Parts of

words.

Why called
Particles.

How far significant.

CHAPTER XV.

OF PARTICLES.

423. HAVING treated of sentences and words, it remains to be seen whether the grammatical analysis cannot be carried still further, by examining the constituent parts of words. It has been stated above, that words, as to their sound, may, for the most part, be divided into syllables, and syllables into articulations; but these divisions having no necessary relation to their signification are not here to be considered. The question is, whether, and to what extent, words, taken as significant integers, may not, in certain instances, admit of fractions (so to speak) which go to make up those integers, and are also themselves significant? and this question is to be resolved, as I shall presently show, in the affirmative.

424. The science of grammar, as hitherto cultivated, has, like most other sciences, obtained as yet but an imperfect nomenclature. We have seen that even the appellations "noun" and "verb," which are on all hands admitted to be applicable to the most necessary parts of speech, are differently understood by grammarians of note. It is not surprising, therefore, that the term Particle should be misapplied, as I think it is, when intended to signify those words which are at the same time recognized as accessorial parts of speech. To say, "there are eight parts of speech, but four of them are particles," is much like saying, there are eight planets, but four of them are satellites, or eight commissioned officers, but four of them are non-commissioned. The word particle, according to all analogies of derivation, ought to mean something less than the word part, a subdivision of a division, a part of a part: and as words have been called parts of speech, particles should be deemed parts of words, in which sense, with reference to signification, I shall here use the term particle.

425. When I speak of a divisible word as an integer, in point of signification, I speak of it with reference to its possible effect in the construction of a sentence; but when I speak of a portion of that word as a particle, I allude to its effect in modifying the signification or character of the integral word in language generally; and some such effect it must necessarily have, whether or not it has any known signification when used separately. Thus each of the sentences, "Johnson was learned," "Friendship is delightful," contains, as a sentence, three, and only three significant integers, viz., a subject, a copula, and a predicate, each of which integers is a word; but if we take any one of the four divisible words in these sentences, and inquire into its signification in the English language generally, we shall find that this depends on the way in which its primary portion is modified

by the other portion.
In "
Johnson," for instance, the primary
portion John is modified by son: each portion has a known significa-
tion, and the union of both produces a third signification relating to
the two former. Again, in the word friendship there are two portions,
friend and ship, and the relation of the word friend to friendship is
very obvious; but the relation of ship to friendship is not equally so at
first sight, though it may be discovered by study and reflection, as
will hereafter be shown. The word learned may, in like manner, be
divided into two portions, learn and ed, of which the former has a
clear meaning of its own; but the latter, if it ever had a distinct and
separate meaning, has long since lost it, and serves only to mark that
learned is a participle of the verb to learn. The word delightful may
be divided into delight and ful, both which are intelligible enough in
English, or into de, light, and ful, of which the two former cannot be
separately understood without reference to the Latin. The words
Johnson, delightful, friendship, and learned, therefore, are in effect com-
pounds, each consisting of a primary part, which is modified by a
secondary part. John is modified by son, friend by ship, learn by ed,
and delight by ful. The primary parts in such compounds are words,
that is, when used separately, they have a plain and distinct significa-
tion of their own. The secondary parts may or may not have such
separate signification in present usage; and their signification, if any,
may be more or less obvious. These secondary parts I call particles,
when so used in composition. Thus, I say that, in the word Johnson,
son is a particle; in the word friendship, ship is a particle; in the
word delightful, ful is a particle; and in the word learned, ed is a
particle.

426. Particles modify words in three different ways, and with Three kinds. three different effects :

i. In the ordinary compounds, such as Johnson, overtake, forewarn, erewhile, elsewhere, there is no alteration of the principal word, either by changing the grammatical class to which it belongs, or by varying the grammatical construction of the sentence in which it is used.

ii. In such compounds as friendship, bisyhed, avette, masterless, blaunchard, sweetly, &c., the grammatical class of the word is more or less altered; thus, from the personal substantive, friend, we form the ideal substantive, friendship; from the Latin appellative apis, was formed the French diminutive avette; from the common adjective blanche, was formed the diminutive adjective blaunchard; from the adjective busy, was formed the old English substantive bisyhed; from the substantive master, we form the adjective masterless; from the adjective sweet, we form the adverb sweetly, and so forth.

iii. In such compounds as growen, beon, makede, walked, monethes, children, &c., the principal word is varied in its construction by the particles en, on, ede, ed, es, &c.; and thus are formed those inflections which grammarians call declensions and conjugations. Of each of these kinds I shall give one or more examples.

Class and construction unaltered.

66

427. The class and construction of the word John remain unaltered in Johnson, which was manifestly in its origin nothing more than John's son. Thus in all languages have been formed patronymics, the most ancient of all family names. The Greeks did this in several instances, whence such names as acides, Pelides, Atrides, &c.; but the Romans adopted it generally at a very early period of their history. Remarquons sur les noms propres des familles Romaines," (says M. de Brosses), "qu'il n'y en a pas un seul chez eux, qui ne soit terminè en ius, desinence fort semblable à l' viòs des Grecs, c'est-à-dire filius-par où on pourrait conjecturer que les noms des familles, du moins ceux des anciennes maisons, seraient du genre_patronimique.” Thus Cæcilius was Cæcula viòs, Julius, Juli viòs, Æmilius, Æmili vios, &c. Mr. Tooke says, "I think it not unworthy of remark that, whilst the old patronymical termination of our northern ancestors was son, the Sclavonic and Russian patronymic was of. Thus whom the English and Swedes named Peterson, the Russians called Peterhof. And as a polite and foreign affectation afterwards induced some of our ancestors to assume Fitz (i. e. fils or filius) instead of son, so the Russian affectation, in more modern times, changed of to vitch (i. e. fitz, fils, or filius), and Peterhof became Petrovitch, or Petrowitz." The Irish patronymic O' may possibly be of the same origin as the Russian of. The Welsh 'P is well known to be ap, an abbreviation of mab, a son, as Price for Ap Rhys, Powell for Ap Hoël, &c. The Scottish Highlanders use the cognate word mac, a son, for their patronymical prefix, as in Mac Donald (i. e. the son of Donald), Mac Kenzie (i.e. the son of Kenneth), &c.; while the Lowland Scotch used still a different mode of expressing the same thing, by prefixing to the son's name the genitive case of the father's, as Watt's Robin, for Robert the son of Walter; Sim's Will, for William the son of Simon, whence arose such family names as Watts, Sims, and the like: and so much for the particles son, ius, fitz, of, vich, mac, O', 'P, and 'S. The proper name, Johnson, is no less obviously a compound than watchman, spearman, boat-hook, and thousands of similar words in common use. There are also many that have fallen into disuse, though still perfectly intelligible; ex. gr. nonemete, a meal formerly eaten by artificers at noon, but which seems to be distinguished from dinner :

Divers artificers and laborers reteyned to werke and serve, waste moch part of the day, and deserve not their wagis, summe tyme in late commyng unto their werke, erly departing therfro, longe sitting at ther brekfast, at ther dyner, and nonemete, and long tyme of sleping at after none.

Stat. 2 Hen. VII. c. xxii. M.S.

And as we had the word nonemete, i. e. noonmeat, so we have the words noontide, noonday, midday, midnight, forenoon, afternoon, &c., all nouns compounded on similar principles; for as noon modifies meat, so mid modifies night, and fore modifies noon: and thus noon, mid, and fore, are equally to be considered in these three instances

respectively as particles. So, in the compound verb overtake, over is a particle modifying take; and in the compound noun overseer, over is a particle modifying seer; and this particle, over, is sometimes corrupted into or, as in the word orlop, which is a platform of planks laid over the beams in the hold of a ship-of-war, so named from the Dutch overloopen, to run over, and anciently written in English overlopps :

Somuche as they shall put greater nomber of people in the castelles and ouerlopps of their shypps they shalbe the more oppressed. Nicolls's Thucydides, fol. 191, a.

In Danish also this same preposition over, written ober, is used as a particle in compound nouns, as oberdommer, the chief justice.

428. The grammatical class to which the word friend belongs is Class altered. that of a general appellative, and it expresses a person possessing a certain moral quality; but the grammatical class to which the word friendship belongs is that of an universal, and expresses the ideal conception of that quality. In compounding the primary word friend, then, with the particle ship, an alteration of the grammatical class is effected. In some such compounds the particle retains a signification analogous to that which it has when used separately; but in this particular instance, the particle ship signifies something very different from the ordinary English substantive ship. To understand its modifying power, therefore, we must have recourse to those cognate languages in which a particle of similar origin occurs. The Germans use the termination schaft, the Dutch schap, and the Swedes skap: and these are manifestly from the Gothic skapan, Anglo-Saxon scapan, or scyppan, Frankish and Alamannic scaffen, Dutch scheppen, Icelandic skapa and skipa, Danish skaber, and old English to shup, i. e. to shape, make, or do:

Friendship, therefore, is the action, the work, of a friend: Chaucer uses gladshipe:—

That gladshipe he hath al forsake.

In Danish we find selkskab, a fellowship; in Anglo-Saxon ealdorscipe, cynescipe, sib-scipe, &c. In German herrschaft, eigenschaft, gesellschaft, &c. &c.

The particle scape, in landscape, is the same as ship; for we find in Anglo-Saxon landscipe, in Dutch landschup, and in German landschafft.

Many other particles altering the class of words are to be found in our own and other languages, which will be more appropriately noticed in a future part of this work.

429. The third mode in which particles modify words is, by alter- Construction ing their effect in the construction of a sentence. This use of particles,

altered.

Induction.

which seems to have been little thought of, and scarcely suspected till of late years, has recently opened an immense field for the study of that important branch of ethnography, the connection of languages. Mr. Tooke, in the second volume of his Diversions of Purley, says, "All those common terminations, in any language, of which all nouns or verbs in that language equally partake, under the notion of declension or conjugation, are themselves separate words with distinct meanings." On the strength of this assertion, credit has been given to him as the discoverer of a great and incontrovertible principle in the science of language; but his real and only merit (if merit it be) was in boldly stating as a general truth what more cautious grammarians had shown, with great probability, to be true in a few particular instances. As in his first volume he had built his whole theory of conjunctions on Skinner's derivation of the conjunction if from the imperative gif, so in his second volume, published several years after, he, in the above brief and oracular manner, asserted all terminations not merely to have originally been, but still to be, separate words; because Dr. Gregory Sharpe and others had suggested," that the personal pronouns are contained in the Greek and Latin terminations of their verbs." Mr. Tooke adds, "These terms are all explicable, and ought to be explained;" but he made not the slightest attempt himself to prove in detail what he had asserted as universally true. The productions of the illustrious German philologists, and especially of Grimm, Pott, and Bopp, show the result of long years of labour, in comparing not merely the terminations, but the particles in general, whether prefixed, subjoined, or inserted, of whole families of languages, especially those called Indo-European. We now clearly perceive the operation of one and the same great principle in languages so widely distant from each other in time and place, as the Zend, the Sanscrit, the Maso-Gothic, the Sclavonian, the Frankish, German, AngloSaxon, and English. We find in these and other dialects, not only that the personal pronouns supply particles by which nouns are declined and verbs conjugated, but that certain particles distinguish pronouns personal, relative, and demonstrative; that they convert adjectives into adverbs; give to verbs a negative, intensitive, inceptive, or frequentative character; and, in short, enable the same radical word to pass through all the modifications of every separate part of speech. And, moreover, we perceive that the same particle, varied in articulation according to definite laws, performs the same function in many different languages, showing a connection between nations, of which, in many instances, history affords no other trace.

430. The method by which Mr. Tooke arrived at his supposed discoveries, was certainly not "the Baconian Induction;" for it consisted in that very "leap or flight from particulars to the remote and most general axioms,' "*which Bacon so much and so often repro*Neque permittendum est, ut Intellectus a particularibus ad axiomata remota et quasi generalissima saliat et volet. Org. Nov. aph. 104.