subject relation and the object relation. No one word contains all these ideas.-LEWIS.

The most elaborate system of inflection still leaves something unexpressed.-BAIN.

The Anglo-Saxon, which is the basis of the English tongue, was a highly inflected language. But the Norman Conquest, besides bringing into English a large vocabulary of new words, inaugurated the long process by which the structure of the language itself was radically changed.

It has been said that "A French family settled in England and edited the English language." Perhaps the truer statement would be that the Normans found it too much trouble to learn the Saxon inflections and so ignored them. At any rate most of the old Saxon terminations gradually disappeared, and with these some of the "governments and agreements" that depend upon inflection disappeared also. By the end of the fourteenth century the process was nearly completed, and the invention of printing during the following century established the general fixity of forms that has prevailed since that era.

Inflection is the general name for all grammatical changes in the forms of words. These changes are produced as a rule by adding various terminations to the stem or root; but changes within the words, as mouse plural mice, are also called inflections.

Inflectional phenomena are of two kinds, living and dead. Certain inflections have become fixed for specific words, but are no longer used in making new forms

as, who, whose, whom. Others are freely used to make forms of new words after a prescribed pattern as the plural in s, or past tenses in ed.

The name Declension has been given to a tabulated statement of the inflectional forms of a substantive. The word comes from a fanciful device, that seems almost childish to modern minds, in which an upright line represented the nominative case, and declining lines the other cases, as

A summary of the inflectional forms of a verb is called its "conjugation." There is very little of conjugation belonging to modern English verbs.

The name of each specific inflect on, as person, case, mood, etc., has had a somewhat indeterminate value in grammatical usage, and has been variously defined as a form, property, distinction, condition, etc. That there is some inherent reason for this lack of unity in definition must be acknowledged. Some of the so-called inflections seem to extend themselves to cover subtle relations where the true inflection is wanting. It need not be thought strange that there has been wide divers

ity among grammarians regarding the treatment of the inflections.

But the sensible way of dealing with the subject is that which is adopted by most modern text-books. Case, number, mood, etc., are regarded as genuine inflections, that is, as true grammatical changes in the forms of words themselves. Only such are named as are really to be found in English words. The student should be an investigator in this field, searching for all the traces of these inflectional forms which he can find. Yet, as he discovers certain "agreements" where the form of the governing word is non-committal, the idea of a subtle property that goes beyond the formal inflection is awakened in his mind.

A knowledge of Latin, or some other inflected language, though not a substitute for the English study, is of great help here. As the student grasps the larger knowledge which historical and comparative grammar can throw upon these questions, the remnants of the English inflections gain a wider interest and are apprehended with truer value.

XIV

GOVERNMENT AND AGREEMENT

The repetition of the inflection of a head-word in its adjunct-word is called concord, and the words are said to agree in whatever grammatical form they have in common.SWEET.

Rules are the elastic expression of the custom of a language. -Independent.

Rules have been laid down which never had any existence outside of the minds of the grammarians and verbal critics. -LOUNSBURY.

Concord is not a necessity of language; while in the degree that it prevails in Latin and in Greek, it is a serious incumbrance.-BAIN.

The verb needs not, and generally does not, agree with its nominative case in number and person,-active verbs do not govern the objective case or any other,—prepositions do not govern the objective case or any other.-RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

To parse agreement whenever a distinct form of the verb marks a particular number (as in are and were) or whenever a distinct form marks a particular person and number (as in am, is, and loves) and to say nothing about agreement when there is no such distinct form,—is the simple rule that we would urge upon teachers.-TOLMAN.

A verb must not disagree with its subject in number and person.-LEWIS.

In an abridgment of Murray's grammar that was

extensively used in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, after the twenty-one rules of syntax, with their numerous notes and exceptions, we find a "Synopsis of Syntax" divided into the two sections of "Concord" and "Government."

Under "Concord" are given rules showing that articles, substantives, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have "agreement" with other words to which they relate.

Under "Government" it is shown that substantives, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, participles, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections-all of the parts of speech, in fact, except adverbs-may govern other words. Doubtless all of these rules have an element of truth in them. The first rule under "Concord" states that "Articles agree with nouns in number," which seems to be a large generalization from the fact that a or an because of its meaning, belongs always to a singular

noun.

Another rule states that "Adjectives and adjective pronouns generally agree in number with the substantives to which they belong"; which is also a very comprehensive statement, for the fact that this and that have plural forms; and that few, several, many, and some other adjectives because of their meaning belong to plural nouns, while each and every belong to singular nouns. But the modern grammarian feels that it would be better to state the specific fact in relation to these words, than to try to cover these individual points by a universal statement.