Sophia's Lesson

The Deeper Pattern Behind the Parts of Speech

In which Philo asks why the philosophers divide words into eight kinds at all, and finds out that grammar is a mirror, not a cage

Philo set down his pen. "Before we part for the evening," he said, "will you tell me why the philosophers divide words into these eight kinds at all? It seems a dry business — nouns here, verbs there — unless some deeper order explains it."

Sophia smiled, the way she did when a question pleased her more than an answer would have. "Sit, then," she said, "and I will show you that grammar is not a cage of rules, but a mirror. It reflects the way the mind lays hold of reality itself."

Sophia begins

"Every word," Sophia said, "is a sign — first of a thought in the mind, and through that thought, of some thing in the world. The philosophers who study being itself tell us that reality divides into substance, which exists in its own right, and accidents, the many things that exist only in or through a substance — its qualities, its quantities, its actions, its relations, and so on. A scroll is a substance; its dryness, its age, its length, the copying done upon it — these are accidents. They have no being of their own; they lean upon the scroll for theirs.

"Grammar, rightly understood, grows out of this same soil. Words that name a substance — a person, place, or thing existing in itself — we call substantives. These are your nouns and pronouns. When I say Philo, or this scroll, or simply he, I point to something that stands on its own.

"Words that name an accident — something that exists only in a substance — we call attributives. Among these, the adjective names a quality resting in a substance: the old scroll, where old has no being apart from the scroll it describes. The verb, too, is an attributive, but a peculiar one: it names an accident — an action or a state — while also marking when it occurs. When I say Philo writes, I attribute the accident of writing to Philo, and I fix it in the present. This is why the verb alone, among all the parts of speech, carries tense within itself, and why the simple verb to be — the pure copula — can join a subject to what is said of it without adding any accident of its own, as when I say, the scroll is old.

"The adverb serves the verb and the adjective as the adjective serves the noun: it modifies an accident, telling how, when, where, or to what degree the action or quality occurs. Philo writes carefully — here carefully qualifies not a substance, but the writing itself.

"Now, not every word names any form of being, substance or accident. Some words have no meaning at all until they are joined to others — the philosophers call these words syncategorematic, as opposed to the categorematic words we have just discussed. The preposition is one such word: through, beneath, beside mean nothing alone, but they show the precise relation between one substance and another — the lamp beside the scroll. The conjunction is another: and, but, because join one sentence, or one part of a sentence, to another, binding thought to thought as the mind reasons from one judgment to the next.

"And the interjection — Aha! Alas! — stands apart from all the rest, for it does not, strictly speaking, symbolize a concept by agreement, as every other word does. It is closer to a cry than a sign: a natural overflow of feeling, not a considered judgment about what is. The old grammarians included it among the parts of speech more from custom than from strict necessity."

Sophia's summary, restated plainly

Philo was quiet for a moment. "So when a child learns that scroll is a noun and old is an adjective," he said slowly, "she is already learning to sort the world into what stands on its own, and what merely clings to something else."

"Just so," said Sophia. "Grammar is the first philosophy a child ever studies — she simply does not yet know its name."

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