Inflections OF Adjectives - This/That/These/Those - Parts Of Speech-ESL/Learn English Grammar

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INFLECTIONS OF ADJECTIVES



153 .Adjectives have two inflections,--number and comparison.



NUMBER.--_This_, _That_.



[Sidenote: _History of_ this--these _and_ that--those.]


154. The only adjectives having a plural form are _this_ and _that_

(plural _these_, _those_).


_This_ is the old demonstrative; _that_ being borrowed from the forms

of the definite article, which was fully inflected in Old English. The

article _that_ was used with neuter nouns.


In Middle English the plural of _this_ was _this_ or _thise_, which

changed its spelling to the modern form _these_.


[Sidenote: Those _borrowed from_ this.]


But _this_ had also another plural, _thas_ (modern _those_). The old

plural of _that_ was _tha_ (Middle English _tho_ or _thow_):

consequently _tho_ (plural of _that_) and _those_ (plural of _this_)

became confused, and it was forgotten that _those_ was really the

plural of _this_; and in Modern English we speak of _these_ as the

plural of _this_, and _those_ as the plural of _that_.






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