Smith, and one of his own stories.
Perhaps it wovld he well to see if you under ->



68 GEAMMAR OP PRESENT DAY ENGLISH

stand the methods of showvng possession, hy giv-
mg the possessive forms of the foUowi/ng nouns:

Father-in-law, Frederick the Great, Heath &
Co., Charles Dickens, Jones, prince, princess.
Some books on grammar arrange the cases of
a noun in the following order :

Singular Plural

Nom. man men

Poss. man's men's

Obj. man men

But this process, known as Declension, is prob-
ably unnecessary for English nouns ; for the only
matter to keep in mind is the form of the pos-
sessive.
vn

PERSON

In the sentence, ^^I, the andhor of this gram-
mar, wrote it for you,'* the pronoun **I'' repre-
sents the speaker, and the noun ** author,'' ex-
plaining who I am and therefore in apposition
with **I," also represents the speaker. The noun
** grammar" and the pronoun ^4t" represent the
thing talked about; while the pronoun **you" rep-
resents the person spok&n to. Now, this distinc-
tion in nouns and pronouns to denote the person
or thing speaJdng, spoken to, or spoken of, is
known as Person. If the noun or pronoun repre-



THE NOUN 69

sents the person speaking it is said to be in the
First Person; if the person spoken to, the Second
Person; if the person spoken of, the Third Person.
In the English language the noun does not change
its form at all to represent any person and we must
depend upon the pronoun accompanying the noun
to show us what person the noun is in.
