QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED IN PARSING.

What is the distinction between a noun and an adjective?—­By what sign may an adjective be known?—­Are participles ever used as adjectives?—­Does gender, person, number, or case, belong to adjectives?—­How are they varied?—­Name the three degrees of comparison.—­What effect have less and least in comparing adjectives?—­Repeat the order of parsing an adjective.—­What rule applies in parsing an adjective?—­What rule in parsing a verb agreeing with a noun of multitude conveying unity of idea?—­What Note should be applied in parsing an adjective which belongs to a pronoun?—­What Note in parsing numeral adjectives?

QUESTIONS ON THE NOTES.  Repeat all the various ways of forming the degrees of comparison, mentioned in the first five NOTES.—­Compare these adjectives; ripe, frugal, mischievous, happy, able, good, little, much or many, near, late, old.—­Name some adjectives that are always in the superlative, and never compared.—­Are compound adjectives compared?—­What is said of the termination ish, and of the adverb very?—­When does an adjective become a noun?—­What character does a noun assume when placed before another noun?—­How can you prove that custom is the standard of grammatical accuracy?

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    PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES.

    ADNOUNS.

    Adnoun or Adjective, comes from the Latin, ad and jicio, to
    add to.

Adnouns are a class of words added to nouns to vary their comprehension, or to determine their extension.  Those which effect the former object, are called adjectives, or attributes; and those which effect the latter, restrictives.  It is not, in all cases, easy to determine to which of these classes an adnoun should be referred.  Words which express simply the qualities of nouns, are adjectives; and such as denote their situation or number, are restrictives.

    Adjectives were originally nouns or verbs.

Some consider the adjective, in its present application, exactly equivalent to a noun connected to another noun by means of juxtaposition, of a preposition, or of a corresponding flexion.  “A golden cup,” say they, “is the same as a gold cup, or a cup of gold.”  But this principle appears to be exceptionable.  “A cup of gold,” may mean either a cup-full of gold, or a cup made of gold.  “An oaken cask,” signifies an oak cask, or a cask of oak; i.e. a cask made of oak; but a beer cask, and a cask of beer, are two different things.  A virtuous son; a son of virtue.

    The distinguishing characteristic of the adjective, appears to
    consist in its both naming a quality, and attributing that
    quality to some object.