A return was eventually made to the older form; assimilation has supervened, and the forms appear as now.

Lentement is quite regular; the adjective is lent, from lentus, lenta.*

(2) Traîtreusement was regularly formed from the adjective traitreux, feminine traîtreuse, which has been displaced by the substantive forms traître, traitresse (§ 229).

(3) Gentiment is from gentil and ment. As gentil is from gentilis, the feminine was like the masculine in Old French (compare above, and § 207). The consonant l is very weak and is apt to drop out in pronunciation. (Compare § 116. 6.)

(4) Brièvement is from the adjective brief, briève (Lat. brevis), a dialectic variation of bref, brève. The Old French adverb was briement brie(f)ment. (Compare above.)

=

5. Some adjectives in e mute take an acute accent when -ment is added (§ 426). As explained in § 81, e is now sounded or not, according to the necessities of the case.

Adverbs form a good illustration. At one end of the scale we have complete elision of the e, at the other its accentuation :

vraie, vraiment :

gai, gaîment or gaiement:
doux, doucement:

leste, lestement,

commode, commodément,

*Présentement is more difficult.

elided e

silent e-may be elided or not silent e

sounded e (je)

sounded e (été). †

It seems to have arisen from the usage in Old French of present as a substantive, en present = presente, the common form in Latin. In any case it is anterior to the sixteenth century. Is it the Latin ablative imported, tel quel, and -ment added? Véhémentement would seem to be of this origin.

Many an e which is now silent was distinctly pronounced in Old and Middle French (§ 81). We have not much direct evidence of the value attached to the medial e in Old French. But there is little doubt that its pronunciation depended more upon the position of the tonic accent, than upon the presence or absence of consonants after it. When e bore the tonic accent, whether it ended the syllable as dete, or was followed by a consonant as in dette, debte, no doubt the sound was that of the modern é or è. This does not seem, however, to be the explanation of the accent in these adverbs. We owe it, to all appearance, to the necessity of pronouncing the e for the sake of the consonants. find the connecting link in such words as gouvernement, lestement, etc., where e is not accented, but yet is distinctly sounded as e in je.

We

It is a common habit with Englishmen (and no doubt a natural one) to give the sound é (été) instead of e (je). The é in communément, etc., seems, so to speak, to be an illustration in France of the English mistake, and not to have had its origin in the older speech.

CHAPTER V.-PREPOSITIONS.

Many words are Adverbs or Prepositions according to use. Many Prepositions, with que added, form Conjunctions.

§ 436. Prepositions which may be said to govern the Accusative:

§ 488. Formation of Prepositions.

Prepositions like Adverbs have been obtained from various

sources:

1. Directly from Latin Prepositions, sometimes without composition: sans, pour, entre, en, sur, de, à, par, etc.; sometimes with composition: dans, depuis, avant, parmi, dès, derrière, dessus, dessous, etc., etc.

2. From oblique cases of Nouns and Adjectives: sometimes with, sometimes without, composition with de, à, etc.: chez, malgré, vis-à-vis, sauf, loin de, au dedans de, vis-à-vis de, etc.

3. From French Nouns and Adjectives: au lieu de, au bas de, à cause de, le long de, en faveur de, à la merci de, etc., etc. 4. From the Imperative Mood: voici, voilà.

5. From the Past Participle used absolutely excepté, attendu, vu, hormis (§ 456. 4).

6. From the Present Participle used absolutely: touchant, pendant, suivant, moyennant, nonobstant.

CHAPTER VI.-CONJUNCTIONS.

§ 439. Conjunctions are of two kinds :

1. Co-ordinate, which join words and sentences, but do not influence mood.

2. Subordinate, which join sentences and do influence mood.

§ 440. The Co-ordinate Conjunctions are

§ 441. The Subordinate Conjunctions are conveniently divided into Conditional, Concessive, Consecutive, Final, Temporal, Causal, Comparative. Most of these may be again divided into those with which the Indicative or Conditional is usual, and those with which the Subjunctive is usual ($ 467).

CONDITIONAL.
Indicative Mood.

à condition que, on condition that sinon que, if not that si, if

Subjunctive Mood.

à moins que, unless
en cas que, in case that
soit que, whether

si (before auxiliaries), if

pourvu que, provided that au cas que, in case that supposé que, supposing that pour peu que, provided that