d separately; and each having,
in some instances, employed the pens of able writers almost to the
exclusion of the other.

OBS. 17.--The syntax of any language must needs conform to the
peculiarities of its etymology, and also be consistent with itself; for all
will expect better things of a scholar, than to lay down positions in one
part of his grammar, that are irreconcilable with what he has stated in an
other. The English language, having few inflections, has also few concords
or agreements, and still fewer governments. Articles, adjectives, and
participles, which in many other languages agree with their nouns in
gender, number, and case, have usually, in English, no modifications in
which they _can agree_ with their nouns. Yet _Lowth_ says, "The adjective
in English, having no variation of gender and number, _cannot but agree_
with the substantive in these respects."--_Short Introd. to Gram._, p. 86.
What then is the _agreement_ of words? Can it be anything else than their
_similarity_ in some common property or modification? And is it not
obvious, that no two things in nature can at all _agree_, or _be alike_,
except in some quality or accident which belongs to each of them? Yet how
often have _Murray_ and others, as well as _Lowth_, forgotten this! To give
one instance out of many: "_Gender_ has respect only to the third person
singular of the pronouns, _he, she, it_."--_Murray, J. Peirce, Flint, Lyon,
Bacon, Russell, Fisk, Maltby, Alger, Miller, Merchant, Kirkham_, and other
careless copyists. Yet, according to these same gentlemen, "Gender is _the
distinction of nouns_, with regard to sex;" and, "Pronouns _must always
agree_ with their antecedents, _and the nouns_ for which they stand, in
gender." Now, not one of these three careless assertions can possibly be
reconciled with either of the others!

OBS. 18.--_Government_ has respect only to nouns, pronouns, verbs,
participles, and prepositions; the other five parts of speech neither
govern nor are governed. The _governing_ words may be either nouns, or
verbs, or participles, or prepositions; the words _governed_ are either
nouns, or pronouns, or verbs, or participles. In parsing, the learner must
remember that the rules of government are not to be applied to the
_governing_ words, but to those which _are governed_; and which, for the
sake of brevity, are often technically named after the particular form or
modification assumed; as, _possessives, objectives, inf