Sometimes the sense requires a singular verb, or the singular may be used optionally; as,

Great Britain with Ireland contains nearly thirty millions of inhabitants.

This takes place when the words added are less important than the first statement, and fall under it as part of a whole.

In the sentence 'Man walks,' it will be seen that the sense conveyed by the subject man, is very wide; as it means nothing less than mankind, or all men taken as one race or class. But we generally want to speak of individuals, not of a whole class. That is, we want to limit the person or thing spoken of to one of a class.

Now this is done most markedly by limiting it to some one known, less markedly, to any one of the class.

This limitation is made in English by putting a word before the noun limited. This word is called an Article.

An article therefore is a word joined to the noun to limit it. There are two articles. The word The called the Definite or limiting article. The word A called the Indefinite or unlimiting article, as it is, if compared with The. For The marks out some known person or persons, whilst A extends the sense to any one without particularizing.

'man walks.' The class.

'The man walks.'

'A man walks.'

One marked out of the class.
Any one of the class.

The fixing the limit to the particular one, or ones. A or An extending the limit to any one of the class. Sometimes The denotes a class as distinguished from other classes; as 'The cow ruminates, the horse does not.'

An is used before a vowel, A before a consonant, or a word beginning with ḥ, or u pronounced as in the word 'unicorn.'

THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE.

A or An is singular only; The singular or plural; as, ' a man,' 'the man,' 'the men.'

A or An is used in distributive speeches;

as, 'Twelve acres a man,' 'Two shillings a day.' And when a name is taken as a specimen of a class; as 'a Catiline,' a conspirator; 'a Solon,' a wise man. Duration of time;

as, 'He stayed a whole hour.’

Notice the following phrases :

I go a hunting (old English form, on hunting, as in the expression, ‘on a journey ').

A black-and-white dog. A black and a white dog. But in poetry, ‘A sadder and a wiser man.'

THE DEFINITE ARTICLE.

Or

The is used with names of seas; as, 'the Mediterranean.' with names of collections of mountains; as, 'the Sierra Nevada.' Of collections of islands; as, 'the Antilles.' With names of rivers; as, 'the Thames.' Of tracts of country; as, 'the Campagna,' 'the Highlands,' 'the vale of Trent.' With names of ships; as, 'the Great Eastern.' But not with the names of single islands, countries, or towns; as, 'Ireland,' 'France,' 'London.'

The is used with comparative adjectives or adverbs to express degree; as, 'The more I know of him, the more I like him;' 'The stronger the attack, the stouter the defence.' With names of species; as, 'The natural history of the mouse.' But not of the human species; as, 'The natural history of man.' 'Woman is not undeveloped man.'

Rule.

There are two Articles, An or A, and The. The Definite Article The limits the sense of the Noun to some one known. The Indefinite Article A or An only limits it to any one of the class named.

The winds blow*.

EXAMPLES.

The waters flow.

The trees grow*.

A wheel turns*. A frost nips*. The rain drips.

A fire burns*.

In the sentence 'Man walks,' the predicate, or speech-clause, is one word. And it is obvious that the sense of that word is complete in itself, as the action spoken of, namely, walking, is finished in itself, and does not pass on to any other thing. But it is necessary that it should be possible to speak of actions not thus complete in themselves, but where the agent acts on, or in relation to, something. The sense passing, as it were, beyond, and out of the verb across to some farther point; as, 'Man loves a friend.' If this is compared with the sentence 'Man walks,' it will be seen that the predicate or speech-clause alone is altered, the first predicate being complete in one word, the verb of the second predicate not being thus complete in itself; as, 'Man loves.' The question immediately arises, what does he love? And the sense is incomplete till that is added, for instance, 'a friend.' This, or the like addition, fills up the void, and makes the second predicate as complete as the first. This distinction then in verbs of incompleteness, or completeness, divides them into two great classes, which are called, the one Intransitive (or not passing across) Verbs, as the verb 'walks,' where the sense requires no addition. The other Transitive (or passing across) Verbs, as the verb 'loves,' where the sense must pass across to the object of love, for instance, 'a friend,' and is not completed till that is added.

Intransitive Verbs, therefore, are verbs whose sense is shut up

and complete in the verb itself, the action being stated to be finished by the agent himself.

Transitive Verbs are verbs whose sense passes out of the verb itself across to something beyond; the action being performed by the agent on or toward something else.

Rule.

Verbs are divided into Intransitive and Transitive. In Intransitive Verbs the sense is completed in the Verb itself, as 'Man walks.' In Transitive Verbs the sense passes across from the Verb to some Noun, as 'Man loves a friend.'

All the former examples of verbs have been Intransitive. Those, however, marked with an asterisk can also be used with a Transitive sense.

CASE.

Man loves a friend.

In the sentence 'Man loves a friend,' there is found first the name, or noun, or subject, standing by itself, and then by itself a predicate or speech-clause, like a full vessel, made up of two things, a verb which by itself is empty, and a noun which by itself is spilt and lost. There is an intimate relation between the verb and noun, which exists whether the noun shows it by its form or not, a dependence of the noun which might be shown by form always, and is so in some languages. Now whenever the noun is thus dependent, it is said to be in a Case. That is, whenever any word or words depend on another word, the sense of which is incomplete without them, that word or those words are

said to be in a case, and the word requiring the addition is said to take that case.

It is clear that all languages require to express much the same dependent relations, but all do not show them by the form of the word. The English language does not. It seems the clearest plan to confine the name case primarily to formal cases, that is, to cases marked by change of form; but where the same form, without change, is used in fixed combinations to represent relations which other languages represent by a formal change, as for instance, such a combination as 'to a friend,' it is not objectionable to call such combinations, cases, and name them as, in those languages, the formal case is named.

Every noun, without change, can stand as the subject of a sentence. Hence this independent word is, in this work, called the subject-form. Dependence, that is, Case, being properly shown by a deviation from this form.

In English there are two formal cases, the Possessive Case and Objective Case; as

Possessive Case Friend's, his, my, your, its, their, &c.
Objective Case

Friend, him, me, you, them, &c.

In nouns, the Possessive Case is formed from the subject-form by the addition of 's (s after the apostrophe). The Objective Case is distinguished from the subject only by its place in the

sentence.

In pronouns, both cases differ from the subject-form.
Examples of the two cases :-

Man loves a friend. Man loves a friend's counsel.

To be parsed, or given account of as follows:

Friend. The Objective Case, Singular Number, from the Subject-form 'friend,' taken * by the transitive verb 'loves.'

Friend's. The Possessive Case, Singular Number, from the Subject-form 'friend,' taken by the noun 'counsel.'

Examples of other dependent relations which some languages express formally, are—

* The word 'governed' is not used in this work, as it gives a false idea of the connexion between words. Words fit into each other; the shape of a drawer as much determines the shape of the place it fits, as the shape of the place it fits determines the shape of the drawer.