PARTS or SPEECH. In a discussion of grammar it is necessary to enumerate the relations of the various parts of speech to each other, and to state what is comprised under each of these parts. The parts of speech are usually consid ered to be eight in number: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunc tions, and interjections. Under these several titles will be found more full accounts of their functions. The noun is conventionally described as the name of a concrete or abstract object; the adjective modifies the meaning of a noun or pronoun; the pronoun is a word standing in place of a noun; a verb expresses action or state of being; an adverb modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb; a preposition shows the relation between one noun or pronoun and another; a conjunction connects clauses or words; the inter jection is an expression of emotion standing in no grammatical relation with the rest of the sen tence. While this division is sufficient for practi cal purposes, it is far from satisfying scientific accuracy. The noun and adjective are particular ly closely allied, so that their functions often overlap, and there is in some instances no real distinction between the two. It seems probable that in the earliest period of the Indo-Germanic languages (q.v.) there was but one group for the two, the noun, and that from the collocation of nouns, one affecting the meaning of the other, the adjective was derived as a subdivision of the noun. Similarly the adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are shown by comparative philology to be in most instances stereotyped case-forms of nouns. The pronouns, although in many cases, as in the demonstrative, interrogative, or relative classes, they are inflected like adjectives, form, in reality, a class distinct from the nouns. The cardinal numerals beyond four were origi nally nouns; below four they were in the adjec tive group. Verbs also form a separate class, al though in the infinitive and participle they over lap the noun-adjective group. The old view that in their primitive inflection pronominal elements entered seems on the whole doubtful, although arguments may be alleged in its favor. The most primitive interjections are merely reflex emotive vocal actions, and admit of no linguis tic classification. They are perhaps the most primitive forms of speech, shared, like gesture language (q.v.), by man with the animals. The developed interjections are syncopated sentences.
Scientifically, then, the parts of speech are four—nouns, pronouns, verbs, and interjections. Nouns and pronouns have normally gender, num ber, and case. Gender may be natural, indicating male, female, and sexless, or grammatical, as German der Tisch (masc.), table; die Gabel (fem.), fork; das Wcib (neu.), woman. Here gender has nothing to do with sex. Number shows whether the word denotes one (singular), two (dual), or more than one or two (plural).
Case expresses the relations of a noun or pro noun to the word with which it is most closely related in the sentence. The number of cases varies widely in different languages. The verb, like the noun, has number, and, in some lan guages, gender. It also has person, mood, tense, and voice. Person denotes generally either the person speaking, the one addressed, or some other individual. Here again many non-Indo Germanic languages have various deviations from this scheme. Moods are actual (indicative) or contingent, the most familiar- examples of the latter being the subjunctive (will), optative (wish), and imperative (command). Tense ex presses the time of action. Originally tense was merely present or past, the present serving as a future also, but there were later developed va rious subdivisions of tense, as the future and the perfect tense (present, past, and future per fect), and the like. Voice denotes whether the person is the agent (active), or is acted upon (passive), or acts in a way which affects him self (middle). The passive voice is much later in development than the active or than the middle, which has disappeared in the modern Indo-Germanic languages. All these grammati cal categories are modified in various ways by different languages, and very many dialects have much more complex systems than the normal one for the Indo-Germanic group, which is here out lined.
Consult: Vater, Litteratur der Grammatiken, Lexika and 1Viirtersammlungen alter Sprachen der Erde (2d ed., Berlin, 1847) ; Benfey, Ge schichte der Sprachicissenschaft (Munich, 1869) ; Grundriss der Sprachtoissenschart (Vien na, ; Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprach wissenschaft bei den Griechen and Edmern (2d ed., Berlin, 1890) ; Paul, Prinzipien der Sprach gesehichte (3d ed., Halle, 1898) ; Gabelentz, Spradhuissenschaft, are Aufgaben, Methoden and bisherigen, Ergebnisse (2d ed., Leipzig, 1901) ; Oertel, Lectures on the Science of Lan guage (New York, 1901).