S

“ For the vowel u, in this case has not a simple sound, but is pronounced exactly in the same manner as the diphthongs commencing with y, as in you the pronoun, the individual sound given to the name of the vowel u. Now, an, is never written before any words beginning with y; nor should it be placed before words commencing with u, when sounded exactly in the same manner; if we write — a youth, we should also write — a use. ”

“ I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neglected the pronunciation, which I have directed, by printing an accent upon the acute or elevated syllable. ”

“ The Termination of the Infinitive Mood Present Tense, of the Verb Active, in regular Verbs, is always the same as the first Person of the Indicative Mood Present Tense singular; as to love, I love.
The Termination of the second Person Singular is formed out of the first by adding st or est; as I love, thou lovest; I read, thou readest.
The Termination of the third Person singular is formed out of the first by adding th or eth; as I love, he loveth, I read, he readeth; or only by adding s; as he loves, he reads. ”

“ CHAPTER VI VERBS § 72. The MHG. verb has the following independent forms:—one voice (active) , two numbers, three persons, two tenses (present and preterite) , two complete moods (indicative and subjunctive, the latter originally the optative) , besides an imperative which is only used in the present tense; two verbal nouns (the present infinitive, and the gerund, generally called the inflected infinitive) , a present participle with active meaning, and one verbal adjective (the past participle) . ”

“ Rush, Emphasis is—"a stress of voice on one or more words of a sentence, distinguishing them by intensity or peculiarity of meaning."—Philosophy of the Voice, p. 282. Again, he defines thus: "Accent is the fixed but inexpressive distinction of syllables by quantity and stress: alike both in place and nature, whether the words are pronounced singly from the columns of a vocabulary, or connectedly in the series of discourse. ”

“ The construction of verbs is very similar to that of nouns. When the subject precedes, it is connected with its verb by the particle ay, ‘to be.’ The direct object of the active and the agent of the passive stand in the genitive, other nominal adjuncts in the oblique case. Any verbal form may take the article ang. The character of the subject determines the verbal form to be used in a sentence. In general, if the subject is the agent of an action, the verb stands in the active, otherwise in the passive. ”

“ But in this sentence both the noun and the verb retain the objective inflections, as in the former instances. These inflections are not uniformly un, but sometimes een, as in ogeen, his mother, and sometimes ôn, as in odakeek-ôn, his kettle, in all which instances, however, the number is left indeterminate. It may hence be observed, and it is a remark which we shall presently have occasion to corroborate, that the plural inflection to inanimate nouns, (which have no objective form,) forms the objective inflection to animate nouns, which have no number in the third person. ”

“ In compounding words, the usual mode has been, to prefix to the term denoting the principal idea the word denoting the accessory idea or circumstance by which the signification of the principal word is modified. Accordingly we find Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs modified by prefixing to them a Noun, an Adjective, a Verb, or a Preposition.
In forming compound words, a Rule of very general application is, that when the Subjunctive term begins with a Consonant, it is aspirated. ”

“ Two or more singular nouns connected by and take a verb in the plural; as, James and Mary are here. Music and drawing were taught during the term.
If two or more singular nouns connected by and are preceded by each, every, or no, the verb is in the singular, because they refer to things considered separately; as, Every man and woman was lost. ”

“ So that to make our generalization quite correct we must say, that while in certain sentences expressing strong feeling, the word which more especially implies that feeling may often with advantage be a many-syllabled or Latin one; in the immense majority of cases, each word serving but as a step to the idea embodied by the whole sentence, should, if possible, be a one-syllabled or Saxon one. ”

“ To verbs belong Number, Person, Mood, and Tense. These may be called the properties of a verb; and like those of opium, they are soporiferous properties. There are two very important objects which the writer of every book has, or ought to have in view, to get a reader who is wide awake, and to keep him so:—the latter of which, when Number, Person, Mood, and Tense are to be treated of, is no such easy matter ”

“ In former lectures we have confined our remarks to things and a description of their characters and relations, so that every entity of which we can conceive a thought, or concerning which we can form an expression, has been defined and described in the use of nouns and adjectives. Every thing in creation, of which we think, material or immaterial, real or imaginary, and to which we give a name, to represent the idea of it, comes under the class of words called nouns. ”

“ But the English doth so only from the sense of the words, without any variation of terminations, except that es or s signifying the feminine gender, is sometimes added to form the plural number of substantives, and the substantive verb is, or the pronouns it, with its inflections, to form the third person singular of verbs, and as and es in some instances, to express the masculine and feminine genders. ”

“ So darkness, which in English appears to have no plural, is expressed in Latin by tenebræ, in French by ténèbres, which have no singular. It is necessary that every noun should be understood to be of one number or the other; for, in connecting it with a verb, or in supplying its place by a pronoun, we must assume it to be either singular or plural. ”

“ If we know the present tense form, the past, and the perfect participle of any verb, we can tell to which conjugation it belongs, and can give all its inflections of person, number, tense, and mode, therefore the present tense form, the past and the perfect participle, are called the principal parts of the verb. When we give all the inflections of a verb, or indicate them by the principal parts, we conjugate it. ”

“ I shall hereafter have occasion to show how a whole phrase may be used to name an idea, and as such stand as the agent or object of a verb.
Some nouns are specifically used to designate certain objects, and distinguish them from the class to which they usually belong. In this way they assume a distinctive character, and are usually denominated proper nouns. They apply to persons, places and things; as, John Smith, Boston, Hylax. Boy is applied in common to all young males of the human species, and as such is a common noun or name. ”

“ This important property of syllables,—their quantity, or relative time,—which is the basis of all rhythm, is, as my readers have seen, very variously treated, and in general but ill appreciated, by our English prosodists, who ought, at least in this their own province, to understand it all alike, and as it is; and so common among the erudite is the confession of Walker, that "the accent and quantity of the ancients" are, to modern readers, "obscure and mysterious," that it will be taken as a sign of arrogance and superficiality, to pretend to a very certain knowledge of them. ”

“ If the word used signifies
has been done, or is being done, or is, or is to be done, then that word
is a verb.
Thus when we say that anything is "an in'sult," that word is a noun, and
is accented all the first syllable; but when we say he did it "to
insult' another person," that word insult' implies acting, and becomes a
verb, and should be accented on the last syllable. ”

“ From such forms as Let us sing, Let them talk, some grammarians make a first and a third person imperative. But us is not the subject of the verb-phrase let-sing, and let is not of the first person. Us is the object complement of let, and the infinitive sing is the objective complement, having us for its assumed subject. ”

“ In the verb assure, and each of its derivatives, also in the nouns pressure and fissure, with their derivatives, we hear, according to Walker, the sound of sh for each s, or twice in each word; but, according to the orthoëpy of Worcester, that sound is heard only in the accented syllable of each word, and the vowel in each unaccented syllable is obscure.
S is silent or mute in the words, isle, island, aisle, demesne, corps, and viscount. ”

“ Our long syllables are chiefly those which, having sounds naturally capable of being lengthened at pleasure, are made long by falling under some stress either of accent or of emphasis. Our short syllables are the weaker sounds, which, being the less significant words, or parts of words, are uttered without peculiar stress.
OBS.—As quantity is chiefly to be regarded in the utterance of poetical compositions, this subject will be farther considered under the head of Versification. ”

“ Many nouns that end in s have a plural appearance, and we are often perplexed to know whether to use this or these, and whether to employ a singular or a plural verb when the noun is used as a substantive.
Amends is singular. Assets, dregs, eaves, bees, pincers, riches, scissors, sheers, tongs, vitals, are plural. When we say a pair of pincers, or scissors, or shears, or tongs, the verb should be singular. Tidings, in Shakespeare’s time, was used indiscriminately with a singular or plural verb, but is now generally regarded as plural. ”

“ It is always an imperfection in a language to have the same individual word belong to different parts of speech; but when there are two words differently pronounced, and differently spelt, used promiscuously for each other, both in point of meaning, and in discharging the different offices of preposition and adverb, it savours much of barbarism, as it is so easy to allot their peculiar province to each. When I said that the word beside — should be always used as the preposition, and — besides — as the adverb, the choice was not made at random. ”

“ A verb that forms its past tense by changing the vowel of the present, and its perfect participle by adding n or en to the present, is a verb of the strong or old conjugation; as, fall, fell, fallen.
Note.—Verbs of the old conjugation are called strong because they form their past tense within themselves. Verbs of the new conjugation are called weak because they form their past tense by the aid of an additional syllable. ”

“ Hands? And when the Verb has two or more Auxiliaries, the Noun or Pronoun is placed after the first; as have I been taught? Cou'd the Truth have been known?
Rule 6th.
The Verb agrees with its governing Noun, Pronoun Personal, or Pronoun Relative, in Number and Person; as the Birds sing, thou lovest, he who loveth.
Rule 7th.
A Noun of Multitude may have a Verb either Singular or Plural; as the People is mad, or the People are mad. ”

“ When each or every relates to two or more nominatives in the singular, although connected by a copulative, the verb must agree with each of them in the singular; as, "Every leaf, and every twig, and every drop of water, teems with life." ”

“ Verbs are farther distinguished by grammarians into active, passive, and neuter, as being expressive of actions, passions, or neither the one or the other, but mere being or existing, as, I love, am loved, live, walk, or stand; tho’ according to the signification of words, there does not seem to be any real ground for the latter distinction, for to love, to be loved, to live, sleep or rest, must signify either actions, active passions and energies, or their privation and passiveness. ”

“ Verbs and adjectives are made plural by a peculiar process of lengthening the word in its middle, for which purpose the letter r, and sometimes l, is generally associated with a cognate vowel of the word with which it comes in contract, and which R or l and its cognate vowel is generally duplicated, unless the consonant R or L already occurs in the crude and singular from of the word. ”

“ But if you will recollect that c is sounded like k when it stands before the letters a, o, or u, and that it is sounded like s before the letters e, i, and y, you will have very little trouble in reading words that have the letter c in them.
20. So also the letter g has two sounds, called the hard sound, and the soft sound. The hard sound is the sound given to it in the word gone; the soft sound is that which is heard in the word gentle. ”

“ I have supposed some readers to have such an acquaintance with the powers of the letters, as is but loose and imperfect; sufficient for the accurate pronunciation of some words or syllables, but leaving them liable to mistakes in others; extending perhaps to all the sounds of the language, but not to a ready analysis or enumeration of them. Such persons may profit by a written description of the powers of the letters, though no such description can equal the clear impression of the living voice. ”