508. English nouns have now only four forms, as leaf, leaves, leaf's, leaves'; and two of these sound exactly alike. Most verbs have only three forms in everyday use, as call, calls, called. Calling is not a verb. Most adjectives and some adverbs have three forms, as straight, straighter, straightest. Prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections have only one form.

509. Inflections show slight differences in the meaning. Leaf means one object, leaves more than one. Changing the verb call to calls suggests that a different person is acting. Changing call to called changes the time of the action. Adding 's to a noun, as John's, suggests ownership. The chief ideas now expressed by English inflections are seven: number, person, time, comparison, ownership, the subject-relation, and the object-relation. No one word contains all these ideas. Nouns, for example, have forms to show only number and ownership. In the following chapters we shall see what these seven different ideas mean as expressed by inflections.

510. A pronoun and a verb combine in a little sentence, as I run. Either word or both

may change form, as:

These little sentences, when viewed as forms, are called form-combinations, or merely combinations. An orderly arrangement of such sentences is called a conjugation. We speak of the conjugation of a verb, meaning the combinations that its verb-forms or verbals make to express ideas of time, etc. Thus the combination I shall run states a future act.

511. Inflection does not change one part of speech into another, but derivation may do so. From the noun author we derive the noun authority, the verb authorize, the adjective authoritative, and the adverb authoritatively.

512. Uniting two or more words is called word-composition, and the result of it is a compound word. Blackbird is a solid compound. Green-house, twenty-five are hyphen compounds. A rule for the hyphen. Use the hyphen when the compound means something different from the two words uncompounded.1

1. Green-house does not mean a green house.

1 The forming of solid compounds, like blackbird, is best learned from the spelling book.

CHAPTER XIII

FORMS OF NOUNS

513. Most English nouns have four written forms, as leaf, leaves, leaf's, leaves'.

called

the singular leaf.

the genitive singular leaf's.

the plural: leaves.

the genitive plural: leaves'.

These are

The terms singular and plural refer to number,

as we have repeatedly seen.

one; plural, more than one.

Singular means

These are the

only number ideas now conveyed by English inflections.

514. The usual plural ending is s or es, which is added to the singular form, as in book, books; horse, horses; box, boxes.

If

1 The genitive form is often called the genitive case. we wish to call it so, we distinguish two cases of nouns : the common and the genitive. The genitive form is often called the possessive form. Genitive is a bad translation, through the Latin, of a Greek word (yeviкń) meaning showing genus, or kind. "Printer's ink" is a certain kind of

ink.

515. Nouns that end in y, after a, e, or o, adds for the plural: trays, chimneys, monkeys, boys.

Nouns that end in y after a consonant change y to i before adding 8: baby, babies; lady, ladies; laddy, laddies; buggy, buggies; fly, flies; reply, replies; puppy, puppies; cry,

cries.

But the plurals of individual names do not change y to i. Thus we write the Macys, the Henrys.

516. The plural ending en, once very common in English, now appears in but few words, such as children, oxen.

517. A few plurals are formed by change of vowel, as men from man; women from woman 1 ; feet from foot; teeth from tooth; geese from goose; mice from mouse.

The words milkmen, dairymen, Englishmen, Frenchmen are compounds of men; but mans, in Germans, does not signify men.

1 The original word is wifman. Wife meant merely woman, though now it means a married woman. Wifman also meant a woman. Both woman and women are derived from wifman. That is why women is pronounced wi'men. The ƒ has merely dropped out of the olde: word.

518. Most compound words have regular plurals, as bandboxes, baseballs, bathrooms, bedclothes, beefsteaks, spoonfuls.

A few compounds have irregular plurals: fathers-in-law, mothers-in-law, men-servants, washerwomen.

519. A few words do not change their forms to show the plural. We may say one deer, two deer; one sheep, several sheep; one fish, ten fish. Fishes is a form now used mostly by children, but it was common enough two hundred years ago. See also section 526, last paragraph.

520. Some nouns, like crowd, people, committee, are called collective nouns, because they refer to many persons or things as if collected in one whole.

A collective noun may have at one time a singular meaning, at another time a plural, according as the speaker thinks of it. At one minute he may think of the crowd as a solid mass of humanity; at another he may think of it as composed of many individuals. He may think of the United States as one country, or as many states forming a union.

As regards the name United States, we may

U