Derivation

“ Now people once used to suppose that such changes came quite by haphazard; but we know now that in each language at any given time the different sounds were being changed in certain definite ways, and in no others. By finding out these ways of change we can often discover the earlier form of a word, and its earlier meaning also; and when we have done this, we say we have found its Derivation.
§ 2. School-boys and others often wonder what means there are of finding out the derivations of words. ”

“ The derivatives I have referred to their primitives, with an accuracy sometimes needless; for who does not see that remoteness comes from remote, lovely from love, concavity from concave, and demonstrative from demonstrate? But this grammatical exuberance the scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. It is of great importance, in examining the general fabrick of a language, to trace one word from another, by noting the usual modes of derivation and inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical works, though sometimes at the expense of particular propriety. ”

“ Such a realization can only be gained by using the word,—by turning it over in a variety of ways, and by throwing upon it the side-lights of its synonym and contrasted word. The method of thus utilizing English derivatives gives a study which possesses at once simplicity and fruitfulness,—the two desiderata of an instrument of elementary discipline."
2 "Etymology," Greek et'umon, the true literal sense of a word according to its derivation, and log'os, a discourse.
3 "Vocabulary," Latin vocabula'rium, a stock of words; from vox, vocis, a voice, a word. ”

“ If we analyse a judgment, every word in which it is expressed, whether it is a noun or a verb or a preposition or a conjunction, conveys a distinct meaning, indicates a term or a relation, each of which can be made a distinct object to the mind, and all of which are combined in the single meaning the judgment expresses. It is in this complexity that the possibility of error lies, and the possibility increases as the complexity increases. ”

“ Then, resolving that each word ought to be classed according to the meaning which its etymology fixes upon it, he refers the number of classes to nature, thus: "If, then, each [word] has a meaning, and is capable of raising an idea in the mind, that idea must have its prototype in nature. It must either denote an exertion, and is therefore a verb; or a quality, and is, in that case, an adjective; or it must express an assemblage of qualities, such as is observed to belong to some individual object, and is, on this supposition, the name of such object, or a noun. ”

“ You may find examples everywhere, even as the lexicons now are. Strike at the first radical form that occurs, as the primitive ‘he is gone,’ and observe the easy gradation of its derivatives. A series of expressions signifying loss, disappearance, and death, vain purposes, and fruitless toil and trouble, go on in soft transitions; and, if you place yourself in the circumstances of the ancient herdsmen, in their wandering, unsettled mode of life, the most distant derivative will still give back in its tones something of the original sound of the word, and of the original feeling. ”

“ Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from particulars to a general concept. ”

“ In the investigation both of the orthography and signification of words, their ETYMOLOGY was necessarily to be considered, and they were therefore to be divided into primitives and derivatives. A primitive word, is that which can be traced no further to any English root; thus circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, concave and complicate, though compounds in the Latin, are to us primitives. Derivatives are all those that can be referred to any word in English of greater simplicity. ”

“ In the Bible, and in Shakespeare's vocabulary, they are in the proportion of ninety per cent. For specimens showing Anglo-Saxon words, see p. 136.
II.—ETYMOLOGICAL CLASSES OF WORDS.
10. Classes by Origin.—With respect to their origin, words are divided into two classes,—primitive words and derivative words.
11. A primitive word, or root, is one that cannot be reduced to a more simple form in the language to which it is native: as, man, good, run.
12. A derivative word is one made up of a root and one or more formative elements: as, manly, goodness, runner. ”

“ Hence it appears that the term by its very name indicates that it is arrived at by an analysis of the proposition. It is the judgement or proposition that is the true unit of thought and speech. The proposition as a whole is prior in conception to the terms which are its parts: but the parts must come before the whole in the synthetic order of treatment.
§ 60. A term is the same thing as a name or noun.
§ 61. A name is a word, or collection of words, which serves as a mark to recall or transmit the idea of a thing, either in itself or through some of its attributes. ”

“ And it is remarkable that, among all the definitions of the proposition, for example, as the oratio indicativa, as the subsumption of an object under a concept, as the expression of the relation of two concepts, and as the indication of the mutable ground of appearance, there is, perhaps, not one in which the conception of reference to an object or correlate is not the important one. In the same way, the conception of reference to an interpretant or third, is always prominent in the definitions of argument. ”

“ The object of a verb or preposition is in the objective case (p. 47) .
8. A substantive that completes the meaning of a transitive verb is called its direct object, and is said to be in the objective case (p. 48) .
9. A verb of asking sometimes takes two direct objects, one denoting the person and the other the thing (p. 50) .
10. Verbs of choosing, calling, naming, making, and thinking may take two objects referring to the same person or thing.
The first of these is the direct object, and the second, which completes the sense of the predicate, is called a predicate objective (pp. 50, 111) . ”

“ It was natural enough that the originators of conceptual logic, seeing that judgments can be expressed by propositions, and conceptions by terms, should fall into the error of supposing that, as propositions consist of terms, so judgments consist of conceptions, and that there is a triple mental order—conception, judgment, reasoning—parallel to the triple linguistic order—term, proposition, discourse. ”

“ And so in all cases, the general propositions, whether called definitions, axioms, or laws of nature, which we lay down at the beginning of our reasonings, are merely abridged statements, in a kind of short-hand, of the particular facts, which, as occasion arises, we either think we may proceed on as proved, or intend to assume. In any one demonstration it is enough if we assume for a particular case suitably selected, what by the statement of the definition or principle we announce that we intend to assume in all cases which may arise. ”

“ The two words we have instanced may be taken as typical examples of the two classes of derivatives coming most immediately and naturally from the root: the one indicating the action itself, the other, either adjectively or substantively, the actor; the one being of the nature of an infinitive, or abstract verbal noun, the other of a participle, or verbal adjective, easily convertible into an appellative. ”

“ A proposition is called verbal or analytic when the predicate is a part, or the whole, of the meaning of the subject; and the subject being species, a genus or difference is part, and a definition is the whole, of its meaning or connotation. Hence such a proposition has also been called explicative. Again, a proposition is called real or synthetic when the predicate is no part of the meaning of the subject; and, the subject being species, a proprium or accident is no part of its meaning or connotation. ”

“ How do we decide what the sense of a proposition is, or what we mean by a sentence which is spoken, written, or printed? We try to present to ourselves the significance of the different words that we have learned to use, and then endeavor to find sense in the proposition. ”

“ We shall contend, as before expressed, that all verbs are of one kind, that they express action, for the simple yet sublime reason, that every thing acts, at all times, and under every possible condition; according to the true definition of action as understood and employed by all writers on grammar, and natural and moral science. Here we are at issue. Both, contending for principles so opposite, can not be correct. One or the other, however pure the motives, must be attached to a system wrong in theory, and of course pernicious in practice. ”

“ The sciences of grammar and of logic are little more than attempts methodically to classify all such acquired ideas and to trace certain laws of relationship among them. The forms of relation between them, becoming themselves in turn noticed by the mind, are treated as conceptions of a higher and more abstract order, as when we speak of a syllogistic relation' between propositions, or of four quantities making a 'proportion,' or of the 'inconsistency' of two conceptions, or the 'implication' of one in the other. ”

“ But when we say that definition is unfolding the intension of terms, it must not be imagined that we are bound in defining to unfold completely the intension of terms. This would be a tedious, and often an endless, task. A term may mean, or convey to the mind, a good many more attributes than those which are stated in its definition. There is no limit indeed to the meaning which a term may legitimately convey, except the common attributes of the things denoted by it. ”

“ Every general name, if used as a concrete term, has, or may have, a corresponding abstract term. Sometimes the concrete term is modified to form the abstract, as 'greedy—greediness'; sometimes a word is adapted from another language, as 'man—humanity'; sometimes a composite term is used, as 'mercury—the nature of mercury,' etc. The same concrete may have several abstract correlatives, as 'man—manhood, humanity, human nature' ”

“ We found that whatever be the form of the proposition, and whatever its nominal subject or predicate, the real subject of every proposition is some one or more facts or phenomena of consciousness, or some one or more of the hidden causes or powers to which we ascribe those facts ”

“ The forms under which the critical method is applied—such as the distinctions between a priori and a posteriori elements in cognition, between matter and form, between phenomena and noumena, between sense, understanding, and reason—ought not to disguise from us the true nature of the question which underlies all of them. ”

“ It will be hereafter seen that when any important consequences seem to follow, as in mathematics, from an essential proposition, or, in other words, from a proposition involved in the meaning of a name, what they really flow from is the tacit assumption of the real existence of the objects so named. ”

“ The following is one of the modes in which these abstract terms, Nature and Essence, are used as instruments of this fallacy. Some particular properties of a thing are selected, more or less arbitrarily, to be termed its nature or essence ”

“ All cases, then, tend to show that deduction involves generalization from an observed case on a single axiom; the axioms, therefore, of induction are the axioms of reasoning, and the generalization of particulars is the work of reason. ”

“ When once this arbitrary abstraction of some one part or aspect of the stream of events from its context has been made, we are compelled to recognise the existence of the context from which we have abstracted by saying that any effect may enter into or form part of a variety of different larger effects, according to the nature of the context in which it occurs. ”

“ Now when we say 'John is a man' or 'This table is oblong,' the proposition is quite as universal, in the sense of the predicate applying to the whole of the subject, as when we say 'All men are mortal.' For since a singular term applies only to one thing, we cannot avoid using it in its whole extent, if we use it at all. ”

“ As has been already pointed out, this is all that art can do. To test a generalization, by showing that it either follows from, or conflicts with, some stronger induction, some generalization resting on a broader foundation of experience, is the beginning and end of the logic of induction. ”

“ This realised particularity of the notion is the Judgment.
The ordinary classification of notions, as clear, distinct and adequate, is no part of the notion; it belongs to psychology. Notions, in fact, are here synonymous with mental representations; a clear notion is an abstract simple representation: a distinct notion is one where, in addition to the simplicity, there is one 'mark' or character emphasised as a sign for subjective cognition. ”

“ Another mode of reasoning, very widely applied in these attempts, was the doctrine of contrarieties, in which it was assumed that adjectives or substances which are in common language, or in some abstract mode of conception, opposed to each other, must point at some fundamental antithesis in nature, which it is important to study. ”

“ In the same way, why should our proposition lead people to infer that that part of the total object of knowledge which is called the subject is that other part of it which is usually called the object, or that that part of it which is usually called the object is that other part of it which is called the subject? ”