Elle } she. Elle et toi, vous ne l'aurez pas. She and thee shall not have it. I am happy near her. Eux, they. Eux et moi, nous sommes They and I are agreed. m.p. them. d'accord. SAvec eux, je ne crains rien. With them, I fear nothing. They and you will be deceived. Elles, they. f. p. Elles et vous, vous serez a- them. Je ne saurais me passer d'elles. I cannot do without them. NOTE. The above disjunctive pronouns, joined to the word méme singular, and mêmes plural, acquire a degree of affirmative energy and precision which they do not themselves possess. Example: Est-ce lui qui a osé le faire? Is it he who has dared to do it?—Oui: c'est lui-même. Yes: it is he himself.-Ils l'ont arrêté eux-mêmes ; Practice will best they themselves have arrested him; and so on. direct you in the use of this word. S. By what rule am I to be governed in respectively placing le or lui, la or lui, and les or leur, before a verb? M. I will lay down a general rule, by which you can avoid mistakes on such occasions. When you are at a loss to know whether le or lui should be used, take notice, that, if the English verb corresponding with the French verb, admit of to before him, her, or them, &c. lui or leur must be used; but if, on the contrary, it does not admit of that preposition, le, la, or les, are respectively placed before the verb. S. Have you any further observations to make on the pronouns ? M. A few more, which I recommend to your attention. The pronouns disjunctive, lui, elle, eux, and elles, cannot be used in speaking of things: instead of them we use the adverbs or pronouns y and en, so frequently introduced in the French language. EXAMPLES ON Y. 1. Fuyez les procès; souvent la conscience s'y intéresse, la santé s'y altère, et les biens s'y dissipent. Pensez-vous à mon affaire? 2. Oui, j'y pense. Etes-vous couché sur mon lit? 3. Oui; j'y suis couché. Avoid law-suits; conscience is often Do you think of my business? Are you lying on my bed? In the first example y occurs three times. In the first place, it is put for à eux; in the second and third places, for par eux. In the second example y serves instead of à elle, as relative to affaire. In the third example y is put for sur lui, as referring to lit. EXAMPLE ON EN Il en parle toujours; he always speaks of it (or of them); alluding to a thing or things inanimate: thus, en serves for de lui, d'elle, d'eux, d'elles, &c. Y and en are sometimes used in speaking of persons instead of pronouns, for the sake of harmony and conciseness of expression. Pensez-vous à Newton? EXAMPLES. Do you think of Newton? Y is here placed for à lui. Combien de ces dames avez-vous vues? How many of those ladies have you seen In this last instance, en is put for d'elles. S. Before you close this Conversation, I request you to let me know why the name of personal is given to pronouns. M. Because they represent persons; that is to say, men addressing other men, or addressed by them. Some words, which have hitherto been, I think, injudiciously classed amongst the pronouns, shall be the subiect of the next Conversation. CONVERSATION VII. OF NOUNS GENERALLY RECEIVED AS PRONOUNS. Scholar. What do you mean by those words, of which you remarked in the foregoing Conversation, that you thought were improperly classed among the pronouns ? Master. The following nouns, viz. on, personne, rien, quiconque, autrui. S. What is the signification of the monosyllable on, which so frequently occurs in the French language? M. It corresponds with any of the following words, viz. one, it, we, they, men, people, any body, or any one, and is used before all the tenses of the French verbs, in the third person singular, the verb generally called impersonal excepted, before which, instead of on, IL is used. This monosyllable, as it goes before no word but a verb, has been taken for a pronoun. It is supposed to be, however, a contraction of the noun homme:* if so, on, which is its abridgment or contraction, cannot therefore be called a pronoun. It is necessarily used in French before the verb that expresses hat has been done, experienced, &c. by a whole body or class of people, taken collectively; which cannot be accurately rendered by the third person plural ils or elles, especially when the subjects which pronouns represent have not been before mentioned. Suppose, in conversing with you, I say, on mange du bon fruit en France, I signify, by the phrase, that the people in general eat good fruit in France. If I had said, ils mangent, they eat, &c. (as it may be expressed in English,) it would be vague and unsatisfactory, and the dubious sense of the terms would naturally prompt my hearers to ask me, Who eat? and how many eat? &c. On is sometimes substituted for quelqu'un, somebody, anybody, &c. in the following phrase and the like; as, on nous écoute, somebody listens to us. S. Convince me that personne is a noun. M. As this word is always preceded by an article (except in one instance, where it is understood,) such a leading circumstance should have been sufficient to prevent grammarians from ranging it in a class in which, I am of opinion, it is misplaced. J'ai vu bien des personnes, J'ai rencontré une personne, Je n'ai pas rencontré une personne, EXAMPLES. I have seen many persons. A person has not told me. Nobody, or no person, has told me. I have met no person, or nobody. Personne, without the article and negative, signifies anybody. Personne a-t-il jamais douté de l'exis- Has anybody ever doubted the existence tence de Dieu ? of God? S. Can you prove that rien, quiconque, and autrui, are nouns ? According to SICARD, the following is the manner in which this contraction has been effected; Tous les hommes. les hommes. homme. 'omme. 'om. 'on. The article negative, aucune, is understood before personne. M. Certainly. Rien, is no more a pronoun than personne; it is the accusative rem of the Latin noun res, thing; which, in becoming French, has undergone some alteration: like personne, it admits the article, and then means a trifling thing; as, vous vous fâchez pour un rien, you fret or become angry for a mere trifle. When it is preceded or followed by the negative, ne, it means nothing. Je n'ai rien, Rien ne l'épouvante, EXAMPLES. I have nothing. Without the negative and article, it signifies any thing; as, Y a-t-il rien de plus beau que cela? Is there any thing more beautiful than that? Quiconque (whoever, or whosoever), in its full extent, implies every man who: one of these three terms is a noun, and this of course must govern. If we are, therefore, to give the elliptical word, quiconque, any denomination, that of noun unquestionably demands a preference. Autrui is also an elliptical term, composed of two words, autre. and homme; the first an adjective, the second a noun: autrui is, therefore, in every sense of the word, a noun. EXAMPLES. Ne faites pas à autrui ce que vous ne Do not unto others what you would not voudriez pas qu'on vous fit, they should do unto you. CONVERSATION VIII. OF THE VERB. Scholar. What is a verb? Master. It is an essential and indispensable word, which expresses the co-existence of an attribute, that is to say, of a quality, colour, form, &c. with a subject or object. S. How many kinds of verbs are there? M. From this definition of the verb, you may readily conclude that we acknowledge but one; for, existence being simple and indivisible, one verb alone is sufficient to define it. S. What is that verb? M. In all languages, the verb to be, which is called the abstract verb, as being separated from all quality; and thus, considered in itself as a substance, it is sometimes termed the substantive verb. S. What then is meant by an adjective verb, a mode of expression often used in Grammars? M. By this is generally understood, such words as-to love, aimer, to speak, parler, &c.; which are denominated verbs, because the verb to be is interwoven with their very existence, and intimately connected with the word denoting the quality, from which they take the appellation of adjective verbs: we cannot always, by the eye, perceive the connexion; but analysis, and sometimes etymology, will evince, that, in all languages, such expressions as--to love, to speak, &c. are, by an ellipsis, equivalent to the phrases-to be loving, to be speaking, &c. S. How many kinds of adjective verbs are there? M. Two: active, and stationary or neuter. The first are so called because they comprehend an active quality, which extends its influence to a certain object; as, for instance, when I say-I esteem you, or rather, I am esteeming you, the active quality, expressed by the word esteeming, is extended to you, who are thereby described as the object of my esteem. The second are denominated stationary, because the quality does not exceed the limits of the subject; as-I walk, I sleep, I die: when I pronounce these verbs, you will not ask me, what or whom do you walk? &c. because you find no object to which the action extends. They are generally called neuter. S. How many, and what properties, appertain to a verb? M. Five: 1st, the person; 2d, number; 3d, tense; 4th, mood; and, 5th, conjugation. S. As, by attending to your conversation on the pronoun, I have acquired an idea of the person and number of a verb, I now request you will give me some information respecting the tenses. M. The tenses are the various epochs at which the events related have happened. These epochs, compared with each other, and then, collectively and respectively, with the instant de la parole, or present utterance of speech (which is the standard for judging of epochs), will give us the different tenses of a verb. S. How many tenses are there? M. Three, general and absolute,--the past, present, and future, which you may perceive, from the very definition of the verb, exist in every language. When we have occasion to express the past, present, and future, existence of a subject, under a certain attribute, those different modes of considering existence will necessarily produce the three tenses above mentioned: the past may be represented by yesterday, the present by to-day, and the future by to-morrow. But man, too ambitious to convey his sentiments in broken sentences (which would be the case were he confined to those tenses only), and aiming at improvement in language, began to consider the time of events under different relations from the present utterance of speech, and to mark his actions, by contrasting them with one another in the current of human affairs. To express those different views of the mind, he made the verb undergo various modifications, and thus divided the tenses into moods. |