OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­In the personal pronouns, most of these properties are distinguished by the words themselves; in the relative and the interrogative pronouns, they are ascertained chiefly by means of the antecedent and the verb.  Interrogative pronouns, however, as well as the relatives which, what, as, and all the compounds of who, which, and what, are always of the third person.  Even in etymological parsing, some regard must be had to the syntactical relations of words.  By modifications, we commonly mean actual changes in the forms of words, by which their grammatical properties are inherently distinguished; but, in all languages, the distinguishable properties of words are somewhat more numerous than their actual variations of form; there being certain principles of universal grammar, which cause the person, number, gender, or case, of some words, to be inferred from their relation to others; or, what is nearly the same thing, from the sense which is conveyed by the sentence.  Hence, if in a particular instance it happen, that some, or even all, of these properties, are without any index in the form of the pronoun itself, they are still to be ascribed in parsing, because they may be easily and certainly discovered from the construction.  For example:  in the following text, it is just as easy to discern the genders of the pronouns, as the cases of the nouns; and both are known and asserted to be what they are, upon principles of mere inference:  “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?”—­1 Cor., vii, 16.  Again:  “Who betrayed her companion?  Not I.”—­Murray’s Key, p. 211.  Here her being of the feminine gender, it is the inference of every reader, that who and I are so too; but whether the word companion is masculine or feminine, is not so obvious.

OBS. 2.—­The personal pronouns of the first and second persons, are equally applicable to both sexes; and should be considered masculine or feminine, according to the known application of them. [See Levizac’s French Gram., p. 73.] The speaker and the hearer, being present to each other, of course know the sex to which they respectively belong; and, whenever they appear in narrative or dialogue, we are told who they are.  In Latin, an adjective or a participle relating to these pronouns, is varied to agree with them in number, gender, and case.  This is a sufficient proof that ego, I, and tu, thou, are not destitute of gender, though neither the Latin words nor the English are themselves varied to express it:—­

          “Miserae hoc tamen unum
    Exequere, Anna, mihi:  solam nam perfidus ille
    Te colere, arcanos etiam tibi credere sensus;
    Sola viri molles aditus et tempora noras.”—­Virgil.