History and Etymology of the English Language (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART III. INFLECTION. Preliminary facts in Logic.?Previous to the consideration of the Parts of Speech, it is necessary to become acquainted with the chief facts in the STRUCTURE OF PROPOSITIONS, and with the difference between INVARIABLE AND VARIABLE NAMES. STRUCTURE OF PROPOSITIONS. 100. Every sentence, or part of a sentence, in which something is affirmed of something, is a proposition.?Thus, the day is fine is a proposition; because, concerning the day, it is affirmed that it is fine. 101. Every sentence, or part.of a sentence, in which something is denied of something, is a proposition.?Thus, the day is not fine is a proposition; because, concerning the day, it is denied that it is fine. 102. Hence it follows that every sentence, or part of a sentence, in which something is either affirmed or denied of something is a proposition; so thatpropositions are of two kinds, affirmative and negative. To understand more fully the nature of propositions, let us suppose two persons talking together. It is certain that they talk about something, ?e. g. the weather. It is also certain that they say something about something; e. g. they say of the weather that it is hot, or that it is not hot. One may assert that it is hot. In this case the subject spoken of is the weather, concerning which there is a fact affirmed, viz. that it is hot. The other may assert that it is not hot; in which case the subject spoken of is the weather, concerning which a fact is denied, viz., the fact of its being hot. If we consider the great extent to which statements concerning particular objects, or classes of objects, form the staple of human conversation, if we remember how much of our speech is applied to making different assertions concerning different subje...