Volume 1

History of the European languages; or, researches into the affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian nations / By Alexander Murray. With a life of the author [by Sir H.W. Moncreiff].

  • Murray, Alexander, 1775-1813.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the European languages; or, researches into the affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian nations / By Alexander Murray. With a life of the author [by Sir H.W. Moncreiff]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    185/610 (page 49)
    pleasure, and expressive of action alone, had no ap¬ propriating sign whatever. * Nouns of a limited nature were formed by adding ag or a, having; ra, working; sa, holding ; to the root. As that agent which has, works, holds, is generally a person; nouns so compounded began to be appropriated to persons, a distinction of whose sex became finally convenient. The noun, in its simplest form, re¬ mained to mark the object or action which it de¬ noted, without regard to any actor. This state of the noun is the neuter, in which all substantives and adjectives continued, until, by addition of such con- significative words as had been allotted by use to distinguish the masculine or feminine agent, they assumed a respective gender. At first, all substan¬ tives were, by their nature, adjective nouns, that is, names of qualities. The adjective, therefore, when applied to any substantive, was considered as liable to receive all its changes of case, number, and gen¬ der. For as both words owed their form to consig- nificative verbs, which were fixed to their radicals for a special purpose, it was esteemed necessary that they both should have similar terminations in an uniform and perspicuous manner, t Note 2 P. f Note 2 Q. VOL. I D