§ =95.= As the root-syllables of words (leaving out of account the words of Romanic origin) almost universally retain their full syllabic value, whether occurring in arsis or in thesis, they require no notice in this chapter. We therefore confine our remarks to the formative and inflexional syllables, which, though as a rule found only in thesis, admit of being treated metrically in three different ways. (1) A syllable of this kind may retain its full value, so as to form by itself the entire thesis of a foot. (2) It may be slurred, so that it combines with another unaccented syllable to form a thesis. (3) It may lose its syllabic value altogether, its vowel being elided and its consonantal part (if it has any) being attracted to the root-syllable. By the last-mentioned process, as is well known, the number of inflexional syllables has been greatly reduced in Modern as compared with Middle and Old English. The inflexional endings which in Middle English (we are here considering chiefly the language of Chaucer) have ordinarily the value of independent syllables are the following:-- _-es_ (_-is_, _-us_) in the gen. sing. and the plur. of the substantive, and in certain adverbs. _-en_ in the nom. plur. of some substantives of the weak declension, in certain prepositions, in the infinitive, in the strong past participle, in the plur. of the pres. of strong verbs, and in the pret. plur. of all verbs. _-er_ in the comparative. _-est_ in the superlative and the 2nd person pres. _-eth_ (_-ith_) in the 3rd person pres. sing., in the plur. pres. and plur. imperative. _-ed_ (_-id_, _-ud_) in the past participles of weak verbs, and often in the 1st and 3rd person sing. and the whole plur. pret. of the weak verbs with short root-syllable, instead of the fuller endings _-ede_, _-eden_, which also occur; in weak verbs with long root-syllable the endings are _-de_, _-den_. _-edest_, or _-dest_ in the 2nd pers. sing. pret. of the weak verb. _-e_ in a certain number of inflexional forms of the verb (as e.g. in the inf. and in the past part. of strong verbs, where _n_ is dropped), and of the substantive and adjective, and as an ending of Romanic words, &c.