The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

4.  By the adding of ard:  as, drunk, drunkard; dull, dullard.  These denote ill character.

5.  By the adding of ist:  as, sensual, sensualist; separate, separatist; royal, royalist; fatal, fatalist.  These denote persons devoted, addicted, or attached, to something.

6.  By the adding of a, the Latin ending of neuter plurals, to certain proper adjectives in an:  as, Miltonian, Miltoniana; Johnsonian, Johnsoniana.  These literally mean, Miltonian things, sayings, or anecdotes, &c.; and are words somewhat fashionable with the journalists, and are sometimes used for titles of books that refer to table-talk.

III.  Nouns are derived from Verbs in several different ways:—­

1.  By the adding of ment, ance, ence, ure, or age:  as, punish, punishment; abate, abatement; repent, repentance; condole, condolence; forfeit, forfeiture; stow, stowage; equip, equipage; truck, truckage.

2.  By a change of the termination of the verb, into se, ce, sion, tion, ation, or ition:  as, expand, expanse, expansion; pretend, pretence, pretension; invent, invention; create, creation; omit, omission; provide, provision; reform, reformation; oppose, opposition.  These denote either the act of doing, or the thing done.

3.  By the adding of er or or:  as, hunt, hunter; write, writer; collect, collector; assert, assertor; instruct, instructer, or instructor.  These generally denote the doer.  To denote the person to whom something is done, we sometimes form a derivative ending in ee:  as, promisee, mortgagee, appellee, consignee.

4.  Nouns and Verbs are sometimes alike in orthography, but different in pronunciation:  as, a house, to house; a use, to use; a reb’el, to rebel’; a rec’ord, to record’; a cem’ent, to cement’.  Of such pairs, it may often be difficult to say which word is the primitive.

5.  In many instances, nouns and verbs are wholly alike as to form and sound, and are distinguished by their sense and construction only:  as, love, to love; fear, to fear; sleep, to sleep;—­to revise, a revise; to rebuke, a rebuke.  In these, we have but the same word used differently.

IV.  Nouns are often derived from Participles in ing; as, a meeting, the understanding, murmurings, disputings, sayings, and doings:  and, occasionally, one is formed from such a word and an adverb or a perfect participle joined with it; as, “The turning-away,”—­“His goings-forth,”—­“Your having-boasted of it.”

SECTION III.—­DERIVATION OF ADJECTIVES.

In English, Adjectives are derived from nouns, from adjectives, from verbs, or from participles.

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The Grammar of English Grammars from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.