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heirs, they are as far from any agreement, or even from self-consistency, as the cleverest of them could ever imagine. To the person, the number, the gender, and the case, of each of these words, they either profess themselves to be total strangers, or else prove themselves so, by the absurdities they teach. Brightland calls them "Possessive Qualities, or Qualities of Possession;" in which class he also embraces all nouns of the possessive case. Johnson calls them pronouns; and then says of them, "The possessive pronouns, like other adjectives, are without cases or change of termination."--_Gram._, p. 6. Fisher calls them "Personal Possessive Qualities;" admits the person of _my, our_, &c.; but supposes _mine, ours_, &c. to supply the place of the _nouns which govern them!_ Mennye makes them one of his three classes of pronouns, "_personal, possessive_, and _relative_;" giving to both forms the rank which Murray once gave, and which Allen now gives, to the first form only. Cardell places them among his "defining adjectives." With Fowle, these, and all other possessives, are "possessive adjectives." Cooper, in his grammar of 1828. copies the last scheme of Murray: in that of 1831, he avers that the personal pronouns "want the possessive case." Now, like Webster and Wilson, he will have _mine, thine, hers, ours, yours_, and theirs, to be pronouns of the nominative or the objective case. Dividing the pronouns into six general classes, he makes these the fifth; calling them "Possessive Pronouns," but preferring in a note the monstrous name, "Possessive Pronouns Substitute." His sixth class are what he calls, "The Possessive Pronominal _Adjectives_;" namely, "_my, thy, his, her, our, your, their, its, own_, and sometimes mine and thine."--_Cooper's Pl. and Pr. Gram._, p. 43. But all these he has, unquestionably, either misplaced or misnamed; while he tells us, that, "Simplicity of arrangement should be the object of every compiler."--

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