceive. He came to know my intentions. to pray. Fit to eat. I blame him for doing it. The house is a building. Infinitives or nouns. Gerunds. Auxiliary Verbs help other verbs to form the moods and tenses which we have no inflection for. It should be noted that some of them are often used as principal verbs. The Auxiliaries may be classified, according to their use, as Be, besides being joined to perfect participles to form the Passive voice, is joined to imperfect participles to form what is called the Progressive Conjugation of verbs. Do, and its past tense did, form the emphatic conjugation, besides being greatly used interrogatively. Have is the regular auxiliary of the present perfect tense, and had of the past perfect. These three are often used as principal verbs. |