PART THE SECOND.

PRACTICAL AND COMPARATIVE METHOD.

"Les méthodes sont les maîtres des maîtres."-TALLEYRAND.

VOL. II.

B

UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNI

BOOK VII.

OF WORDS.

"Les mots dans le discours jouent des rôles différents, y remplissent diverses fonctions, d'où la nécessité de les classer."-A. BONIFACE.*

"Those inquiries may surely be deemed interesting as well as liberal which either search how speech may be naturally resolved; or how, when resolved, it may be again combined."-J. HARRIS.t

CHAPTER I.

CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS.

SECT. I.-NATURE OF WORDS AND THEIR ADEQUACY TO THE EXPRESSION OF THOUGHT.

THE pronunciation, orthography, and meaning of words, their inflections, concord, and arrangement, are the six objects to be studied in order to know a language. All agree on this point; but they differ widely as to the mode of proceeding in the pursuit. With a view to elucidate this subject, we will inquire into the nature and origin of words, will classify them, and carefully examine their degrees of importance.

In our observations we will preserve the technical denominations most generally adopted, imperfect as many of them are; because our object being to facilitate the study of languages, that object might be defeated, if, at the outset, we presented a new grammatical nomenclature; names are of themselves comparatively unimportant. Our chief aim has been to establish

* Journal Grammatical de la Langue Française.
† Hermes or Philosophical Inquiry, &c.

a classification of words on clear and general principles, that it may be auxiliary to the understanding of the elementary works usually put in the hands of learners.

Discourse includes four objects of consideration ;-realities (whether concrete or abstract), thoughts, articulate speech, and written expression. Realities are represented by thoughts, thoughts by articulate speech, and articulate speech is represented by written expression. Words, the elements of language, are the signs of ideas, which are themselves the elements of thoughts.

Two things are to be considered in the nature of words, the sign and the idea; the one, material, which is appreciable by the senses; the other, immaterial, which is appreciable by the mind alone; the one, the body; the other, the soul of the word. From the intimate association existing between the idea and the thing it represents, either of these may be considered as the signification of the word. It may be said that words represent, primarily, our thoughts, and secondarily, the external objects of our thoughts, whether our consciousness of those objects be the result of perception or conception. Hence we will, throughout, speak of words as indifferently signifying ideas or things.

The sign also assumes a double form; it may be audible or visible, as it is spoken or written. But although this second form was, in alphabetical languages, originally intended to signify the articulate words and not the ideas, it may be considered as standing for the latter in foreign languages; because the meaning of their written words is usually ascertained by translation, without reference to the sounds which they represent. The essentials of a word are consequently three,—its pronunciation, orthography, and signification: the complete knowledge of it implies the inseparable association in the mind of these three constituent notions.

The use of one common language determines the nationality of a people, and binds them in a fraternal bond; the people, in their turn, give the language the impress of their ideas and feelings, of their disposition and genius. Hence it is that the collection of the words and phraseology of a language represents the ideological character of a nation; it is, as it were, the picture of its intellectuality, the criterion by which we may judge of its degree of civilisation. The picture will be faithful, if it represent all that is in the original, that is to say, the language will be perfectly suited to its purpose, if it contain