In this category, we find the following definitions which serve to classify the quantitative values or degrees:  that is the extent assigned to each articulation or vocal emission to enable it to express the thoughts, sentiments and sensations of our being in their truth and proportionate intensity: 

1. Substantive is the name given to a group of appearances, to a totality of attributes.

2. Adjective expresses ideas, simple, abstract, general and medicative; it is an abstraction in the substantive.

3. Verb is the word that affirms the existence and the co-existence between the being existing and its manner of existing:  that is to say it connects the subject with the attribute.  The verb is not a sign of action, but of affirmation, and existence.

4.  The participle alone is a sign of action.

5, 6, 7.  The article, pronoun and preposition fit into the common definitions.

8.  The adverb is the adjective of the adjective and of the participle (in so far as it is an attribute of the verb); it modifies them both, and is not modifiable by either of them; it is a sign of proportion, an intellectual compass.

9.  The conjunction has the same function as the preposition:  it unites one object to another object; but it differs from it, inasmuch as the preposition has but a single word for its antecedent, and a single word for its objective case, while the conjunction has an entire phrase for antecedent, and the same for complement.  It characterizes the point of view under the sway of which the relations should be regarded:  restrictive, as but; hypothetical or conditional, as if? conclusive, as then, etc., etc.  The conjunction presents a general view to our thought, it is the reunion of scattered facts; it is essentially elliptical.

10.  The interjection responds to those circumstances where the soul, moved and shaken by a crowd of emotions at once, feels that by uttering a phrase it would be far from expressing what it experiences.  It then exhales a sound, and confides to gesture the transmission of its emotion.

The interjection is essentially elliptical, because, expressing nothing in itself, it expresses at the time all that the gesture desires it to express, for ellipsis is a hidden sense, the revelation of which belongs exclusively to gesture.

It must first be noted that these degrees are numbered from one to nine, and that, of all the grammatical values defined, the conjunction, interjection and adverb are classed highest.

Delsarte made the following experiment one day in the “Circle of Learned Societies,” during a lecture: 

“Which word,” he asked his audience, “requires most emphasis in the lines—­

     “The wave draws near, it breaks, and vomits up before our eyes,
     Amid the surging foam, a monster huge of size?”