kimkat2125k The Philology
of the English Tongue. John Earle, M.A. Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the
University of Oxford. Third Edition. 1879.
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llythrennau duon = testun wedi ei gywiro
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4jO VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
476. This is, however, but a feeble example of the pronominal use of the word
man, a use which it has been our singular fortune to lose after having
possessed it in its fulness. In place of it, we resort to a variety of shifts
for what may justly be called a pronoun of pronouns, that is to say, a pronoun
which is neither / nor we nor you nor they, but which may stand for either or
all of these or any vague commixture of two or three of them. Sometimes we
say 'you' not meaning, nor being taken to mean you at all, but to express a
corporate personality which quite eludes personal application. It is always
pleasant to be forced to do what you wish to do, but what, until pressed, you
dare not attempt. — Dean Hook, Archbishop*. vol. iii. ch. 4. This you is
often convenient to the poet as a neutral medium of address, applicable
either to one particular person, or to all the world: — Yet this, perchance,
you '11 not dispute, — That true Wit has in Truth its root, Surprise its
flower, Delight its fruit. Sometimes, again, it is we, and at other times it
is they which represents this much-desired but long-lost or notyet-invented '
representative ' pronoun. We render the French ' on dit' by they say. 477.
Besides the resort to pronouns of a particular person in order to achieve the
effect of a pronoun impersonal, we have also some substantives which have
been pronominalised to this effect, as person, people, body, folk. people.
Bothwell was not with her at Seton. As to her shooting at the butts when
there, this story, like most of the rest, is mere gossip. People do not shoot
at the butts in a Scotch February. — Quarterly Review, vol. 12S. p. 511. |
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1. SUBSTANTIVAL. — INDEFINITES.
45 1 People are always cowards when they are doing wrong. — M. Manley, W)ien
I was a Boy (William Macintosh), p. 24. body. The foolish body hath said in
his heart, There is no God. — Psalm liii. I, elder version. And from this we
get the composite pronouns somebody, nobody, everybody, and a-body, as little
John Stirling, when he saw the new-born calf — Wull't eat a-body? — Thomas
Carlyle, Life, ch. ii. In like manner, but less fixed in habit, some people,
and also some folk, as in the well known refrain Some folk do, some folk do!
478. One. The first numeral has an intimate natural affinity with the
pronominal principle, and this is widely acknowledged in the languages by
pronominal uses which are very well known. Some of our pronominal uses of one
are easily paralleled in other languages, the one and the other = Tun et T
autre; one another = Tun l'autre. But there is an English use which is far
from common, even if it is not absolutely unique; namely, when it is employed
as a veiled Ego, thus: 'One may be excused for doubting whether such a policy
as this can have its root in a desire for the public welfare '; or, ' One
never knows what this sort of thing may lead to.' It would be impossible to
put in these places Vim or ein or unus or eh. The one of which we speak is
quite distinct from those cases in which it is little removed from the
numeral, as 1 One thinks this, and one thinks that.' In this case one is
fully toned, but not so in the case referred to, as when a person who is
pressed to buy stands on the defensive with, 'One can't buy everything, you
know'; here the one is Gg 2 |
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4$2 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
lightly passed over with that sensitiveness which accompanies egotism. There
are instances in which one language catches up a confused idea from another,
and matches it with a like sound in its own vocabulary. And it is just
possible that the French on has had some such undefined effect in this member
of our language, guiding us through the association of sound to our peculiar
use of the first numeral. This pronoun appears in concord or under government
in ways which it would be hard to parallel in other languages: — As nations
ignorant of God contrive A wooden one. William Cowper, The Timepiece. The
strictly logical deduction from the premises is not always found in practice
the true one. — Sir J. T. Coleridge, Keble, p. 388. Combinations with one:
each one, every one (496), no one, some one, many one, many a one, such one,
such a one. such one. The kinsman of whom Boaz had spoken, came by: and he
sayd, Ho, such one, come, sit downe here. — Ruth iv. 1. Genevan, 1560. 479.
None is the negative of one. Originally adjectival, and used before
consonants and vowels alike, it was shortened to no before consonants, and
none continued in use only before vowels: as, ' There is none end of the
store and glory,' Nahum ii. 9; 'There was none other boat there,' John vi.
22. This is now obsolete, and the form none is only used substantially, as '
I have none.' Ought or aught, from Saxon awuht, a composite of wight or whit.
It is now little used. He asked him, if hee saw ought. — Mark viii. 23. And
when ye stand praying, forgiue, if ye haue ought against any.— Murk xi. 25. |
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2. ADJECTIVAL. — POSSESSIVES.
453 Nought or naught is composed of tie and ought or aught. Few. Once common
to the whole Gothic family, this pronoun survives only in the English and
Scandinavian. Anglo-Saxon feawa, Mceso-Gothic fawai, Danish faa. A variety of
other pronouns belong to this set, which we have only space just to hint at.
Such are thing, something, everything, nothing; wight, whit, deal. We have
thus reached the natural termination of this section. Having started from the
pronouns which were most nearly associated with definite substantival ideas,
we have reached those whose characteristic it is (as their name conveys) to
be indefinite, to shun fixed associations, and thus to be ever ready for a
latitude of application as wide as the widest imaginable sweep of the mental
horizon. II. Adjectival Pronouns. 480. This section will run parallel to the
former, as each group of Pronouns has its substantives and its adjectives.
Yet it may be observed that the more subtle quality of pronouns, as compared
with nouns, is the cause of a more ready transition from the substantival to
the adjectival function, and reversely. 481. The Possessive Pronouns. These
were a genitival shoot from the personal pronouns which became, some more some
less, adjectival: those which became most so were the possessives of the
first and second persons. These have, in the earlier stage of the language,
had a complete adjectival development, and full means of concord |
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454 VIU - THE PRONOUN GROUP. with
substantives; and this began to be the case in some measure even with his, of
which we meet with a plural hise (disyllabic), as in the following broken
Saxon from the year 1 123, in the Peterborough Chronicle: — Da sone J>aer
aefter sende se kyng hise write ofer eall Engla lande, and bed hise biscopes
and hise abbates and hise })eignes ealle pet hi scolden cumen to his gewitene
mot on Candel messe deig to Gleaw ceastre him togeanes. Then sooyi thereafter
sent the king his writs over all England, and bade his bishops and his abbots
and his thanes all, that they sho?dd come to his Witenagemot on Catidelmas
day at Gloucester to meet him. All the possessives were originally genitives
of the personal pronouns, of which some reached greater perfection in adjectival
form than others. |
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2. ADJECTIVAL. — POSSESSIVES.
455 reduced my, thy, occupy the old domain. When the N was first dropped, it
was because the following word began with a consonant, and then the
difference between mine, thine, and my, thy, was like that between an and a t
or the original distinction between none and no. In Chaucer's verse we find
the N-form unremoved before consonants, as — Myn purchas is the effect of al
myn rente. Canterbury Tales, 7033. But in his prose he was more familiar, and
we find my, thy, before consonants in the opening sentences of the Treatise "ii
the Astrolabe: — Litell Lowys my sone, I haue perceiued well by certeyne
euidences thine abilite to lerne sciencez touchinge noumbres &
proporciouns; & as wel consiJere I thy bisi preyere in special to lerne
the tretis of the astrelabie. But considere wel, that I ne vsurpe nat to haue
fownde this werk of my labour or of myn engin. I nam but a lewd compilatour
of the labour of olde Astrologiens, and haue hit translated in myn englissh
only for thi doctrine; and with this swerd shal I slen envie. — Ed. W. W.
Skeat, pp. I, 2. And so it continues in the Bible of 161 1: — Thou didst ride
vpon thine horses, and thy charets of saluation. — Habakkult iii. 8. 484.
Ours, yours, hers, theirs. In these cases the substantival possessive is made
by the cumulative addition of the s genitival to its previously genitival
termination. Against this s the rustic tradition maintains its old rival n;
and hence a uniform series of substantival possessives, mine, thine, hisn,
hern, oum, yourn, theirn, current among the purest English folk. Theirs. The
distinction between adjectival their and substantival theirs is well
exhibited in the following lines: — Leave kingly backs to cope with kingly
cares; They have their weight to carry, subjects theirs. William Cowper,
Table Talk. |
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45<5 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
His. This is the only one of the possessives that has no variation of form
for the substantival function — at least, not in the literary language. I
would rather abide by my own blunders than by his. — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park,
ch. vi. Here ends the Substantival list which began at 483. 485. Its. This
form is now never used substantivallv, but I imagine that its first
appearance in the language was in the train of hers, ours, yours, theirs; and
it bears such a character at its earliest appearance. Each following day
Became the next dayes master, till the last Made former Wonders, it's. Henry
VIII, i. I. 1 6. This obsolete use seems to have preceded the adjectival use
of its, and indeed to have been the introducer of the latter 1 . From the
following passage, in which Constance mimics' childish prattle, it seems as
if children in Shakspeare's time used it for the adjectival its: — Queen.
Come to thy grandame, child. Cons. Doe childe, goe to yt grandame childe,
Giue grandame kingdome, and it grandame will Giue yt a plum, a cherry, and a
figge, There's a good grandame. King John, ii. I. 159. The possessive its is
not yet found either in Shakspeare or in our Bible of 1611. Where we now
should use its, these have his: — . . . euery thing vpon his day. — Levit.
xxiii. 37. 1 This distinct recognition of the Substantival as against the
Adjectival in possessive pronouns, is something (as I apprehend) peculiar to
modern languages. The distinction is bolder in French than in English, and boldest
in German. In French it is mon, ton, son, notre, votre, leur, as against le
mien, le den, le sien. le notre, le votre, le Itur. In German there is a
duplicate apparatus for the Substantival. As against Weill, bctll, &c,
there is, Fir>t. meitter bcincr, &c, and Second, ber, bie, ba3
Sftciuicje, ©cinigc, @einige, (Sutige, 3brtge. |
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457 |
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45^ VI H- THE PRONOUN GROUP.
plural of this demonstrative, took the place of hi as personal pronoun of the
third person plural (they). And, to pursue this transition to its
consequences; a place was now vacant, the demonstrative required a plural of
its own. Here we have a beautiful example of the innate resource of language,
which often is most admirable in this, that a new want is supplied out of a
mere nothing. The sister demonstrative this had a plural which was
grammatically written thds, and with this full a it was pronounced so as to
be very like our those, which is indeed its modern form. But people whose
education had been neglected were apt to make a plural in their own way by
just adding on a little vague e to the singular this, so they (the
ungrammatical people) made a plural this-e. After a certain period of
confusion, during which both demonstratives admitted a great variety of
shapes, they at last settled down to this, that the word those, which was the
original old plural of this, should pass over to the other side and become
the plural of that, while this should make its plural these according to the
later popular invention. 489. What was at the root of all this stir appears
to have been the newly-felt insufficiency of the distinction between the
singular he and the plural hi. And perhaps it should be added, the want of
distinction between the singular dative him and the plural dative, also
written kt'm, though sometimes heom or hem. In the following passage, Mark
vi. 48-50, we find him three times, and in every case it corresponds to the
modern them: — And he geseah hig on rewette swincende; him waes wiSerweard
wind: and on niht ynibe pa feorSan waeccan, he com to him ofer J)a see
gangende, and wolde hig forbugan. pa hig hine gesawon ofer )>a sae
gangende, hig wendon J?aet hit unfaele gast w;ere, and hig clyptdon: hig
ealle hine gesawon and wurdon gedrefede. And sona he spra?c to him, and
cwie'tf: Gelyfaft; ic hit eom; nelle ge eow ondrsedan. |
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2. ADJECTIVAL. — DEFINITE
ARTICLE. 459 So that the English language, about the time of its national
restitution, gradually substituted they, their, them, in the place of the
elder hi, heora, him. This change was not quite established till far on in
the fifteenth century. In Chaucer we have still the elder forms, hi, hir,
kem, in free use, or at least the two latter. For the nominative he generally
uses they: — Vp on the wardeyn bisily they crye, To yeue hem leue but a litel
stounde, To go to Mille and seen hir corn ygrounle: And hardily they derste
leye hir nekke, The Millere shold noght stelen hem half a pekke Of corn by
sleighte. ne by force hem reue: And atte laste the wardeyn yaf hem leue. The
Reeves Tale, 4006. It may not be amiss to add that when in provincial
Engglish we meet with 'em in place of them, it must be regarded as an elided
form not of them, but of hem. 490. These two pronouns have held a great place
in our language. We can hardly omit to notice what may be called their
rhetorical use. This has a rhetorical use expressive of contempt. It was by
means of this pronoun that Home Tooke expressed his contempt for the
philology of Harris's Hermes: — There will be no end of such fantastical
writers as this Mr. Harris, who takes fustian for philosophy. — Diversions of
Parley, Part II. ch. vi. That, on the other hand, is a great symbol of admiration:
— The face of justice is like the face of the god Janus. It is like the face
of those lions, the work of Landseer, which keep watch and ward around the
record of our country's greatness. She presents one tranquil and majestic
countenance towards every point of the compass and every quarter of the
globe. That rare, that noble, that imperial virtue has this above all other
qualities, that she is no respecter of persons, and she will not take
advantage of a favourable moment to oppress the wealthy for the sake of
flattering the poor, any more than »he will condescend to oppress the poor
for the sake of pampering the luxuries of the rich. — House of Commons, March
11, 1870. |
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460 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
Both of these uses are to be paralleled in Greek and Latin, as the student of
those languages should ascertain for himself, if he is not already familiar
with the feature. 491. But a more peculiar interest attaches to this pronoun
from the circumstance that out of it has been carved the definite article.
The word the is generalized from the more prevalent cases of thcet, and
perhaps the French le has exercised some influence in the way of shaping the.
And not unfrequently we experience in the course of reading, especially in
poetry, a certain force in the definite article, which we could not better
convey in words than by saying it reminds us of its parentage, and calls the
demonstrative to mind. It is one of those fugitive sensations that will not
always come when they are called for; but perhaps the reader may catch what
is meant if the following line from the Christian Year is offered in
illustration: — The Man seems following still the funeral of the Boy. The
same thing may however be shown in a manner more agreeable to science. We
find cases in which the same text is variously rendered according as the
interpreters have seen a demonstrative or a definite article in the original:
— Ezehel ix. 19. 1535. 1611. That stony herte wil I take out I wil take the
stonie herte out of youre body, & geue you a fleshy of their flesh, and
will giue them an herte. heart of flesh. There is a case, and that rather a
frequent one, in which the is not a definite article at all, but either a
demonstrative or a relative. It is the instrumental case thy of the Saxon declension
above given, and answers to the Latin quo. . . eo before comparatives, just
as thcet that in Saxon was equivalent to the Latin id quod. |
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2. ADJECTIVAL. — INTERROGATIVE,
ETC. 46 1 The more luxury increases, the more urgent seems the necessity for
thus securing a luxurious provision. — John Boyd-Kinnear, Woman's Work, P-
353 492.
Yond, yon, yonder. Saxon geoxd, German jener: — Mene. See you yond Coin a'th
Capitol, yond corner stone? W. Shakspeare, Coriolanus, v. 4. I. But looke,
the Morne in Russet mantle clad, Walkes o're the dew of yon high Easterne
Hill. Hamlet, i. 1. 167. Caesar saide to me, Dar'st thou Cassius now Leape in
with me into this angry Flood, And swim to yonder Point? Julius Ccesar, i. 2.
104, Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd. Oliver Goldsmith, The
Deserted Village. Saxon, from yonder mountain high, I mark'd thee send
delighted eye. Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, v. 7. |
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46 Z VIII, THE PRONOUN GROUP.
the native growth as cuttings differ from seedlings. Only a reduced number
gets well and permanently rooted. We proceed to notice an instance of this.
The relative which, as a personal relative, is no longer used, and it is a
well-known peculiarity of the English of our Bible, that it is so common
there. Instances of this use are indeed numerous beyond the pages of that
version. The following is from a brass in Hutton Church, near
Westonsuper-Mare: — Pray for y e soules of Thomas Payne Squier &
Elizabeth hyis wiffe which departed y e xv th day of August y e yere of o r
lord god m.ccccc.xxviij. In the following passage Pope put Whom as a
correction in the place of Which: — Welcome sir Diomed, here is the Lady
Which for Anterior we deliuer you. Shakspeare, Troylus and Cressida, iv. 4.
109. ' Another French -trained faculty was once enjoyed by which, but is now
obsolete. This was the admirative or exclamative power, like the French quel,
quelle! In the following instances we should now put what instead oiwhich: —
And which eyen my lady had, Debonaire, good, glad, and sad. Geoffrey Chaucer,
Blauncke, 859. But which a visage had she thereto. Id. 895. Whether = which
of two? was in Saxon an adjectival pronoun, declined in the three genders;
whereas now it has not only lost its concordal faculty, but has almost
dropped out of knowledge as a pronoun altogether (537). In the seventeenth
century it was still used. Strafford, writing to Laud of his opening speech,
says: — Well spoken it is, good or bad. I cannot tell whether; but whatever
it was, I spake it not betwixt my teeth, but so loud and heartily that I protest
unto you I was faint withal at the time, and the worse for it two or three
days after. — J. B. Mozley, Essays, 'Lord Strafford,' p. 27. |
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2. ADJECTIVAL.— INDEFINITES. 463
Indefinite Pronouns. 494. Many keeps the place of the Saxon masig, except in
so far as it has received additions from Danish in the formulas many one,
many a one, many a: To many a man and many a maid Dancing in the chequered
shade. John Milton, f Allegro. Same. This word is not found (as a pronoun) in
AngloSaxon literature, and the question arises whence it came° to be so
familiar in English. Jacob Grimm thinks it was acquired through the Norsk
language, in which same is a prevalent pronoun. The Saxon word in its place
was ik wh,ch is so well known to us through Scottish literature As however
there are traces of its having existed at an earlier stage of Saxon, it is
possible that it had never died out, but that having been superseded by ilk
in the written language it had only fallen into temporary obscuritv. Many
genuinely nat.ve elements are found in modern English which are unknown in
Saxon literature, and it is only reasonable to conclude that the vocabulary
of the Saxon literature imperfectly represented the word-store of the nation
495. Own. Saxon agen, German eigen. This is an ancient participle of a Saxon
verb agax, to possess None no. None is from ne and one, Saxon xak. The
history of the shortened form of no is just the same as that of my, thy-. a ,
first it was a C0ncessj0n to the jn . tial cQn _ sonant of the following word,
thus in the Bible of ,6,i there was none other boat there,' and ' no man
knoweth whence. At this stage the relation of none, no, was like that of an,
a; but the former pair did not rest in that conditton as the latter did. The
form no has now occupied all |
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464 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
situations where it is adjectival; and none is kept for the substantival
function: as, 'Have you no other?' 'I have |
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2. ADJECTIVAL. — INDEFINITES. 46
5 The very presence of a true-hearted friend yields often ease to our grief.
— R. Sibbs, So?tles Conflict, 14; ed. 165S, p. 199. In the very centre or
focus of the great curve of volcanoes is placed the large island of Borneo. —
Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, ch. i. A choice illustration
may be had from a letter written in 1666 by the wife of the English
ambassador at Constantinople to her daughter Poll in England, which Poll has
been adopted by a rich relative, and is inclining to vanity l: — Whereas if
it were not a piece of pride to have y e name of keeping y r niaide, she y*
waits on y r good grandmother might easily doe as formerly vou know she hath
done, all y e business you have for a maide, unless as you grow old r you
grow a veryer Foole, which God forbid! Certain is an adjective which has been
presentive not long ago, but it is now completely pronominalised: — At
Clondilever, a farmer was returning from his usual attendance at the Roman
Catholic Chapel on Sunday, when he was stopped by five men with revolvers,
who warned him that if he interfered any further with a certain person as to
possession of a certain field, &c. — April 30, 1870. 498. Our last
adjectival pronouns shall be one and its derivative only. The only prime
minister mentioned in h: story whom his contemporaries reverenced as a saint.
— William Robertson, Charles V, Bk. I. a.d. 15 1 7. One has already been
largely spoken of in the former section, where it was seen to occupy an
important place. But its substantival function is after all less important in
the development of our language than its adjectival habit; because out of
this has grown that member which is the most distinctive perhaps that can be
fixed upon as the mark of a modern language. The definite article is found in
some of the ancient languages, as in Hebrew and Greek, but none 1 Of this
vain Poll, the great grand-daughter was Jane Austen, and it is in the Memoir
of the latter, by the Rev. J. E. Austen-Leigh (Bentley, 1 8 70), that this
admirable letter has been published. Hh |
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466 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP. of
them had produced an Indefinite Article. The general remark has already been
made in an earlier chapter, that it is in the symbolic element we must seek
the distinctive character of the modern as opposed to the ancient languages.
And we may appeal to the indefinite article as the most recent and most
expressive feature of this modern characteristic. In the Greek of the New
Testament there are certain indications (known to scholars) of something like
an indefinite article. In its adjectival use this pronoun is generally set in
antithesis to another) as, — Yf one Sathan cast out another. — Matt. xii. tr.
Coverdale, 1535. Out of this has been produced the indefinite article. It has
not sprung directly from the numeral one, but from that word after it has
passed through the refining discipline of a pronominal usage. The old
spelling of the numeral was an; and this ancient form is preserved in the
article an Or a. This gives us occasion to remark that old forms are often
preserved in the more elevated functions, while the original and inferior
function has admitted changes. 499. Having thus indicated the sources of our
two articles, let us observe that they still carry about them the traces of
their extraction. The magnifying quality of the demonstrative that has been
noticed above. Its descendant the definite article retains something of this
ancestral quality. We all know how the ceremonious The adds grandeur to a
name, and how all titles of office and honour are jealously retentive of this
prefix. On the other hand, the indefinite article, which is descended from
the littlest of the numerals, exercises a diminishing effect, as in the
following: — |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (l) FLAT. 46 J
This little life-boat of an earth, with its noisy crew of a mankind, and all
their troubled history, will one day have vanished. — Thomas Carlyle, Essays;
Death of Goethe. These minute vocables are the real ' winged words ' of human
speech; or, to speak with more exactness, they are the wings of other words,
by means of which smoothness and agility is imparted to their motion. It is
in the articles that the symbolic element of language reaches one of its most
advanced points of development; and it is not by means of these alone, but by
means of that whole system of words of which these are eminent types, that
the modern languages when compared with the ancient are found to excel in
alacrity and sprightliness. |
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468 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP. The
examples which follow may therefore be considered as a continuation of the
corresponding group in the section of nounal adverbs, and differing from them
only in the degree of sublimation. All. A pronominal adverb of great delicacy
and power: Through the veluet leaues the winde, All vnseene, can passage
finde. Loues Labour's lost, iv. 3. . . . feeling that my praise of Harvey has
been all too feeble. — George Rolleston, The Harveian Oration, 1873, p. 90.
Yond, yon, yonder. 492. Pro. The fringed Curtaines of thine eye aduance, And
say what thou see'st yond. W. Shakspeare, The Tempest, i. 2. 408. Adam.
Yonder comes my Master, your brother. As You Like It, i. I. 28. 501. Up. This
is clearly a presentive word so long as the original idea of elevation is
preserved. But it passes off into a more refined use, a more purely mental
service, and then we call it no longer a noun but a pronoun. The instance of
breaking-up is an interesting one. It is one of those in which the flat
adverb has attached itself very closely to the verb, and has with the verb
attained a peculiar appropriation of meaning. This expression now is apt to
suggest the holidays of a school-boy, but in the sixteenth century it was the
proper expression for burglary: — If a thiefe bee found breaking vp. — Exodus
xxii. 2. Suffered his house to be broken vp. — Matthew xxiv. 43. If he beget
a sonne that is a breaker vp of a house. — Ezekiel xviii. 10 (margin). Mr.
Froude quotes a letter of the reign of Queen Elizabeth j in which a burglary
is confessed in these terms:. — |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (i) FLAT. 469
With other companions who were in straits as well as myself, I was forced to
give the onset and break up a house in Warwickshire, not. far from Wakefield.
— History, vol. xi. p. 28. An old ship is sold ' to be broken up,' and akin
to this we find the substantive a break-up: — The death of a king in those
days came near to a break-up of all civil society. — E. A. Freeman, Norman
Conquest, ch. xxi. There is a rich variety of expressions in which up figures
in the character which belongs here; e. g. to be ' knocked up/ ' done up,' '
patched up,' to be ' up to a thing,' ' up with a person,' ' keeping it up
late,' ' open up ' 503. The verb to come up is equivalent to coming into
notice, or even into being; and in the following quotation it translates
eyevero '. — As for wisedome what she is, and how she came vp, I will tell
you. — Wisedome of Solomon, vi. 22. At length it becomes a mere symbol of
emphasis. In Rom. vi. 13, 'yield yourselves unto God,' it is proposed by
Bishop Ellicott to restore a certain lost emphasis by the correction, 'yield
yourselves up to God.' Still. In the next examples the reader may notice that
'still run' and 'still to move' would be pure stultifications if the word
still were taken in its original and presentive signification of motionless
stillness. This affords a sort of measure of the symbolic change that has
passed over the word. Having past from mj hand under a broken and imperfect
copy, by frequent transcription it still run {sic) forward into corruption. —
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Preface. They are left enough to live on, but
not enough to enable them still to move in the society in which they have
been brought up. — John BoydKinnear. Woman's Work, p. 353. 502. Rather. This
word may serve as an illustration of the grounds on which we assign these
words to the pro |
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47° VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
nominal category; In an interesting letter from Sir Hugh Luttrell, in the
year 1420, we have this word in its presentive sense. He is in France, and he
is displeased that certain orders of his have not been carried out, and he
hints that if his commands are not fulfilled, he is alive, and ' schalle come
home, and that rather than some men wolde,' that is to say, he shall be at
home earlier than would be agreeable to some people. Rather is the
comparative of an obsolete adjective rathe, which signified ' early.' It is
found once in Milton, Lycidas, 142: — Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken
dies, The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine. Now compare the way in which
we habitually employ this word, and a plainer example could hardly be found
of the distinction between the nature of the noun and that of the pronoun.
The word is so common that we can hardly read a paragraph in any daily or
weekly article without coming across it, and probably more than once. He
fails to be truly pathetic because we do not see the agony wrung out of a
strong man by the inevitable wrongs and sorrows of the world, but the easy
yielding of a nature that rather likes a little gentle weeping. Mr. Pickwick,
with his love of mankind stimulated with a little milk-punch, is not the most
elevated type of philanthropy, though it is one which is rather prevalent at
the present day. In these respects Mr. Dickens's influence tended rather
towards a softening of the moral fibre than towards strengthening it. — July
16, 1870. Too. This is an Ablaut-variety of the preposition to: Spake I not
too truly, O my knights? Was I too dark a prophet when I said To those who
went upon the Holy Quest, That most of them would follow wandering fires,
Lost in the quagmire? Alfred Tennyson, The Holy Grail. 503. So. This famous pronominal
factor, which has already been spoken of in both the previous sections, must
come in here likewise: — ■ |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (i) FLAT. 471
And he was competent whose purse was so. William Cowper, The Time-Piece. A
declaration so bold and haughty silenced them and astonished their
associates. The presentive idea to which this so points back may be found by
reference to Robertson's Charles the Fifth, Bk. I. anno 15 16, and the
abruptness of the clause as it stands gives a measure of the pronominal
nature of the adverb so. further. Or dwells within our hidden soul Some germ
of high prophetic power, That further can the page unveil, And open up the
future hour. G. J. Cornish, Come to the Woods, and Other Poems, lxxiii. Jump.
In goodnes therefore there is a latitude or extent, whereby it commeth to
passe that euen of good actions some are better then other some; whereas
otherwise one man could not excell another, but all should be either
absolutely good, as hitting jumpe that indiuisible point or center wherein
goodnesse consisteth; or else missing it they should be excluded out of the
number of wel-doers. — Richard Hooker, Of the Laws, &c. I. viii. 8. And
bring him iumpe, when he may Cassio finde. Othello, ii. 3. 369. For this
adverb the editors substitute /mj/. In the following quotation from the First
Folio, the old Quartos have jump: — Mar. Thus twice before, and iust at this
dead houre, With Martiall stalke, hath he gone by our Watch. Hamlet, i. 1.
65. just. How much of enjoyment life shows us, just one hair's breadth beyond
our power to grasp. — The Bramleighs, ch. xxxi. solid. 4 You don't mean that?
' • I do, solid! ' (Leicestershire.) |
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47 2 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
some, much. Suppose a man's here for twelve months. Do you mean to say he
never comes out at that little iron door?-He may walk some, perhaps .-not
much.— Charles Dickens, in Foster's Life, ch. xxi. It is not necessary to the
Flat Adverb that it should consist of a single word, though it generally does
so. Such adverbs as that time, no thynge, the right way, the wrong way, the
ivhile must be placed here. thai time, no thynge. Ireland bat tyme was bygged
no pynge Wvp hous ne toun, ne man wonynge. R. Brunne's Chronicle (Lambeth
MS.). Translation.-/^^ at that time was not-at-all built with house nor town,
nor man resident. He said he loved and was beloved no thing. Canterbury
Tales, 11,258. Next we have the adverb nothing in one word, as 'nothing
loth,' ' nothing doubting.' Here we must, at least provisionally, and without
speculation on their origin, put the adverbs of affirmation, yea and>w,
Saxon ge and gese. The following is from Dr. Bosworth's Parallel Gospels,
Mattheiv v. 37: — Gothic, 360. Wycliffe, 1389. Tyndale, 1526. l6ll. Sivaith
than But be 5 oure But your com- But let your com Siyaith tnan ', ea . mU nicacion
shalbe municationbee Yea, ^"e ZtZ ' Ye, ye; Nay, nay. yea; Nay, nay.
Matthew xi. 9: — Tr . ... . 5. T seie to Ye.Isayevnto Yea, I say vnto Yai,
qiba izvis. 3?> l seie IU ' ' you. y° u - y0U * 504. Next we come upon a
member which is inconsiderable in its bulk, unimposing in its appearance, and
which is inconspicuous by the very continuousness of its presence; |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (l) FLAT. 473
but yet one which covers with its influence half the realm of language, which
involves one of the most curious of problems, and which raises one of the
most important questions in the whole domain of philological speculation: I
mean the apparatus of Negation. It may be out of our reach to attain to the
primitive history of the negative particle; but if we are to judge of its
source by the track upon which it is found, if origin is to be judged of by
kindred, if the unknown is to be surmised by that which is known, it is in
this portion of the fabric of speech — namely in the flat pronounadverbs —
that we must assign its birthplace to the negative particle. The negative
particle in our language is simply the consonant n. In Saxon it existed as a
word ne, but we have lost that word, and it is now to us a letter only, which
enters into many words, as into no, not, nought, none, never. In French,
however, this particle is still extant as a separate word; as ' Je ne vois
pas/ 505. The following parallel quotations exhibit this particle both in its
simple state, and also in combinations, some familiar, some strange to us: —
Anglo-Saxon, 995. Wycliffe, 1389. Ne geseah naefre nan man God, No man euere
sy3 God, no but buton se an-cenneda sunu hit cySde, the oon bigetun sone,
that is in the se is on his faeder bearme. And ftaet bosum of the fadir, he
hath told out. is Johannes gewitnes, Sa fta Judeas And this is the witnessing
of John, sendon hyra sacerdas and hyra dia- whanne lewis senten fro Jerusalem
conas fram Jerusalem to him, ftaet hi prestis and dekenys to hym, that
acsodon hyne and "8us cwaedon, Hwaet thai schulden axe him, Who art
thou? eart iSii? And he cydde, and ne And he knowlechide, and denyede wid">uc,
and Sus cwaep, Ne eom ic not, and he knowlechide, For I am na Crist. And hig
acsodon hine and not Crist. And thei axiden him, Sus cwaedon, Eart ou Elias?
And What therfore? art thou Elye? he cwaep Xe eom ic hit. Da cwaedon And he
seide, 1 am not. Art thou hi, Eart ftu witega? And he and- a prophete? And he
answeride, wyrde and cwaep, Nic. Nay. St. John, i. 18-21, Bosworth's Gospels.
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474 v 111 ' THE PR° N0UN group.
506. In Anglo-Saxon the particle ne was used not only for the simple
negative, as in the above quotation, but likewise as our nor: and both of
these uses continued to the fourteenth century. Thus, in the Vision of Piers
the Plowman, Prologue 174: — Alle bis route of ratones ■ to bis reson thei assented Ac bo be belle was ybou 5 t ■ and on be be^e hanged, Pere newas ratonn in alle be ronte ■ for alle be rewme of Fraunce, Pat dorst haue ybounden be belle ■ aboute be cams nekke Ne hangen it aboute be cattes hals ■ al Engelonde to Wynne. 507. In Chaucer we find the ne in both senses. The following
examples are all from the Prologue. ne = not. He neuere yit no vilonye ne
saide. (1. 70.) That no drop ne fell upon hir breste. (1. 13 *•) So that the
wolf ne made it not miscarie. (L 5 T 3-) ne = nor. Ne wete hir fyngres in hir
sauce depe. (1. 129.) Ne that a monk whan he is recheles. (1. 179.) Ne was so
worldly for to haue office. (I. 292.) Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne.
(1. 5 1?-) Ne maked him a spiced conscience. (1. 526.) ne in both senses. But
he ne lefte nought for rayn ne thondre. (1. 49 2 -) When ne as a simple
negative had been superseded by not, it still continued in the sense of nor,
and thus we find it in Spenser, The Faery Queene, i. 1. 28:— Then mounted he
upon his Steede againe, And with the Lady backward sought to wend. That path
he kept which beaten was most plaine, Ne ever would to any byway bend, But
still did follow one unto the end The which at last out of the wood them
brought. So forward on his way (with God to frend) He passed forth, and new
adventure sought: Long way he travelled before he heard ot ought. |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (i) FLAT. 475
508. Jacob Grimm would distinguish the former ne from the latter, writing the
simple negative as tie, and the equivalent of ' nor' as ne. This he educes
from comparison of the collateral forms, such as nth in Gothic for ' nor.' It
is some confirmation of Grimm's view, that the?ie to which he gives the long
vowel, outlived the other, and that it took so much longer time to become
merged in newer forms. This is in itself an argument for the probability of
its having been a weightier syllable. 509. Another form of this negative was
the prefix un-, which has lived through the Saxon and English period without
much change. 606 a. It has always been a peculiarly expressive formula, and
often strikingly poetical. ungrene. Folde waes J)a gyt Graes ungrene, garsecg
fceahte. Caedmon, Il6. The field was yet-whiles With grass not green; ocean
covered all. Indeed, it is a very great factor in Anglosaxon. It stands in
places where we have lost and might gladly recover its use, and where at
present we have no better substitute than the clumsy device of prefixing a
Latin non. In the Laws of I?te, we have the distinction between landowners
and non-landowners expressed by land dgende and un land dgende. In Chaucer
and in the Ballads we meet with ' unset steven' for chance- meeting, meeting
without appointment. Gawin Douglas, in The Palace of Honour, written in 1501,
ranks Dunbar among the illustrious poets, and adds that he is yet undead: '
Dunbar yit undeid.' unborrowed. Wi'.h orient hues, unborrowed of the sun. —
Gray. |
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47 6 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
510. This N-particle is not limited to the Gothic family. It appears in Latin
ne, non, and in- the negative prefix so well known in our borrowed Latin words,
as indelible, intolerable, invincible, inextinguishable. In Greek it appears
in the prefix an-, as in our borrowed Greek words, anecdote untold before,
anodyne which cancels pain, anomaly unevenness, anonymous unnamed. There is
something strange and fascinating about this faculty of negation in language.
It has been often asserted that there is nothing in speech of which the idea
is not borrowed from the outer world. But where in the outer world is there
such a thing as a negative? Where is the natural phenomenon that would
suggest to the human mind the idea of negation? There are, it is true, many
appearances that may supply types of negation to those who are in search of
them. They who are in possession of the idea of negation may fancy they see
it in nature, in such antitheses as light and shade, day and night, joy and
sorrow. But they only see a reflection of their own thought. There is no
negative in nature. All nature is one continued series of affirmatives; and
if this is too rigid, it is so only because the very term ' affirmation ' is
a relative one, and implies negation: in other words, the expression is
improper only because of the lack of such a foil in nature as negation
supplies in the world of mind. Negation is a product of mind. The first crude
hint of it is seen in the mysterious analogies of instinct. A horse that has
put his head into his manger and found nothing there but chaff, gives a toss
and a snort that are strongly suggestive of negation. It is a case of
expectation baulked. The negative in speech seems to be of this kind. Man is
essentially a creature of special pursuits and limited aims. Everything in
the world but that which he is at the time in |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (l) FLAT. 477
search of is a Nay to him. Call it the smallness and narrowness of his
sphere, or call it the divine, the creative, the purposeful, which out of the
vast realm of nature carves for itself a route, a course, a direction — it is
to this intentness of man that every obstacle, or even every neutral and indifferent
thing, becomes contrasted with his momentary bent, and awakens the sense of a
Negative in his mind. 511. The last great feature that rose in our path was
the Indefinite Article. Nothing could be easier to understand how it came and
what it was derived from; indeed, it seems the most obvious and natural thing
in the world. One might almost imagine it to be unavoidable. And yet it is a
rare possession, and a peculiar feature of modern languages. On the other
hand, the Negative is exceedingly mysterious in its nature and sources, and
yet it seems to be common to all human speech, and to be as familiar at the
earliest stage of primitive barbarism, as in the most cultured languages of
the civilised world. I have never heard of a language that had no negative.
But I have heard of native dialects in Australia, in which the negatives have
been selected as the features of distinction, and have set the names by which
the races named themselves, and were known to others 1: just as the two old
dialects of the |
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47^ VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
French language were distinguished by their several affirmatives, and were
called Langue d'oil and Lengua cCoc. 512. Negation then being a sentient
product, a subjective thing at its very root, we ask with curiosity out of
what materials its formula was first made. Of this I have no opinion whatever
to offer. But of the probable history of the N-formula I will boldly give my
own notion, not so much from confidence in its certainty, as for the
incidental illustration which will thus be called out. My conjecture is, that
our N-particle is the relic of some such a word as one, or an, or any, three
words which, as the student knows, are radically identical. I conceive that
of the primitive formula of negation we know nothing, or only know that it
has perished. Like the primitive oak, it has passed away; but it has left
others instinct with its organism. Men are markedly emphatic in denial, and hence
such formulas as not one, not any, not at all, not a bit, not a scrap, not in
the least. See how any echoes back, and that with an emphasis, the antecedent
negative: — We come back to Sir Roundell Palmer's suggestion, and repeat the
inquiry whether a majority is never to be allowed any rights or privileges?
March 26, 1870. Hence too, in French, the pas and point, which back up the
negation, also rien and aucun and jamais, and other indifferent words which
by long contact with the negative, like steel from the company of the
loadstone, have got so instinct with the selfsame force that they often
figure as negatives sole. Thus pas encore, point du tout; while the other
three are so well known as negatives, that when they stand alone they are
hardly ever anything else. Yet none of these words possess by right of
extraction the slightest negative signification. 513. The fact seems to be
that the word which is added |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (i) FLAT. 479
for the sake of emphasis, comes to bear the stress of the function by the
mere virtue of its emphasis, and often ends by supplanting its principal. As
in French we see but one or two extant relics of negation without the
subjoined adverb, and as the subjoined adverb has in many instances grown
into a recognised negative in its own right, so there is every reason to
apprehend that but for the conservative influences of literature, the ne
would have been by this time very much nearer to vanishing from the languages
than it actually is. And, had this happened, it would have been only a
repetition of that process in which I conceive ne to have formerly borne the
converse part of the action. Ne is probably the relic of some adverbial
pronoun, which at first served a long apprenticeship under some still more
ancient and now quite forgotten negative, of whose function it long bore the
stress and emphasis, until at length it became the sole substitute. 514. The
Welsh dim, which means ' no,' ' none,' is well known in the familiar answer
dim Saesoneg, which means * no Saxon,' or, 'I don't speak English.' Now this
word dim is merely the word for thing. Fob means ' every/ and pob ddim is the
Welsh for c everything.' Thus, in modern Greek, the negative 8ev is the relic
of ovdev, ' not one ': the not has perished, and the one is now the negative.
As a further illustration it may be added that it is common for rustic
arithmeticians to call the tenth cipher, the Zero or Nought, by the name of
Ought, thus retaining only that part of the word which is purely affirmative
by extraction. Nought is an abbreviation for nan-wuht, ' no-whit '; and the
verbal negative not is but a more rapid form of nought. The answer No! is a
curt form of none, Saxon nan, and is plainly a Flat Adverb. |
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4 Hq VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
la) Of the Flexional Pronoun-Adverbs. B16 Under this head come such old
familiar forms a, hen there where, when, then, henee, whenee, how, why,
father S^hich are ancient flexional forms that sprang from nronouns of the
substantival and adjectival classes. The HdnTof some of these to their origin
is a matter of obleure antiqmt,: others are clear; hut the enquiry belongs
rather to Saxon than to English philology. Jfve search back into the growth
of these, we shah find that h y a e old cases, genitive, dative, accusative,
ablauve. F o "stance, why is an old ablative; and so also , rs tke when
" sav ' so much the better,' like the Latm eo Th s » lonj the
demonstratives what wky is among the relatwes, and its old form is thi or Of,
487. Tt„t these Cases are now obscure, and the omy au |
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (2) FLEXIONAL.
481 a preposition, as if forming a link of transition between these adverbs
and those of the third section -.—hereabout, hereafter, hereat, herebefore,
hereby, herein, hereinbefore, hereinto, hereof, hereon, hereout, hereto,
heretofore, hereunder, hereunto, hereupon, herewith, herewithal; thereabout,
thereabouts, thereafter, thereafterward H. Coleridge Glossary, thereagainst
Id., thereat, thereby, therefore, therefrom, therehence Coleridge, therein,
thereinto, thereof, thereon, thereout, thereover Coleridge, therethrough Id.,
thereto, thereunto, thereupon, therewith, therewithal, therewilhout
Coleridge; whereabout, whereabouts, whereas, whereat, whereby, wherefore,
wherein, whereinto, whereof, whereon, wherethrough Wisdom xix. 8, whereto,
whereunto, whereupon, wherewith, wherewithal. These Composites might be
presented in the form of a Declension, with a Nominative as true to history
as the English can provide: — N. and A. (h)it that what Gen. hereof thereof
whereof Dat. hereto thereto, -for(e) whereto, -for(e) Abl. herefrom therefrom
whereout Instr. hereby, -with thereby, -with whereby, -with Thereof is used
interchangeably with of it in Lev. xiv. 45; 1 Kings vii. 27. These adverbs,
so far as they are now used, are more highly symbolical than they once were.
In the following stave of the twelfth century we have thereby in the physical
sense of by that place: — Merie sungen Se muneches binnen Ely, Da Cnut ching
rew Serby: RoweS cnites near "Se lant, And here we '5es muneches sang.
Merry sang the monks in Ely, As king Canute rowed thereby: Row, boys, nigher
the land, And hear toe these monk*' so.-ig. i i |
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4 g 2 VIII. THE PRONOUN GROUP.
(3) Of the Phrasal Pronoun-Adverbs. 517. As the flexional character becomes
obscure, and the flexional signification is forgotten, symbolic «££*« in to
supplement the enfeebled case-endmg. Thus whence gets the larger
formula/^;" whence, as Genesis 111. 23 — , , l6ll. Miles Cover dale,
i53o- „ . T „ r „ A ,f. n t him * „f • Therefore the Lord (joa sent nun The
Lords God Ijt^ fo J t h h e t° m the garde n of Eden, to the garden of Eden,
to tyll y eartn, i ^ ^ ^ m whence he was whence he was taken. taken. The next
step is that the inflection is dispensed with, and the Pre^osition'only is
used, and so we get the complete ^Tlh-'lss belong all such adverbial phrases
as these: „ all, at once, after all, of course, in a way mjJUm a manner, in a
sort of way, in some sort, after a sort, most, at least, to the uttermost. at
next. When bale is att hyest, boote is att next. Sir Aldingar, 117. 518. Some
of these naturally develope with peculiar luxuriance after negative verbs and
as a complement to the negation: — Whereas in deede it tooeheth not monkerie,
nor maketh anything at all fori"; "eh matter.-Hogh Latimer, The
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3. ADVERBIAL. — (3) PHRASAL. 483
an arme of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the key of Dauid,
opening and no man shutting; they prayed to the Lord. — The Translators to
the Reader, 1611. Some of the phrasal adverbs have assumed the form of single
words, by that symphytism which naturally attaches these light elements to
each other. Hence the forms withal, whatever, nevertheless, notwithstanding,
likewise for ' in like wise.' contrariwise. Not rendring euill for euill, or
railing for railing: but contrarywise blessing. — 1 Peter iii. 9. at
leastwise. And every effect doth after a sort contain, at leastwise resemble,
the cause from which it proceedeth. — Richard Hooker, Of the Laws &c. I.
v. 2; also id. II. iv. 3. Upside-down is an adverb that has been altered by a
false light from up-so-down, or, as Wiclif has it, up-se-doivn, wherein so or
se is the old relative, 471, and the expression is equivalent to
up-what-down. He is traitour to God & turnej) be chirche upsedown. — John
Wiclif, Three Treatises, ed. J. H. Todd, Dublin, 1851, p. 29. Thus es this
worlde torned up-so-downe. Halliwell, v. Upsodoun. which way, that way. Marke
which way sits the Wether-cocke, And that way blows the wind. Ballad Society,
vol. i. p. 344. 519. The progress of modern languages, turning as it does in
great measure upon the development of the symbolic element, naturally sets
towards the production of grouped expressions, and this displays itself with
particular activity in the adverbial parts of language, whether they be
presentively or symbolically adverbial, that is to say, whether 1 i 2 |
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484 vnI - THE PR0N0VN GR0UP the
nounal or the pronounal character is prevalent. For the tendency of novelty
is to show itself prominently m the adverbs of either category, much on the
same prmc.ple as the extremities of a tree are the first to display the
newest movements of growth. The adverbs are the tips or extremities of all
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CHAPTER IX. THE LINK-WORD GROUP.
520. Under the title of Link-word I comprise all that vague and flitting host
of words which, starting forth from time to time out of the formal ranks of
the previous parts of speech to act as the intermediaries of words and
sentences, are commonly called Prepositions and Conjunctions. These two parts
of speech have a certain fundamental identity, combined with a bold
divergence in which they appear as perfectly distinct from one another. Their
distinction is based on the definition that prepositions are used to attach
nouns to the sentence, and conjunctions are used to attach sentences or
introduce them. The neutral ground on which they meet, and where no such
discrimination is possible, is in the generic link-words and, or, also, for,
but, than. 1. Of Prepositions. 521. The preposition may be defined as a word
that expresses the relation of a noun to its governing word. A few examples
must suffice for the illustration of a class of words so familiarly known and
so various in their shades of signification. The examples will be mostly of
the less common uses, as we shall consider the common uses to be |
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486 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
familiar to the mind of the reader; the object being to suggest the almost
endless variety of shades of which prepositions are susceptible. First, the
prepositions of the simpler and mostly elder sort. Flat Prepositions. At. Now
used only (in its restful sense) of time and place, but formerly also with
reference to persons: — I may take my leaue att you all! the flower of
Manhoode is gone from mee! Fjlodden Ffeilde, 171. ' for the great kindnesse I
haue found att thee, fforgotten shalt thou neuer bee. Eger and Grime, 1 343.
by. But say by me as I by thee, I fancie none but thee alone. Ballad Society,
vol. i. p. 244. I think he will consider it a right thing by Mrs. Grant as
well as by Fanny. — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ch. v. Where we should now
say ■ as regards Mrs. Grant/ or ' as far as Fanny is concerned/ 522.
By having originally meant about, acquired in certain localities a power of
indicating the knowledge of something bad about any person, insomuch that ' I
know nowt by him ' is provincially used for ' 1 know no harm of him.' And it
is according to this idiom that in our version St. Paul witnesses of himself,
' I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified': and the
expression occurs more than once in the curious book from which the following
is quoted: — |
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1. PREPOSITIONS. 487 Then I was
committed to a darke dungeon fifteene dayes, which time they secretly made
enquiry where I had lyen before, what my wordes and behauiour had beene while
I was there, but they could find nothing by me. — Webbe his trauailes, 1590.
But still exists as a preposition in the connections no one but, nothing but
— No two objects of interest could be more absolutely dissimilar in kind than
the two neighbouring islands, Staffa and Iona: — Iona dear to Christendom for
more than a thousand years; — Staffa known to the scientific and the curious
only since the close of the last century. Nothing but an accident of
geography could unite their names. — The Duke of Argyll, Iona, in it. for.
Wherefore getting out again, on that side next to his own House; he told me, I
should possess the brave Countrey alone for him: So he went his way, and I
came mine. — Pilgrim's Progress, facsimile ed. p. 35. like. Out of that great
past he brought some of the sterner stuff of which the martyrs were made, and
introduced it like iron into the blood of modern religious feeling. — J. C.
Shairp, John Keble, 1866. nigh. There shall no euell happen vnto the, nether
shall eny plage come nye thy dwellyng. — Psalm xc. 10 (1539). 523. Of is the
most frequent preposition in the English language. Probably it occurs as
often as all the other prepositions put together. It is a characteristic
feature of the stage of the language which we call by distinction English, as
opposed to Saxon. And this character, like so many characters really
distinctive of the modern language, is French. Nine times out of ten that of
is used in English it represents the French de. It is the French preposition
in a Saxon mask. The word of is Saxon, if by ' word' we understand the two
letters o andy^ or the sound they make when |
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488 IX. THE LINK-WORD GROUP.
pronounced together. But if we mean the function which that little word
discharges in the economy of the language, then the ' word ' is French at
least nine times out of ten. Where the Saxon of was used, we should now
mostly employ another preposition, as Alys us of yfle. Deliver us from evil.
The following from the Saxon Chronicle, a.d. 894, shews one place where we
should retain it, and one where we should change it: — Ne cum se here oftor
eall ute of The host came not all out of the baem setum ponne tuwwa. opre
sipe encampment oftener titan twice: once pa hie aerest to londe comon. ser
when they first to land came, ere the sio herd gesamnod wsere. opre sipe
Fierd was assembled: once when pa hie of paem setum faran wol- they would
depart from the encamp don. ment. Thus the Saxon of has to be sought with
some scrutiny by him who would find it in modern English. There was indeed
one use in which it already coincided with French de, namely, as the link
between the passive verb and the agent. Though we employ this Saxon of no
longer, though by has entirely superseded it in this function, our ears are
still familiar in Bible English with this passival of: — . When thou art
bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not downe in the highest rourae: lest a
more honourable man then thou be bidden of him. — Luke xiv. 8. Paul after his
shipwreck is kindly entertained of the barbarians. — Acts xxviii. (Contents.)
I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended
of Christ Iesus. — Phil. iii. 12. As before said, the common and current of
which is so profusely sprinkled over every page, is French in its inward
essence. Numerous as are the places in which this preposition now occurs, it
is less rife than it was. In the fifteenth |
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1. PREPOSITIONS. 489 and
sixteenth centuries the language teemed with it. It recurred and recurred to
satiety. This Frenchism is now much abated. I will add a few examples in
which we should no longer use it. How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?
Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 2. What time the Shepheard, blowing of his nailes. 3
Henry VI, ii. 5. 3. Doe me the favour to dilate at full, What haue befalne of
them and thee till now. Comedy of Errors, i. 1. 124. In the Fourth Folio this
last of is at length omitted. 524. Off, a modified of, is now little used
prepositionally; it is mostly reserved for such adverbial uses, as be off,
take off, wash off, write off, they who are far off. But this is a modern
distinction, and it exhibits one of the devices of language for increasing
its copia verborum. Any mere variety of spelling may acquire distinct
functions to the enrichment of speech. In Miles Coverdale's Bible (1535)
there is no sense-distinction between <?/~and off: as may be seen by the following
from the thirteenth chapter of the prophet Zachary: — In that tyme shall the
house off Dauid and the citesyns off Ierusalem haue an open well, to wash of
synne and vnclennesse. And then (sayeth the Lorjde off hoostes) I will
destroye the names of Idols out off the londe. On and its compound upon. . .
. and layde him on the Altar vpon the wood. — Genesis xxii. 9. upon. There
were slaine of them, vpon a three thousand men. — 1 Maccabees iv. 15. And if
any will judge this way more painfull, because that all things must be read
upon the book, whereas before by the reason of so often repetition they could
say many things by heart: if those men will weigh their |
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490 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
labour, with the profit and knowledge which daily they shall obtain by
reading upon the book, they will not refuse the pain, in consideration of the
great profit that shall ensue thereof. — Old Common Prayer Book, The Preface.
over. In a series of Acts passed over the veto of the President, Congress
provided for the assemblage in each Southern State of a constituent
Convention, to be elected by universal suffrage. 525. Till is from an ancient
substantive til, still flourishing in German in its rightful form as jiel,
and meaning goal, mark, aim, butt. Thus in some Saxon versified proverbs, Til
sceal on e'Sle domes wyrcean. Mark shall on patrimony doom-wards work. Two
Saxon Chronicles Parallel, p. xxxv. i.e. a borne or landmark shall be
admissible as evidence. For its prepositional use, see the quotation from R.
Brunne in 515. This preposition is now appropriated to Time: we say till
then, till to-morrow; but not //// there. Earlier it was used of Place, as in
the Passionate Pilgrim: — She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast
up till a thorn, And there gan the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was
great pity. This preposition enjoys a provincial function which is unknown in
literature: — Well, Hester, do you feel tired now that there are two sets of
lodgers in the house? Yes, Sir, till night I do. (Clevedon, Somersetshire.)
to ( = comparable to). A sweet thing is love, It rules both heart and mind;
There is no comfort in the world To women that are kind. Ballad Society, vol.
i. p. 320. |
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1. PREPOSITIONS. 491 With. This
preposition had a value in the fourteenth century which is unknown in Saxon
and which did not permanently root itself in English. It was used like the by
of passivity, as — Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave, Ther every wight,
save he, master or knave, Was with the leon frette, or he asterte? The Man of
Lawes Tale, 4895. i. e. was devoured by the lion before he could stir. The
isolation of this use at a particular point in our literature leads to the
supposition that it may have been Danish, especially as this is the use of
Danish ved to this day *. 526. The prepositions are more elevated in the
scale of symbolism than the pronouns. They are quite removed from all
appearance of direct relation with the material and the sensible. They
constitute a mental product of the most exquisite sort. They are more cognate
to mind; they have caught more of that freedom which is the heritage of mind;
they are more amenable to mental variations, and more ready to lend
themselves to new turns of thought, than pronouns can possibly be. To see
this it is necessary to stand outside the language; for these things have
become so mingled with the very circulation of our blood, that we cannot
easily put ourselves in a position to observe them. Those who have mastered,
or in any effective manner even studied Greek, will recognise what is meant.
To see it in our own speech requires more practised habits of observation.
But here I can avail myself of testimony. Wordsworth had the art of bringing
into play the subtle powers of English prepositions, 1 It is the preposition
used in title-pages before the author's name, as — 1 Bjowulfs Drape. Et
Gothisk Helte-Digt af Angel-Saxisk paa Danske Riim ved Nic. Fred. Sev.
Grundtvig, Praest. Kjobenhavn, 1 820.' Beowulf's Death. A Gothic Hero-Poem
from Anglo-Saxon, in Danish Rime, by N. F. S. Gruntvig, Priest. Copenhagen,
1820. |
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49 ^ IX > THE LINK-WORD
GROUP. and this feature of his poetry has not escaped the notice of Principal
Shairp. ' Here, in passing, I may note the strange power there is in his
simple prepositions. The star is on the mountain-top; the silence is in the
starry sky; the sleep is among the hills; the gentleness of heaven is on the
sea.' Studies in Poetry and Philosophy ', p. 74. Wordsworth dedicated his
Memorials of a Tour in Italy to his fellow-traveller, Henry Crabb Robinson.
The opening lines are: — * Companion! by whose buoyant spirit cheered, In
whose experience trusting day by day. It was originally written ' To whose
experience/ Mr. Robinson suggested that ' In ' would be better than ' To/ and
the poet, after offering reasons for a thing which can hardly be argued upon,
ended by yielding his own superior sense to the criticism of his friend.
Diary, 1837. Flexional Prepositions. 527. A second series of prepositions are
those in which flexion is traceable; for example, the genitival form, as
against, besides, sithence \ or comparison, as after, near, next. after. Full
semyly aftir hir mete she raughte. Prologue, 136. The vintners were made to
pay licence duties after a much higher scale than that which had obtained
under Ralegh. — Edward Edwards, Ralegh (1868), ii. p. 23. besides ( = beyond,
or contrary to). Besides all men's expectation. — Richard Hooker, Of the Laws
&c. Preface, ii. 6. sithence. We require you to find out but one church
upon the face of the whole earth, that hath been ordered by your discipline,
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I. prepositions. 493 by ours,
that is to say, by episcopal regiment, sithence the time that the blessed
Apostles were here conversant. — Richard Hooker, Of the Laws &c. Preface,
iv. I. near (comparative of nigh). The fruitage fair to sight, like that
which grew Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flam'd. Paradise Lost, x.
562. next (superlative). Happy the man whom this bright Court approves, His
sov'reign favours, and his country loves, Happy next him, who to these shades
retires. Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest, 235. 528. Perhaps we ought to range
in this series such a preposition as save, which having come to us through
the French sauf, from the Latin salvo, is still, at least to the perceptions
of the scholar, redolent of the ablative absolute. save. In one of the public
areas of the town of Como stands a statue with no inscription on its
pedestal, save that of a single name, volta. — John Tyndall, Faraday as a
Discoverer. Another instance of an old participle and a young preposition is
except. . . . with all her unrivalled powers of mendacity, she very rarely
succeeded in deceiving any one except her friends. — John Hosack, Mary Queen
of Scots, p. 35. PJirasal Prepositions. 529. A third series of prepositions
are the phrasal prepositions, consisting of more than one word. In the
development of this sort of preposition, we have been expedited by French
tuition. A constant and almost necessary element in their formation is the
preposition of. They are the analogues of such French prepositions as aupres
de, autour de, au lieu de; as |
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494 IX - THE L INK ' W0RD GR0UP
in lieu of. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and
canvas.Samuel Smiles, Self Help, ch. iv. aboard of. Every officer and man
aboard of her entertained unbounded confidence in her qualities.— Oct. II,
1870. long of; along of. All long of this vile Traitor Somerset. 1 Henry VI,
iv. 3. 33. Long all of Somerset, and his delay. Ibid. 46. A ruder form of
this preposition was long on or along on, still heard in country places.
Chaucer has— I can not tell whereon it was along, But wel I wot gret stryf is
us among. The Canones Yemannes Tale, 16398; ed. Tyrwhitt. out of. ... it
cannot be that, a Prophet perish out of Hierusalem.-L^e xiii. 33 in spighi of; in spite of As on
a Mountaine top the Cedar shewes, That keepes his leaues in spight of any
storme. 2 Henry VI, v. I. 206. in despight of And in despight of Pharao fell,
He brought from thence his Israel. John Milton, Psalm cxxxvi. Antecedent to
this was the genitival formula 'in my despite,' Titus Andronicus, i. a; 'in
your despite, Cymbehnt, i 7; ' in thy despite,' i Henry VI, iv. 1; ' in Love
s desp.te, John Keble, Christian Year, Matrimony. |
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1. prepositions. 495 for . . .
sake (with genitive between). Now for the comfortless troubles' sake of the
needy. — Psalm xii. 5. But if any man say vnto you, This is offered in
sacrifice vnto idoles, eate not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience
sake. — 1 Cor. x. 28. For Sabrine bright her only sake. Ballad Society, vol.
i. p. 386. 530. This is the formula throughout the English Bible, and
throughout Shakspeare with three exceptions, according to Mrs. Cowden Clarke.
In the above examples, troubles', his, conscience are in the genitive case.
The s genitival is not added to conscience, because it ends with a sibilant
sound, and where there are two sibilants already, a third could hardly be
articulated. The s of the genitive case is, however, often absent where this
reason cannot be assigned. Thus: — For his oath sake. — Twelfth Night, iii.
4. For fashion sake. — As You Like It, iii. 2. For sport sake. — 1 Henry IV,
ii. I. For their credit sake. — I Henry IV, ii. I. For safety sake. — Id. v.
1. For your health and your digestion sake. Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3.
Instead of this genitive the present use of the language substitutes an of
form, which occurs in Shakspeare three times: — for the sake of. And for the
sake of them thou sorrowest for. Comedy of Errors, i. 1. 122. If for the sake
of Merit thou wilt hear mee. Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7. 54. A little
Daughter, for the sake of it Be manly, and take comfort. Pericles, iii. 1.
21. |
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496 IX. THE LINK -WORD GROUP.
531. Through the phrasal prepositions we are able to see how the older
prepositions came into their place, and (to speak generally) how the symbolic
element sustains itself and preserves itself from the natural decay of
inanition. Here is a presentive word enclosed between two prepositions, as if
it had been swallowed by them, and were gradually undergoing the process of
assimilation. By and bye the substantive becomes obsolete elsewhere, and
lives on here as a preposition, with a purely symbolic power. Thus in despite
of becomes first despite of — ' despite of all controversy/ Measure for
Measure, i. 2; ' despite of death,' Richard II, i. 1; and then in a further
stage despite stands alone — ' despite his nice fence/ Much Ado, v. 1; '
despite thy victor sword/ Lear, v. 3; and in these latter cases the old
substantive despite is as purely a preposition as the French malgre'. And it
may be added that despite as a substantive is as good as obsolete, except in
poetry, but the prepositional use is well established. 2. Of Con-junctions.
532. Of all the parts of speech the conjunction comes last in the order of
nature. The office of the conjunction is to join sentences together, and
therefore it presupposes the completion of the simple sentence; and as a
consequence it would seem to imply the pre-existence of the other parts of
speech, and to be the terminal product of them all. It is essentially a
symbolic word, but this does not hinder it from comprising within its
vocabulary a great deal of half-assimilated presentive matter. This is a point
to which we shall return in the course of the section. The necessity for
conjunctions (other than and, or, also) does not arise until language has
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 497 of compound
sentences. Hence the conjunctions are as a whole a comparatively modern
formation. Almost all the conjunctions are recent enough for us to know of
what they were made. And indeed they may conveniently be arranged according
to the parts of speech out of which they have been formed. 533. Of the derival
of a conjunction from a preposition we have a ready instance in the old
familiar but, at first a preposition, compounded of by and out; in Saxon but
an, from be and utan. Others of the same character are for. For thou, for
thou didst view, That death of deaths, companion true. till The notice which
you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been
kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it;
till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want
it. — Samuel Johnson, to Lord Chesterfield. As there are a thousand thoughts
lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write,
so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it in his own breast. —
W. M. Thackerav, Esmond, Bk. II. ch. i. until. Shakspeare was quite out of
fashion until Steele brought him back into the mode. — W. M. Thackeray,
Esmond, Bk. II, ch. x. No character is natural until it has been proved to be
so.— W. S. Macleay, quoted by Professor Rolleston, Forms of Animal Life, p.
xxi. 534. Then there are conjunctions formed by the symphytism of a
preposition with a noun, as in the Shakspearian belike, which is pure
English, ox per adventure, which is pure French, ox perhaps, which is half
French and half Danish. In Chaucer, Knighfs Tale, 2488, we find the full
phrase out of which has been made the compressed form K k |
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498 IX. THE LINK-WORD GROUP.
because. But by the cause that they sholde ryse Bot be be cause bat bei
sholde rise Eerly for to seen the grete fight Erly for to seen be grete
fighte Vn to hir reste wenten they at night. Vnto her reste went bei att
nighte. Ellesmere MS. Lansdowne MS. In Caxton it appears as by cause: —
Wherfore by cause thys sayd book is ful of holsom wysedom and requysyte vnto
euery astate and degree, I haue purposed to enprynte it. — The Game of the
Chesse, a.d. 1474 (Preface). Divested of the old preposition, it is
provincially used in the short form of cause. I happen to be able to give an
authentic instance. In Ipplepen church there is an inscribed floor-stone, to
the memory of two infants, who died in 1683: — Mourn not for vs dear
Relatiues Caus We So earely left this Vale of Misery. Blesst Infants soonest
to their port arriue, The aged longer with the stormes do striue. A
conjunction formed from the reference of a preposition to a foregoing adverb
is too . . . to. I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat
and huzza to it as it passes in its gilt coach. — W. M. Thackeray, Esmond,
Bk. I. p. 30. 535. But the great source of conjunctions is the Pronoun. Here
the ancient relative pronoun so is one of the most frequent factors, both in
its own form and in its compound also; and in as, condensed from also, or
rather from ealswa, i. e. entirely, altogether so, quite in that manner. In
the following line of Chaucer, Prologue 92, we see the second as already
mature, while the first is still in the course of formation. We see al and so
in various stages of approximation until their final coalition in the form of
as. He was al so fresche as is be moneb of Mai. Lansdowne MS. |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 499' He was
also fressh as ys pe moneth of May. Petworth MS. He was als freissch as is pe
monp of May. Corpus MS. He was as frosch as is the monyth of May. Cambridge
MS. 536. So and as, severally considered, are adverbial pronouns; and it is
by their inherent capacity of standing to each other as antecedent and
relative that they together constitute a conjunction. so . . . as. With a
depth so great as to make it a day's march from the rear to the van, and a
front so narrow as to consist of one gun and one horseman. — A. W. Kinglake,
Invasion of the Crimea, vol. iii. ch. ix. as . . . so . . . and so. As great
men flatter themselves, so they are flattered by others, and so robbed of the
true judgment of themselves. — R. Sibbs, Soules Conflict, ch. xiv, ed. 1658,
p. 201. The use of as for a conjunction-sole is now disallowed, and is in
fact one of our standard vulgarisms. It is seen in the familiar saw, '
Handsome is as handsome does.' Yet this use occurs in the Spectator, No. 508
— in the course of a correspondent's letter it is true, but the correspondent
is a young lady, and writes like one: — Is it sufferable, that the Fop of
whom I complain should say, as he would rather have such-a-one without a
Groat, than me with the Indies? SO . . . that. Rich young men become so
valuable a prize, that selection is renounced. — John Boyd-Kinnear, Woman s
Work, p. 353. then = than. A wise man will make better use of an idle
pamphlet, then a fool will do of sacred Scripture. — John Milton,
Areopagitica. K k 2 |
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500 IX. THE LINK-WORD GROUP.
537. Where, equivalent to whereas: Where in former times the only remedy for
misgovernment real or supposed was a change of dynasty, the evil is now corrected
at no greater cost than that of a ministerial crisis. Where in former times
serious evils were endured because the remedy was worse than the disease,
trivial inconveniences now excite universal complaints and meet with speedy
remedy. Where formerly ministers clung to office with the tenacity of
despair, and rival statesmen persecuted each other to the death, the defeated
premier now retires with the reasonable prospect of securing by care and
skill a triumphant return; and both he and his successors mutually entertain
no other feelings than those to which an honourable rivalry may give rise.
Where formerly every subsidy was the occasion of the bitterest contention,
&c. — W. E. Hearn, The Government of England, 1867, P- I2 ^ Whether. The pronominal use of
this interesting word is now antiquated, and it is used only as a
conjunction: — Whether they wil heare, or whether they will forbeare. —
Ezekiel ii. 5. Whether it were I or they. — 1 Cor. xv. II. 538. To this same
pronominal group belong the twin conjunctions how and why, which are from hwi
and hu, two forms of the instrumental case of hwa who. Both forms have been
retained, with useful discrimination of meaning. How has acquired a flavour
of romance from its often ushering in a narrative: ' us secgao* bee hu . . .'
Books tell us how . . .: ' gehyrdon hu seo halige spraec,' They heard how the
heroine spake. The sister-form why, though best known as an Interrogative
Adverb, is also a Conjunction, and one of a fine and cunning fabric. It is
especially the conjunction of dialogue and repartee, and may be compared to a
certain wreathed action of yap, well known to those who read Greek. In tone
it is slighter than the why of question. The following instances are all from
As You Like It, and if the reader seek them, he can hardly fail to light on
others in his search: — Orl. Why whither, Adam, would'st thou have me go? |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 501 Orl. Why
how now, Adam? Jag. Why 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. Ros. Why then
'tis good to be a post. But this exquisite symbol has other uses. In
rhetorical argument it is a sort of signal-flag that a conclusion is coming,
as — There then; How then? What then? Let me see wherein My tongue hath'd
wrong'd him: if it do him right, Then he hath wrong'd himself; if he be free,
Why then my taxing like a wild goose flies, Unclaim'd of any man. 539. Of all
the elements that go to make conjunctions, none come near the pronouns in
importance. Often where other parts of speech get a footing in this office,
it has been by pronominal ushering. Thus, in the case of directly, quoted
below (541), it is clear that this word originally came in as an adverb to a
pronominal conjunction: it was at first ' directly as ' or ' directly that/
Of the conjunctions which are of pronominal extraction the so and the as are
our Saxon inheritance, whereas the conjunctional use of who, whose, whom,
which, what, whence, are French imitations. In the Latin language, and in
those which spring from it, the relative pronoun is the chief conjunction. In
French, for example, qui and que play a part which their equivalents in
English do not come near. Indeed, the degree in which these relatives act as
conjunctions is almost the touchstone of a romanised style. In Latin we
everywhere see such sentence-links as the following: qui, quoB, quod, qua:
quum ita sint, quo facto, quibus peractis, quod si, quare, quum. 540. We
turned who and which from interrogatives into relatives under French
influence, as already shewn (472), and then it followed that these words took
a place also as |
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5C 2 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
conjunctions, just as the French qui and que do. Moreover, we accepted also
the symbol-cases of these words as conjunctions, namely, of whom, to whom, in
which, and we began to say, ' There is the man to whom I sent you,' ' This is
the thing of which I spoke '; instead of ' The man I sent you to,' ' The
thing I spoke of.' This Romanesque form of speech was well established among
us in the seventeenth century, and it still retains its place, though there
has been a reaction, which Addison has the credit of. It often happens that
when foreign idioms are admitted into a language, they make awkward
combinations with the native material, especially in unskilled hands. So this
relative conjunction is always getting into trouble. It is alleged that even
the correspondents of first-class newspapers will write and who, and which,
and where, inappropriately. Of course there is a position in which such an
expression is unimpeachable. If two clauses, each of them beginning with
which, have to be combined by and, the second clause will naturally begin
with and which. But this will not justify examples like the following: — In
the afternoon the Flower Show will be held in the gardens of Worcester
College, and at which the band of the Coldstreams will assist; . . . . At
night Miss Neilson the well-known actress, and who has obtained in a very
short time a considerable reputation as a reader, will give a dramatic
reading from the Ingoldsby Legends, Tennyson, &c, in the Clarendon-rooms,
and where one may expect a crowded audience. 541. Conjunctions from nounal
adverbs: — directly. The religious difficulty, directly you come to practice,
becomes insignificant. — House of Commons, June 25, 1870. er, or, ere, Saxon
jer. Forsaketh sinne or sinne you forsake. Canterbury Tales, 12,220. |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 503 Sometimes
two forms of the same word were combined, as or ere. Two long dayes journev
(Lords) or ere we meete. W. Shakspeare, King John, iv. 3. 20. At length the
second word was supposed to be ever: — And the Lyons had the mastery of them,
and brake all their bones in pieces or euer they came at the bottome of the
den. — Daniel vi. 24. nevertheless. I cannot fully answer this or that
objection, nevertheless I will persevere in believing. — J. Llewellyn Davies,
The Gospel and Modern Life, p. xiv. 542. Conjunctions from adjectives: —
least, modern lest. Lastly, followers are not to be liked, least while a man
maketh his traine longer, he maketh his winges shorter. — Bacon s Essays, ed.
W. Aldis Wright, P- 275. no more than. So hote he loved that by nightertale
He slep no more then doth the nightingale. Chaucer's Prologue, 98. 543.
Conjunctions formed from substantives. Of these, one has been noticed above
(534). Another is case, as in the following: — The world's a hive, From
whence thou canst derive No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings: But
case thou meet Some petty petty sweet, Each drop is guarded with a thousand
stings. Quarles's Emblems, Bk. I. No. 3. And while, the old substantive for '
time.' But, while his province is the reasoning part, Has still a veil of
midnight on his heart. William Cowper. |
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504 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
Substantives embodied between pronominal factors, as — what time as. Thou
calledst upon me in troubles, and I delivered thee: and heard thee what time
as the storm fell upon thee. — Psalm lxxxi. 7, elder version. Sith is an old
substantive for journey, road, turn; it is used as a conjunction: — . . .
sith thou hast not hated blood, euen blood shall pursue thee. — Ezechiel
xxxv. 6. Being iustified by faith, wee haue peace with God, and ioy in our
hope, that sith we were reconciled by his blood, when wee were enemies, wee
shall much more be saued being reconciled. — Romans v. Contents. 544.
Conjunctions formed of verbs, or containing verbs in their composition.
albee. Soone as my younglings cryen for the dam, To her will I offer a
milkvvhite lamb; Shee is my goddesse plaine, And I her shepherds swayne,
Albee forswonck and forswatt I am. Edmund Spenser, The Shepheards Calender,
April. albeit. Al be it that it is again his kind. G. Chaucer, Canterbury
Tales, 2453. howbeit. Howbeit (as evermore the simpler sort are, even when
they see no apparent cause, jealous notwithstanding over the secret intents
and purposes of wiser men) this proposition of his did somewhat trouble them.
— Richard Hooker, Of the Laws &c, Preface, ch. ii. 545. Among these, the
conjunctional use of the participle being, common enough in the seventeenth
century, is now obsolete. It is notoriously frequent in Pearson On the Creed
, as: — Now being the Creed comprehendeth the principles of our religion, — |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 505 For, being
every natural cause actually applied doth necessarily produce its own natural
effect, — — and being we have placed the formality of the object of all
belief in credibility, — Being then I have described the true nature and
notion of Belief, — Preface, and Article I. seeing. And one morn it chanced
He found her in among the garden yews, And said, • Delay no longer, speak
your wish, Seeing I must go to-day.' Idylls of the King. according. Their
abominations were according as they loved. — Hosea ix. 10. talk of. Talk of
the privileges of the Peerage, of Members' exemption from the Eighth Commandment,
of the separate jurisdiction secured on the Continent to soldiers, — what are
they all put together to a privilege like this? depend upon it. Depend upon
it. a good deal is lost by not looking round the corner. — Mrs. Prosser,
Quality Fogg's Lost Ledger. When a sentence is opened with No doubt, this
seems to claim a place among these verbal conjunctions, being a condensed
expression for ' There is no doubt that.' It has, however, a less emphatic
burden than would be conveyed by the latter formula: — No doubt a determined
effort would be made by many of those who are now engaged in these
occupations, to prevent the admission of females to them, and to keep up the
monopoly of sex. — Frederic Hill, Crime: its Amount, Causes, and Remedies,
1853; p. 86. 546. Here it may be objected — Do you call these words symbolic?
What does ' presentive ' mean, if such words as see, talk, depend, doubt, are
not presentive? In what sense can these belong to a group which is called
essentially symbolic? |
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506 IX. THE LINK-WORD GROUP.
This very contradiction troubled the author of Hermes, a famous book on
universal grammar, which was published in 1 75 1. He had pitched upon the
distinction of presentive and symbolic as the fundamental and essential
distinction of his universal grammar. He did not, indeed, use the terms; but
he spoke of words as (i) significant by themselves, or significant
absolutely, and (2) significant by association, or significant relatively.
When he treats of conjunctions, he regards them as belonging to the second
class, and yet he cannot shut his eyes to certain refractory instances. The
embarrassment of James Harris on this occasion became the sport of Home
Tooke, who published his Diversions of Pur ley in 1786. In his saucy manner
he sums up the doctrine of the Hermes as follows: — ■ Thus is
the conjunction explained by Mr. Harris: A sound significant devoid of
signification, Having at the same time a kind of obscure signification; And
yet having neither signification nor no signification, Shewing the attributes
both of signification and no signification; And linking a signification and
no signification together. Diversions of Purley, Part I. ch. vii. This is a
caricature, and we only avail ourselves of its exaggerated features, in order
to raise up before us in bolder relief the difficulty which we are here
confronting. 547. The answer seems to be this: — That the essential natural
of a conjunction (or of any other organic member of speech) discovers itself,
not in the recent examples of the class, but in those which have by long use
been purged of accidental elements. This will be clearer by an illustration
drawn from familiar experience. It is well known that many words in common
use are masked, that they do not express plainly the sense which they are
notwithstanding intended to convey. We do not always call a spade a spade. We
have recourse in certain |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 507 well-known
cases to forms of expression as distant from the thing meant as is any way
consistent with the intention of being understood. It will have struck every
observer that it becomes necessary from time to time to replace these
makeshifts with others of new device. In fact, words used to convey a veiled
meaning are found to wear out very rapidly. The real thought pierces through;
they soon stand declared for what they are, and not for what they half feign
to be. Words gradually drop the non-essential, and display the pure essence
of their nature. And the real nature of a word is to be found in the thought
which is at the root of its motive. As in such cases we know full well how
this true nature pierces through all disguise, casts off all drapery and
pretext and colour, and in the course of time stands forth as the name of
that thing which was to be ignored even while it was indicated, — even so it
is in the case now before us. 548. There are reasons why the speaker is not
satisfied with the old conjunctions, and he brings forward words with more
body and colour to reinforce the old conjunctions and give them a greater presence.
If these words continue for any length of time to be used as conjunctions,
the presentive matter which now lends them colour will evaporate, and they
will become purely symbolic. Of this we may be sure from the experience of
the elder examples. Even in such a conjunction as because, where the
presentive matter is still very plain, it has, generally speaking, no
existence to the mind of the speaker. It is not indeed a singular quality in
the conjunction, that being itself essentially symbolic, it should receive
accessions from the presentive groups. This is seen also in the pronoun and
in the preposition, and it is only as a matter of degree that the conjunction
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50 8 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
As far as observation reaches, the symbolic element is everywhere sustained
by new accessions from the presentive, and it is worthy of note that the
extreme symbolic word, the conjunction, which is chiefly supplied from groups
of words previously symbolic, seems to be the one which most eagerly welcomes
presentive material, as if desirous to recruit itself after its too great
attenuation through successive stages of symbolic refinement. 549. The
employment of conjunctions has greatly diminished from w r hat it once was,
as the reader may readily ascertain if he will only look into the prose of
three centuries back. The writings of Hooker, for example, bristle with
conjunctions 1 , many of which we have now learned to dispense with. The
conjunction being a comparatively late development, and being moreover a
thing of literature to a greater extent than any other part of speech, was
petted by writers and scholars into a fantastic luxuriance. It connected
itself intimately with that technical logic which was the favourite study of
the middle ages. Logic formed the base of the higher region of learning, and
was the acquirement that popularly stamped a man as one of the learned, and
hence it came that men prided themselves on their wherefores and there/ores,
and all the rest of that apparatus which lent to their discourse the prestige
of ratiocination. But this is now much abated, and the connection of
sentences is to a large extent left to the intelligence of the reader. Two or
three very undemonstrative conjunctions, such as if, but, for, that, will
suffice for all the conjunctional appliances of page after page in a well -
reasoned book. Often the word and is enough, even where more than mere
concatenation is intended, and this colourless link -word 1 As above, 544: '
howbeit . . . even when . . . notwithstanding.' |
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2. CONJUNCTIONS. 509 seems
invested with a meaning which recalls to mind what the and of the Hebrew is
able to do in the subtle department of the conjunction. Indeed, we may say
that we are coming back in regard to our conjunctions to a simplicity such as
that from which the Hebrew language never departed. The Book of Proverbs
abounds in examples of the versatility of the Hebrew and. Our but, as a
conjunction, covers the ground of two German conjunctions, fonbcrn and after.
If we look at Proverbs x. there is a but in the middle of nearly every verse,
equivalent to fonbcrn. These are all expressed in Hebrew by and. If we look
at i. 25, 33; ii. 22; iv. 18, we see but in the weightier sense of after, and
here again the simple and in the Hebrew. 550. In the close of the following
quotation, the and is equivalent to 'and yet' or 'and nevertheless.' In
Mecklenburg, Pommern, Pommerellen, are still to be seen physiognomies of a
Wendish or Vandalic type (more of cheek tban there ought to be, and less of
brow; otherwise good enough physiognomies of their kind): but the general
mass, tempered with such admixtures, is of the PlattDeutsch, Saxon, or even
Anglish character we are familiar with here at home. A patient stout people;
meaning considerable things, and very incapable of speaking what it means. —
Thomas Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Bk. II. ch. iv. In conversation we omit
the relative conjunction very usually; and poetry often does the same with
great gain to its freedom of movement: — For I am he am born to tame you,
Kate. Taming of the Shrew, ii. I. Where is it mothers learn their love? John
Keble. 551. When the bulkier conjunctions are used in the present day, or
when ordinary conjunctions are accumulated, an effect is produced as of
documentary solemnity. Thus Now therefore (Acts xxiji. 15), Now whereas
(Richard Hooker, Of the Laws,\\ 76. 5), notwithstanding however, &c. |
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510 IX. THE LINK- WORD GROUP.
This closes the analysis of the Parts of Speech, and prepares the way for the
structural analysis. Hitherto the elements of speech have been classified; it
remains to treat of their grouping. The task falls into the same two parts,
whenever an elaborate plan has to be analysed with a view to production or
reproduction. I witnessed the arrival of a pavement at the spot where it was
to be laid down, and as it was unloaded I saw that it was packed in sorts and
sizes, like with like. But as the work proceeded, the men took a piece from
this lot and a piece from that lot, and shewed them out on the ground near
their work, so as to compose partial groups in the order of the design. To
some such a grouped analysis do we now proceed. |
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OF SYNTAX. 552. Syntax is a
Greek word, signifying the order or array of words in a sentence. But the
term signifies something beyond its etymological contents. It signifies that
nexus between words which constitutes them Sense; a web of delicate
functional relations, apprehended not by the eye but by the mind. Syntax will
accordingly mean the presentation of the sentence in its constituent parts,
and the enquiry by what contrivances these parts are made to produce a
continuous and consistent signification. We shall find that there are three
kinds of instrumentality which are the most active in the production of this
effect. 553. The first of these is collocation, or the relative position of
words. So far as this agency is exerted, the parts of a sentence tell their
function by the mere order of their arrangement. This sort of syntax we call Flat.
The second is where the functions of the members of the sentence are shewn by
modifications in the forms of words. This is the Flexional Syntax. The third
is where the same relations are expressed by symbolic words. This is the
Phrasal Syntax. The analytical action of syntax resolves the sentence not |
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512 X. OF SYNTAX. into words,
but into parts of speech. The term Syntax is a necessary correlative of the
term Parts of Speech, inasmuch as the things represented by these several
terms have no existence apart from each other; — there is no Syntax but by
combination of Parts of Speech, and there is no Speechpart-ship but by the
analysis of Syntax. And for this reason many of the details which are
ordinarily comprised under the head of Syntax have already been disposed of
in the foregoing chapters on the Parts of Speech. Accordingly, we have in the
present chapter only to consider the salient points, and such as are of the
most essential value in the mechanism of the sentence; and these are
comprised in the above division, which will therefore constitute the plan of
this Chapter. 1. Of Flat or Collocative Syntax. 554. How important an element
mere position is in the structure of the English sentence, may readily be
seen by the contrast which appears if we consider how unimportant, or at
least secondary, the same element is in Latin. If we have to say that men
seek victual, the words by which this would be expressed in Latin are so
unaffected by the order of their arrangement that it is impossible to dislocate
the sentence. It is good in any order: — Homines quaerunt victum. Quaerunt
victum homines. Victum homines quaerunt. Homines victum quaerunt. Quaerunt
homines victum. Victum quaerunt homines. All these variations are possible,
because each word has its inflection, and that inflection determines the
relative office of |
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1. FLAT. 513 each word and its
contribution towards the meaning of the whole. But in English the sense
depends upon the arrangement, and therefore the order of the English sentence
cannot be much altered without detriment to the sense: — Men seek victual.
Cats like fish Boys love play. Fools hate knowledge. Horses draw carts.
Diamonds flash light. All these examples present us with one, and that the
simplest, scheme of a sentence: and in them we see that the sense requires
the arrangement of the words in the given order of collocation. 555. Each of
these three words is capable of amplification. In the first place the subject
may be amplified by an adjective; thus, — Hungry men seek victual. Wise men
desire truth. Healthy boys love play. This adjective has its proper
collocation. We have no choice whether we will say hungry men or men hungry.
The latter is inadmissible, unless it were for some special exigency, such as
might rise in poetry; and then the collocation would so far affect the
impression communicated, that after all it could not be called a mere
alternative, whether we should say hungry men or men hungry. The next thing
is the placing of the article. The article stands immediately before the
adjective: — The hungry man seeks victual. The healthy boy loves play. A wise
man desires truth. l1 |
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514 X. OF SYNTAX. This
amplification brings out to view an important consequence of the order last
observed. As we put our adjective before our substantive, it results that
when the article is put before both, it is severed from the substantive to
which it primarily appertains. The French, who can put the adjective either
before or after its substantive, have the means of keeping the article and
substantive together in most cases where it is desirable. This is a trifle,
so long as it is confined to the difference between the wise man, a good man,
and / 'hom?ne sage, un homme bon. But then the adjective being capable of
amplification in its turn, the gap between the article and its substantive
may be considerably widened. An adverb may be put to the adjective, and then
it becomes the truly wise man, a really good man. 556. The severance between
the article and its noun had not in English extended beyond such examples as
these, until within the recent period which may be designated as the German
era. Our increased acquaintance with German literature has caused an
enlargement in this member of our syntax. We not unfrequently find a second
adverb, or an adverbial phrase, or a negative, included in the interval
between the article or pronoun and the substantive x; thus, — In that not
more populous than popular thoroughfare. — Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers,
ch. xii. And is it indeed true that they are so plied with the gun and the
net and the lime that the utter extinction of their species in these islands
may be looked upon as a by no means remote eventuality? There he puts down
the varied and important matter he is about to say, according to a large plan
and tolerably strictly carried out arrangement. — Translation from German. 1
In Spanish this structure was already ridiculed as strange and romantic by
Cervantes (1549-1617): — 'el jamas conio se debe alabado caballero D. Quijote
' — The never-enough-to-be-praised Don Quixote. — Ch. i.; translation by
Charles Jarvis. |
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1. FLAT. 515 This is now
sometimes used by highly qualified English writers. I have now travelled
through nearly every Department in France, and 1 do not remember ever meeting
with a dirty bed: this, I fear, cannot be said of our happily in all other
respects cleaner island. — Mr. Weld, Vacation in Brittany, 1866. Douglas, in
the Nenia, p. 10, is so far as I know the first who called attention to this
passage of our great poet [Hamlet, v. i], as illustrating the very commonly
to be observed presence of ' shards, flints, and pebbles,' in graves, into
which it is difficult to think they could have got by accident. — George
Rolleston, M.D., On Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon Sepulture. 557. This
expansibility of the noun applies equally to the subject and to the object;
that is to say, it may take place either before or after the verb, or even
both. It does not often happen that the two wings of the sentence are
expanded in the same manner, because the uniformity would not be pleasing.
But the same order rules on the one side as on the other; and variety is
sought only to avoid monotony. If we were speaking of the sense of liberty
which is nourished in a people by the habit of discussing and correcting the
laws which bind them, we might say, — Deliberation implies consent.
Continuous deliberation implies continuous consent. A continuous deliberation
implies a continuous consent. A continuous deliberation on the law implies a
continuous consent to the law. A continuous deliberation on the law by the
subject, implies a continuous assent to the law on the part of the subject. A
continuous deliberation on the law by the subject through the medium of
representation, implies a continuous assent to the law on the part of the
subject in his own proper person. A practically continuous deliberation . . .
implies an absolutely continuous assent, &c. When the accumulation
between the article (or pronoun) l1 2 |
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5l6 X. OF SYNTAX. and the
substantive becomes overcharged, the sentence recovers its equilibrium by
turning the qualifying phrase over to the other side. Instead of ' a
practically continuous deliberation ' we may say ' a deliberation which is
practically continuous'; and if we alter ' a tolerably strictly carried out
arrangement ' to ' an arrangement which is tolerably strictly carried out '
we relieve the phrase of some part of its turgidity. 558, And indeed we seem
to trace a recurrent inversion in the ordering of words in the Sentence. The
movement is so gradual, that to the national apprehension, and for all
purposes of grammar, the collocative habit is fixed. It is only if we look
across great tracts of time that we perceive the inversion. If we translate
the Latin verb ibo in the order of its elementary parts, it is, go will I:
but now all the great western languages say it in this order, / will go. The
general habit of the old Indo-European languages was to place the symbolic
words after their presentives, and it was out of this habit that terminal
flexion grew so widely prevalent. The modern languages put the pronouns and
prepositions before their verbs and nouns, and thus act as a counterpoise to
the ancient terminations. The Mcesogothic remains are not generally available
as independent evidence of ancient collocation, because they so largely obey
the order of the Greek original. For this reason I do not quote runa nemun
(94) and many such, which else would be to the point. But there is at least
one case of independent Mcesogothic structure. When a single Greek word is
resolved in translation into two or three words, we then see the native order
of arrangement so far as these two or three words are concerned, because it
cannot be guided by the Greek. In Matt. xi. 5, Ka6api£ovTai is rendered |
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1. FLAT. 517 ' hrainyai
wairthand,' i.e. 'clean become': and in verse 19, €biKai<l)6ri is thus
given — l uswaurhta gadomida warth,' i. e. 1 righteous judged is.' These are
the exact reverse of the modern order, ' become clean,' and ' is judged
righteous.' 559. A like conclusion may be drawn from Particle-composition. We
find particles which once were prefixes now used as separable suffixes; thus
Gower, in the Fifth Book of the Confessio Amantis, says that the king ordered
a table to be set up and spread before his bed, only instead of ' set up,' as
we should now speak, he has it ' upset': — Ther scholde be to-fore his bed, A
bord upset and faire spred. In Acts xxvii. 16, 'We had much work to come by
the boat,' the verb to come by means to compass or get possession of; and it
is only an inverse reconstruction of the old verb to become ( = by come), if
we remember its first sense of come about and so arrive at. The adverb by is
identical in origin with the prefix be-, and both at first meant about,
around. But this signification being lost sight of, we find that round comes
naturally in as its reinforcer, and is ranged on the other side of the
principal as a counter-satellite to the particle be: — Ham. Being thus
be-netted round with villanies. William Shakspeare, Hamlet, v. 2. 29. 560.
One of the most telling examples is the English Negative. Its place is now
after the verb, as / was not, I will not. In early times it was before the
verb; thus — ic ne was, ic ne wille; and hence the coalesced forms nas and
nill. And this case of the Negative is only a particular instance of a rule which
applies on a large scale to the station of adverbs in attendance on verbs. In
the whole tribe of verbal |
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5l8 X. OF SYNTAX. prefixes we
see the relics of a time when the adverb stood before the verb. In the living
English language the adverb has taken the opposite stand. Left. Right. alight
get off upheave heave up We retain comparatively few of the elder sort from
our old mother tongue, but we have borrowed them abundantly from Latin and
French; and we may array the foreign borrowings against the genuine English:
ascend go up depart go away descend come down pervade pass through. 561. The
three languages are variously affected towards this movement. The French have
the Left structure altogether, and this is the chief source of that curiously
bookish savour which French conversation has upon an English palate that has
for a long time been deprived of the pleasure of it. The Germans use either
Left or Right according to some obscure and rigidly grammatical rules, which
bring more trouble to the learner than profit to the diction. The English
retain both in free option with the happiest effect as to copiousness and the
increased power of suiting speech to time, place, person, and occasion; to be
homely or dignified, playful or stately, as may be required. Perhaps enough
has been said to indicate traces of a law which the student may further
explore for himself 1 . Of the 1 The Japanese language offers an admirable
illustration. The native grammarians distinguish their nouns, verbs,
adjectives, numerals and pronouns very carefully from their particles, which
they call Teniwoha. This grammatical term is composed of four of the
commonest of those particles, namely, te, ni, wo, and ha. Under this class
come the article and the |
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1. FLAT. 519 operative cause of
this alternation, we shall have something to say in the last chapter. For the
present we will only add that this double movement seems to deserve a name,
such as Heteroblastesis or Yon-strif \ 562. The movement is slow, and each
age enjoys its own habits of collocation, with all the security of an
immutable thing. Without this condition, an inversion of order could not be
the great resource that it now is for conveying variety of signification. If
the order of pronoun and verb in ' you are ' were not firm, the mere change
of order to ' are you ' would not convey all the transition from assertion to
interrogation. On this single variation there hinges in our family a series
of syntactic consequences. Close to interrogation is contingency and
hypothesis; and consequently we make a Conditional Mood by this mere
inversion of order. Thus ' Were the whole realm of nature mine/ is equivalent
to ' if it were mine.' More rarely in prose, as: ' And what will you do
should you find them out?' — Mrs. Trimmer, The History of the Robins, ch. iv.
In English prose we commonly use conjunctions for this purpose, and we keep
the inversion for poetry: that is to say, our prose is after the French ' Si
tout le monde etait a moi,' while our poetry retains the Gothic faculty of collocative
structure. In German |
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520 X. OF SYNTAX. and Danish
this inversion is one of the commonest means of expressing modality even in
prose, as in the following from Ludwig Holberg: — Men vil du giore, hvad jeg
beder dig, skal du nyde gode Dage. — Den panlsatte Bondedreng, Act. i. Scene
3. But if thou wilt do, what I bid thee, thou shalt taste good days. — The
Prentice Pawned, i. 3. 563. So well established is the general order of
collocation, that marked divergences arrest the attention, and have, by
reason of their exceptional character, a force which may be converted into a
useful rhetorical effect; thus — beauties the most opposite. Having been
successively subject to all these influences, our language has become as it
were a sort of centre to which beauties the most opposite converge. — H. T.
W. Wood, The Reciprocal Influence of French and English Literature in the Eighteenth
Century, 1870. It occasionally happens that the surprise of an unusual order
becomes the evidence to our minds that there is such a thing as a usual order
of collocation. In the following sentence the putting of the comparative
clause before the verb is an illustration of this: — And this it is that I
think I have seen, and that I wish, if I can be so happy, to shew to those
who need it more than myself, and who better than myself may profit by it. —
James Hinton, The Mystery of Pain. When in the Idylls we read of the ' Table
Round,' we experience a sort of pleasure from the strangeness of the
collocation by which the adjective is put after its substantive: starting
from the principle that the reverse is the true English order of collocation.
This is proper to poetry and high style: and it is one of the traces which
early French culture has left on our literature: — Seed royall. — 2 Kings xi.
I. |
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1. FLAT. 521 Life eternal. —
John xvii. 3. Devastation universal. — Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm.
A spring perennial rising in the heart. Edwar.d Young, Night Thoughts, viii.
958. It lingers also in a few legal expressions which date from the French
period; as, letters patent, sign manual. 564. Our habits of collocation are
very firmly established, so much so, that the Part of Speech is chiefly
determined by the position of the word. This is only the reverse statement of
that which has been already exemplified above (554), where it has been shewn
that each Part of Speech has its own proper situation. A crucial test of the
importance of this habit may be found if we can get a word which has in the
course of history changed its speech-partship. Such a word we have in only,
which was mostly an adjective in our elder literature, and is now mostly an
adverb. In the following line of Spenser, But th' only shade and semblant of
a knight The Faery Queene, iii. 2. 38, only is an adjective equivalent to
mere; as ' the mere shade." If we preserve the order we must change the
word: but if we will keep the word we must change the order, and say, ' only
the shade.' In such cases the unaccustomed reader is checked by meeting what
seems a familiar word in a strange position: Thou art only the most Highest
over all the earth. — Psalm lxxxiii. 18, elder version. In the manuscript
Common Prayer Book of 1661 we read: ' In the time of the plague . . . when
none of the neighbours can be gotten to communicate with the sick, . . . the
Minister may only communicate with him/ The Fourth |
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- 22 X. OF SYNTAX. Report (1870)
of the Commissioners on Public Worship contains the proposed amendment: ' the
Minister alone may communicate with him.' In this instance we have a change
both of the word and of the position; and the double change carries withal a
new ambiguity. Collocation changes the grammatical character of the symbol
of, which is an adverb if we say, according to English idiom 'that which I
have spoken to thee of,' Genesis xxvm. 1- • but a preposition if we use the
French construction, ' that of which I spoke to you.' Permanent characters
are stamped on words from the accident of their having survived in some one
particular collocation. The combination 1 weird sisters' in Macbeth being the
parent of all extant usa-e of weird, it has resulted that this word is known only
as an adjective to the modern language, although m Saxon it was known only as
a substantive, namely wyrd fate (425). And this affords an example of the
next observation. 565. The palmary example of the great import of collocation
in our language is that of the transformation of a substantive into an
adjective by position alone. Instances abound of the alternate use of the
same word as substantive and adjective; thus, horse chestnut, chestnut horse;
School Board, Board School There is hardly anything more characteristic' of
our language than this particular faculty. noontide solace, summer grass,
mother earth. Like a shadow thrown Softlv and lightly from a passing cloud,
Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay For noontide solace on the summer
grass, The warm lap of his mother earth. William Wordsworth, The Excursion,
Bk. VII. stone weapons, stone implements, stone age Stone weapons of many
kinds were still in use **^gJ*X££ and even during that of iron, so that the
mere presence of a tew stone imple |
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1. FLAT. 523 merits is not in
itself sufficient evidence that any given ' find ' belongs to the stone age.
— Sir John Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times, second ed. r86o,; p. 3. vine disease,
cattle disease, potato disease. In Hungary there has been no vine disease, no
cattle disease, and no potato disease. Names of Companies and Associations
are commonly formed upon this model. I belong to a Society in whose style and
title five substantives form a syntactic row: The Bath Church Sunday School
Association. 566. This constructive juxtaposition of two substantives stands
in an intimate relation with that body of English compounds which will be
treated of in the first section of the next chapter. But nearly related as
these two members are, they must be carefully distinguished from one another,
as their very tendency to blend makes it the more necessary to keep them well
apart. Just as the lowest stage of organised existence is that in which we
are met by the difficulty of distinguishing between animal and vegetable life,
so here, in the most elementary region of syntax, we are hardly able to keep
the organism of the phrase distinct from that of the word. When grass green
could make its negative grass uvgreen (509) it was not yet a compound as now
it is. In many instances there is fair room for doubt whether two words are
in the compound or the construct state. Thus bee hive, hive bee; race horse,
horse race; field path, path field; herb garden, garden herb, may be written
either with or without the hyphen, that is to say, either as compound words
or as words in construction. In such cases it is not to be supposed that the
distinction is wanting, but that through the fineness of the difference our
discernment is at fault in the application of the principle. |
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524 X. OF SYNTAX. The following
from a first-class print is a clear instance of a misplaced hyphen; it ought
to be written thus — marriage settlements. The Married Women's Property Act,
1870, was intended to prevent the personal property of a woman, her wages and
earnings, being at the absolute mercy and control of her husband's creditors.
It was supposed that it would be an especial protection to that poorer class
of women whose property before marriage was too small to be worth the expense
and life-long trouble of marriage-settlements. 567. Before the development of
flexion and symbolism there was a dearth of means for expressing those
modifications which are now effected by adverbs and adverbial phrases. In the
collocational stage of syntax the chief means resorted to for this end was
repetition. Early languages bear about them traces of this contrivance. The
Hebrew is remarkable for this. The following little specimen may serve as an
indication. In Mark vi. 39, 40, there occurs a Hebraism in the Greek text which
is not rendered, and indeed hardly could be rendered, in English. The Hebrew
(we will call it) says ' companies companies,' and ' ranks ranks.' The
English says ' by companies ' and ' in ranks.' Here we have a certain idea
expressed in the one by a syntax of collocation, for repetition is a form of
collocation; and in the other by a syntax of symbolism, namely, by the
intervention of prepositions. Here then we have the most ancient form of
expressing this idea contrasted with the most modern. Betweeen these two lies
the flexional way of saying the same thing. The true Greek idiom or the Latin
gives it to us flexionally in the forms el\i]86v and catervati?n, which we
cannot match by any extant expression in English. 568. It seldom happens that
means which have once been largely used, even though they should be
superseded by |
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1. FLAT. 525 newer contrivances,
are entirely abolished. We still have recourse to mere repetition for an
adverbial effect; as — A lesson too too hard for living clay. The Faery Queetie,
iii. 4. 26. Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt! Hamlet, i. 2. Here
we go up tip up; and here we go down down down, is a rule of universal
application, expressing the average, the balance, which prevails in human
affairs. — Frederic Eden, The Nile without a Dragoman, 187 1; ch. xii. 569.
We will close this section with the flat infinitive, or infinitive expressed
by position alone, as seen in the following examples: — I do think. They did
expect. I will hope. I shall go. You cannot think. You may try. You might
get. They would have. They should not have. They shall smart. These and other
such are but the slender remnant of a usage that was once more widely
prevalent. As we draw back to the sub-flexional times, we see this Flat
Infinitive in positions which now seem strange *. Wilt please your highness
walk? Lear, iv. 7. But labour lost it was to weene approch him neere. Faery
Queene, ii. II. 25. 1 In Maetzner, English Grammar, vol. iii. init., there is
a good store of examples of these Flat, or as he calls them, Pure
Infinitives. |
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526 X. OF SYNTAX. The Americans
seem to have preserved one or two peculiar usages of the Flat Infinitive; as
— ... to help persons appreciate landscape more adequately. — Thomas Starr
King, The White Hills, New York, 1870; Preface. In all these cases the verb
is an infinitive by position. In Saxon this infinitive was a flexional one.
It could not be otherwise, because there was no rlexionless infinitive in the
language. This variety then, which we call the Flat Infinitive, is a direct
product of deflectionization. These are verbs which in shedding flexion have
still retained their infinitival places without taking any substitute for
Flexion. They shew what could be done in verbal expression without the aid of
flexion, and thus they appear in the light of a reversion from an artificial
to a simpler and more primitive type of speech. 570. The positional stage of
syntax is most highly displayed in the Chinese language. This is in itself a
confirmation of the claim which Chinese literature makes to an exceedingly
high antiquity. Speaking generally, it may be said that the whole of Chinese
grammar depends upon position. Chinese words change their grammatical
character as substantives, adjectives, verbs, according to their relative
positions in the collocation of the sentence (223). M. Julien has published a
Chinese syntax with a title in which this principle is conspicuously
displayed 1 . From a notice of this work in the Academy the following
illustration is borrowed: — For instance, the character tch'i, ' to govern,'
if placed before a substantive remains a verb, as tch'i ko tie, 'to govern a
kingdom'; if the order of 1 Syntaxe Nouvelle de la Langue Chinoise, fondee
sur la Position des Mots, suivie de deux Traites sur les Particules, et les
principaux Ternies de Grammaire, d'une Table des Idiotismes, de Fables, de
Legendes et d'Apologues traduits mot a mot. Par M.Stanislas Julien. Paris:
Librairie de Maisonneuve. London: Trubner and Co., 1869. |
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2. FLEXIONAL. 527 these two
characters is reversed, they signify ' the kingdom is governed '; and if the
character tcKi be placed after chi, ' a magistrate,' it becomes a
substantive, and the two words are then to be translated ' the administration
of the magistrates.' Very remarkable is the plasticity of signification which
such a grammatical system demands. I imagine that the best European
illustration of the Chinese language is to be found in our flat syntax, and
the second best in the German compounds. It must not be supposed that the
Chinese language stands alone in the possession of such a syntax: what it
does stand alone in, is in the development of a great literature through
means so rudimentary. The whole outer field of so-called Allophylian
languages, those namely which lie outside the Aryan and Semitic families,
appear to be of this character. They are divided into — (1) Isolating, i.e.
monosyllabic and unsyntactical; (2) Agglutinating; (3) Polysynthetic: — and
all these varieties are but so many different stages and conditions of the
positional. This is therefore to be regarded as the basement storey of all
syntax, and it is largely discoverable in the English language. |
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528 X. OF SYNTAX. compared with
the import of collocation, it may be said almost to count for nothing. The
syntax of the English language is therefore at its weakest in this division.
We can only collect a few remaining features, which have lived through the
collision of the transition period, and have up to the present time defied
the innovations of the symbolic movement. We will consider these relics in
order, taking first those of the nounal, and afterwards those of the verbal
flexion. Syntax of Nounal Flexion. 572. We have retained the genitive
singular of nouns, as ' heart's desire ' Psalm xx and xxi, ' Simon's wife's
mother' Luke iv. 38, 'yesterdayes hunting' Compleat Angler (1653) p. 50.
Except personal names, this is mostly found in old and set phrases, as '
money's worth,' ' out of harm's way,' ' change for change's sake.' This
structure has often an archaic, and sometimes almost a romantic or imposing
effect; as when President Lincoln was admiringly called ' nature's diplomat V
There are but few specimens of this type in current use. They have undergone
change in two ways. A limited number of them have become compounds, as
bondsman, kinsman, sportsman, and others (607): but the wide and general
change has been by the substitution of the preposition for the flexion,
whereby we no longer speak thus — 'the man's rod whom I shall choose' Numbers
xvii. 5; but thus — 'the rod of the man whom.' However, we still say ' a
ship's captain ' and we have not yet followed the French — un capitaine de
navire. |
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2. FLEX TONAL. 529 A monument of
the transition from the flexional to the phrasal structure is seen in the
Double Genitive, a peculiar English combination, where both the of and the s
are retained, as 'that boy of Norcott's ' — 'that idea of Palmerston's.' In
connection with this Genitive there is another remarkable phenomenon, an
appearance as of separable flexion. It looks as if the possessival
termination had detached itself in the form of es or is, and had then passed
into a pronoun by a sort of degeneracy, as in John his book,' and other
well-known examples. An original document of the year 1525, by the Prior of
Bath, begins thus: ' To all true Cristen people to whome this present wrytyng
Indentour shall come William Hollowaye by Gode is suffer'nce Priour,' &c.
And again in the same: ' As they haue doone in tyme paste whan the saide
pastures were in the lorde is handes, Soo thai; thereby the lorde is owne
werkes elles where and woode carriage be nott nestoppede att any tyme.' This
supplies the intermediate step between -es and his; and the following
quotation supplies an example of the sort of structure in which this
separable flexion would be felt as a convenience: — his. The Cathedrall
Churche of Christe in Oxford of Kinge Henry theight his fowndac'on. —
Assignment by John Haryngton to William Blanchard of Catterne, 1594. I used
to be satisfied with this explanation, but renewed travel in the Low Dutch
regions has caused me to refer this peculiar structure to a much more remote
origin. I now think it was brought from the old mother countries by the
original settlers, or some tribe of them. It does not appear in Anglosaxon
literature, but it is found as early as the second half of the thirteenth
century in the later manuscript m m |
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5$0 X. OF SYNTAX. of Layamon's
Brut, hi. 285, three times in one page. I quote a single instance: — Inne wes
pe uormeste mon Ine was be forste man pe Peteres peni bigo. pat Peter his
peny bigan, Sarai her. Sarai her name is changed. — Genesis xvii, Contents.
Artegall his. Who when he nigh approcht, shee mote arede That it was Talus,
Artegall his groome. Faery Queene, v. 6. 8 (1596). Telephus his. When
Telephus his youthful charms. Spectator, No. 171. 573. Some genitival phrases
we have lost altogether, as fer dayes, equivalent in the fifteenth century to
far on in the day; and early days, early in the day, which though not
extinct, seems now to be regarded as a plural. fer dayes. • Ther was a ladi
that duelled fast bi the chirche, that toke euery day so longe tyme to make
her redy that it made wery and angri the person of the chirche and the
pariss.henes to abide after her. And she happed to abide so longe on a sonday
that it was fer dayes, and euery man said to other, ' This day we trow shall
not this lady be kerned and arraied.' — La Tour Landry, ed. T. Wright, ch. xxxi.
Diei multum iam est. Plant. It is farre dayes. — Thomas Cooper, Latin
Dictionary, 1 5 78; v. Dies. early days. 'Tis but early dayes. — W.
Shakspeare, Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 12. To this group belongs the
formula Jiowadays, written in the fifteenth century now a dayes. Our
adverbial genitive is but a relic, and so it has been during the whole of the
present period (435). Indeed it |
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2. FLEX ION AL. 53 1 has never
been so strong with us as in German. Perhaps we could not find anywhere in
our literature so bold an example of this kind as Luther's ftracfy &auf3
in Acts xvi. ii, where we have; with a straight course.' 574. Of pronominal
flexion there is but little remaining which really serves any purpose of
syntax. The accusatives me, him, her, whom, and the genitive whose, are the
chief. In such cases as of me, to him, from them, it is true that me, him,
them, are inflections; but then the relation which they once served to
express is now expressed by the preposition. Mine may be regarded as a flexion
by an archaeological effort of mind, for it is an old genitive of me. But in
its ordinary use there is no call to think of this, for it appears as an
adjectival pronoun. When it is so used as to shew a trace of its old
genitival extraction, then it is accompanied with a preposition, and so comes
under the next division, as ' That boy of mine.' We have, however, dative
pronouns without the preposition, as in give me, tell him, and in our elder
literature more frequently: — me. That my hand may be restored mee againe. —
I Kings xiii. 6. In the following quotation him in the second part is
equivalent to the unto him that went before: — Lend not vnto him that is
mightier than thy selfe; for if thou lendest him, count it but lost. —
Ecclesiasticus, viii. 12. In the next quotation we should now say to him: —
And sent him them to Jezreel. — 2 Kings x. 7. Not even a poet in our day
could write her for to her in such a structure as this: — His lovely words
her seemd due recompence. The Faery Qtteene, i. 3. 30. m m 2 |
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S3 2 x - OF SYNTAX. Meihinks is
now written as one word. It consists of me in the dative case, and thinks, an
old impersonal equivalent to the Latin videtur, radically connected no doubt
with our verb ' I think/ ' he thinks,' but quite distinct from it. The
distinction is kept up in German between bertft the verb of thought, and
bitnft of seeming, which is that now before us. 575. A noted instance of
pronominal flexion which we have borrowed from the French, and which has
become thoroughly English, though it has long lain under the disapproval of
the powers of Latin scholarship, is the use of the objective case in the
expressions it is me, it is him. Again, the effect of the Messiah's coming,
supposing Jesus to have been him, — William Paley, Evidences, ch. vi. Latin
syntax has almost taught us to think it is I, it is he, the only correct
formula 1 . This latter is however a thing of no definite lineage; it is a
hybrid between French idiom, which says c'est moi, and Latin scholasticism,
which dictates that the substantive verb must have the same case after it as
before it. But before all this there was a good old native idiom which ran
very close to the real idiom both of Latin and of Greek in regard to this
formula. Our pure mother tongue had it thus: / am it, thou art it, he is it,
or It am I, &c.: Who koude ryme in Englissh proprely His martirdom; for
sothe it am noght I. Knighfs Tale, 1 460. And the Germans retain with
fidelity the family style, with their 3d; Bin eg, (Sr tft eg. Let us compare the
sister-dialects in John ix. 9: — 1 For a lively statement of the case, see
Dean Afford, in Queen's English. |
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2. FLEXIONAL. $3$ Anglo-Saxon,
995. Luther, 1534. Sume cwaedon, He hyt is; sume (S'tlicbe fpracfcen: (Sf ift
e£. cwsedon, Nese, ac is him gelic. He Stttdjp abet: @r tft Unit dfuihcfc.
cwaeb soblice, Ic hit eom. (Sv felbft abet fpra<^|: 3dj bin e3. If to the
above we add the s of most nouns plural and the en of a very few; also the s
of the pronouns his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs; and farther, the -er and
-est of adjectival comparison, — we have exhausted the relics of nounal and
pronounal flexion which survive in the English language. Syntax of Verbal
Flexion. 576. But the verb is the great stronghold of flexion. More than any
other part of speech it attracts and attaches inflections to itself in times
when flexion is growing: and on the other hand, when flexion is on the wane,
the verb is the most retentive of its relics, and the most reluctant to part
with them. There is no language of Western Europe in which the verb has
parted with its flexion more than in English. The Gothic languages are the
most advanced in this respect, and especially the Danish, Swedish, and
English. The verbal inflections, which are still used to express person, tense,
or mood, are as follows: — (See) seest, sees, seeth, saw, sawest, seen,
seeing. (Look) lookest, looks, looketh, looked, lookedst, looking. Half of
these are antiquated, and all that are in habitual use are, — sees, saw,
seen, seeing, looks, looked, looking. When our ancestors came to this island
they brought with them no Future tense. The Present was used for the |
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534 x - 0F SYNTAX. Future. The
Future with shall or will has been made since the colonization. These two
auxiliaries are however by no means of equal standing in the language. For
shall is old, and had already made some movements in this direction, even in
the old mother country; but will as a futuritive is a product of
comparatively recent times. And this is why there is no vacillation about the
usage of shall, as there notoriously is about that of will: — the latter has
not yet got definitely settled into its place. 577. A feature worthy of
contemplation is that whereby the flexion which expresses past time is
employed also for contingency or uncertainty. It appears as if the link of
sympathy between the two things thus rendered by a selfsame formula were
remoteness from the speaker's possession. Looking at the word attempted by
itself we should associate it with the idea of past time, but in the
following sentence it expresses contingency and not time, or if it regards
time at all, the time is future. His power would break and shiver like glass,
if he attempted it. In the following quotations this twofold power is well
seen in the form had. I say not that she ne had kunnyng What harme was, or
els she Had coulde no good, so thinketh me, And trewly, for to speke of
trouth, But she had had, it had be routh. Chaucer, The Bool-e of the
Duichesse, 996. He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to
wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed. — Thomas Fuller. Hence it comes
that the apodosis to had is often would be, or ivould have. |
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2. FLEX ION AL. $$$ If this man
had not twelve thousand a-year, he would be a very stupid fellow. — Jane
Austen, Mansfield Park, ch. iv. And some among you held, that if the King Had
seen the sight, he would have sworn the vow. Alfred Tennyson, The Holy Grail.
578. In the single case of the verb to be, however, there are distinct forms
for the subjunctive tenses. Be was originally indicative, as it still is in
Devonshire, and in our Bible: 'They be blind leaders of the blind/ Matt. xv.
14. But inasmuch as the present had a duplicate form is, are, a division of
labour took place, whereby be was reserved for the subjunctive and
conditional present: — If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. —
Genesis xliii. 14. What though the field be lost? All is not lost. John
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 105. In the revision of the Common Prayer Book in
1661, are was substituted for be in forty-three places, and the indicative be
was left standing in one place only, namely this — ' Which be they? ' On the
same principle ivas and were took distinct offices: — were. I am not able to
unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licencing can be exempted from the
number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly dispos'd,
could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that gailant man who
thought to pound up the crows by shutting his Park-gate. — John Milton,
Areopagiiica. 579. The subjunctive thus recently acquired is now antiquated;
and not even in a sermon of the present day should we meet with the like of
this of Isaac Barrow's: — Be we never so urgently set, or closely intent upon
any work (be we reeding, be we travelling, be we trading, be we studying),
nothing yet can forbid, but that we may togeiher wedge in a thought conctrnmg
God's goodness, and bolt forth a word of Praise for it. — The Duty of Prayer.
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$$6 X. OF SYNTAX. Nor is were so
freely employed now as it once was j — if it goes out, it will be a beauty
lost. But however it may be with colloquy and familiar prose, it can hardly
be spared from poetry and the style of dignity: — But to live by law, Acting
the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow
right, Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. Alfred Tennyson, (Enone.
Should these subjunctives be and were fall into complete desuetude, they will
leave behind some fossil traces of their existence in the conjunction
howbeit, and in the phrasal adverb as it were. In the case of ordinary verbs,
the subjunctive is distinguished from the indicative merely by the denudation
of flexion; but this distinction now lives in poetry only: — and age to age,
Though all else pass and fail, delivereth At least the great tradition of
their God. Frederic W. H. Myers, St. John the Baptist. 580. We will close
this section as we closed the previous one, with the infinitive. The old
grammatical infinitive in -en lingered in our language as late as the
Elizabethan period. Thus Surrey: — say en. Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain; My lady's beauty passeth more The
best of yours, I dare well sayen, Than doth the sun the c:mdle light, Or
brightest day the darkest night. We lost the infinitive in -en, but we
unconsciously retained the same thing in a slightly disguised form, namely
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2. FLEXIONAL. 537 In the
fifteenth century we find an intermediate and variable termination, -yng and
-yn. The Promptorium Parvulorum has it throughout in the form -yn. The
following from Caxton exhibits both: — makyng and reducyn. Besechyng al them
that this litel werke shal see / here / or rede to haue me for excused for
the rude & symple makyng and reducyn in to our englisshe. — 2 he Game of
the Chesse, a.d. 1474; Preface. 580 a. The tendency to turn -a?i or -en into
-ing shews itself elsewhere: thus, Abbandun has become Abingdon', and we are
all pretty familiar with such forms as capting, chicking{Little Dorr it,
184), childring, garding, lunching. When the mind has lost its hold on the
meaning of a given form, the organs of speech are apt to slide into any
contiguous form that has more present currency or is more vital with present
meaning. The -an or -en of the infinitive became -ing because it was
surrounded with nouns and participles in -ing which differed from the
infinitive by a difference too fine to be held-to in the transition and Early
English periods, with their neglect of the vernacular. Hence it has become
traditional to explain this form always either as a substantive or as a
present participle. But there is a large class of instances to which these
explanations will not apply. In such a sentence as the following, ' Europeans
are no match for Orientals at evading a question,' evading is clearly a verb
governing its substantive; and yet it is not a participle, for it has nothing
adjectival about it. By an infinitive, I understand a verb in a substantival
aspect; by a participle, a verb in an adjectival aspect. In the saying of
Rowland Hill to his co-pastor Theophilus Jones, ' Never mind breaking grammar
if &c.,' the word breaking is clearly a verb, and can be no otherwise
grammatically designated than as an infinitive. The nature of the participle
is seen in the following: — |
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$3$ X. OF SYNTAX. All is hazard
that we have, Here is nothing bideing; Daves of pleasure are like streams
Through faire Medows gliding. Ballad Society, vol. i. p. 350. 580 b. The
analysis of a sentence is, however, a subjective act, as we have already
observed; and if any insist, on mentally supplying the formula requisite to
establish the participial character of every verb in -ing, I know of no
argument potent enough to restrain them. But there is a large number of
instances in which I think that whether the case be historically or
grammatically tested, it must be pronounced an infinitive. As this is a point
of some importance, I have collected rather a copious list of examples of the
infinitive in -tng. Historically there is no case clearer than that in which
it follows verbs of coming or going; as — ffor yonder I see her come rydinge.
Percy Ballads, ed. Furnivall, vol. i. p. 1 60. This Lady when shee came thus
ryding. — Id. p. 161. Came tow'ring, arm'd in Adamant and Gold. John Milton,
Paradise Lost, vi. 1 10. This is now commonly parsed as a Participle, through
classical grammar, which has now grown among us into a tradition; but if we
refer back to Saxon poetry, we find that verbs of coming and going constantly
take infinitives after them precisely in the position now held by these
seeming participles. This grammatical character is sometimes illustrated by
the help of the French a before these infinitives: — Oh how shall the dumb go
a courting? — Bloomfield. 580 c. Perhaps the plainest instances (to the
modern |
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2. FLEXIOXAL. c?^ grammatical
sense) are those in which the word has a verbal government, and yet cannot be
accounted a participle, as— dropping, drawing. Defend me, therefore, common
sense, sav I. From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into
empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up. iiam Cowper, The Garden.
finding. And I can see that Mrs Grant is anxious for her not finding
Mansfield dull as winter comes on.— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, vol. ii. ch.
3. % giving, acquiring. I am convinced a man might sit down as systematically
and as successfully to the study of wit, as he might to the study of the
mathematics; awould answer tor it, that, by giving up only six hours a day to
bein* will he should come on prodigiously before midsummer, so that his
friends shoi hardly know him again. For what is there to hinder the mind from
gradually acquiring a habit of attending to the lighter relations of ideas in
which wit consists? Punning grows upon everybody, and punning is the wit of
words. — Sydney Smith, Wit and Humour. simplifying. I feel it a surprise,
every time I see Parrv: there seems to be a power of simplifying whatever
comes near him, an atmosphere in which trifles die a natural ueath.— Memoirs
of Sir IF". E. Parry. organizing, gathering, obtaining, distributing,
detecting. Organizing charitable relief over areas conterminous with those of
the l^oor Law, and gathering together ail the representative forces we can
for common action, seems to us the best method of obtaining the two important
aims of distributing judicious charity and detecting imposition — Alsae.-r
Hay Hill, Times, October 22, 1869. S predicting, conspiring. Some people will
never distinguish between predicting an eclipse and conspiring to bring it
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54° X. OF SYNTAX. leaving.
Caesar spent his winters at Lucca without leaving his province. — E. A.
Freeman, Essays, vii. p. 166. 580 d. A very good illustration of our point is
furnished by sentences of the varying type in which the infinitiveregnant
with to confronts the flexional infinitive: — It is quite possible for you to
carry your point, without gaining your end. But talking is not always to
converse. W. Cowper, Conversation, 7. Where the case is so plain, it is not
for the dignity of this house to inquire instead of acting. — February 1 1,
1870. To select a First Lord of the Admiralty is something like appointing
the Captain of a ship. — March 14, 1876. When there are a great many
infinitives to be expressed, it is here as elsewhere the delight of our
language to have the means of avoiding monotony by variation \ as — But it is
clear that, as society goes on accumulating powers and gifts, the one hope of
society is in men's modest and unselfish use of them; in simplicity and
nobleness of spirit increasing, as things impossible to our fathers become
easy and familiar to us; in men caring for better things than money and ease
and honour; in being abJe to see the riches of the world increase and not set
our hearts upon them; in being able to admire and forego. — R. W. Church,
Sermons, ii. (1868). 580 e. A case that deserves a place apart is that of
being and having when they enter into composite infinitives, active or
passive: — The present apparent hopelessness of a really CEcumenical Council
being assembled. — John Keble, Life, p. 425. In the next piece it would be
allowable to substitute to have heard for having heard'. — I recollect having
heard the noble lord the member for Tiverton deliver in this House one of the
best speeches I ever listened to. On that occasion the noble lord gloried in
the proud name of England, and, pointing to the security with which an
Englishman might travel abroad, he triumphed in |
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2. FLEXIONAL. 54 1 the idea that
his countrymen might exclaim, in the spirit of the ancient Roman, Civis
Romanus siwi. — John Bright, Speeches, 1853. At the close of the following
quotation it would mean the same, and be equally correct, if ' being ' were
put in the place of to be:— I did not show all my dissatisfaction, however,
for that would only have estranged us; and it is not required, nay, it may be
wrong, to show all you feel or think: what is required of us is, not to show
what we do not feel or think; for that is to be false. — George MacDonald, A
nnals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, ch. xii. In the early days of the infinitive
with to it was sometimes pushed (like a new toy) beyond the sphere since
allotted to it, and we find it in places where the present language would
render it by the infinitive in -ing. Spenser has For not to have been dipt in
Lethe lake Could save the son of Thetis from to die; which in plain English
would run somewhat thus: — ' His having-been-dipped in Lethe could not save
Achilles from dying.' 580 f. The expression in the following line is
certainly condensed, and the grammar by no means explicit, but I should be
curious to know by what process of thought the word writing could be accepted
in any other character than that of an infinitive: — Nature's chief
master-piece is writing well. Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, 725. The
expression ' about doing anything' is not generally approved by grammarians,
yet it is met with in authors of repute: — Mrs. Wilson smiled, and,
addressing herself to Mrs. Benson, said, Now, madam, we will, if you please,
return to the house; for 1 fancy by this time dinner is nearly ready, and my
husband and sons are about coming home. — Mrs. Trimmer, Fabulous Histories,
ch. xx. |
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542 X. OF SYNTAX. He was about
retracing his steps, when he was suddenly transfixed to the spot by a suddtn
appearance. — Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch. xxiii. The aversion which
there is to this particular expression might perhaps be modified if the verb
in -ing were acknowledged to be an infinitive. I apprehend that the ground of
the objection to all such terms of expression as ' before coming/ ' since
leaving/ is that under the participial hypothesis the logical sentiment is
dissatisfied. 580 g. The German scholar will hardly require to have the
reality of this old infinitive urged upon him, if he marks how often the
German infinitive can only be rendered by the English verb in -ing. Luther.
1611. $lltd) IjaBeit fte mid) Utcfyt Cie; And they neither found me in the
(unbelt tm Seinpet mit iemant) Temple disputing with any man, rebctt, obev
etnen 2tltfnt()r ttiacfyen neither raising vp the people, — . im ^Bolf, —
Acts xxiv. 12. There are some English constructions in which this infinitive
stands out in as unequivocal a character as a German or a Latin infinitive could
do. Such is the case with attempting in the following extract: — I am not
sure that it is of very much use attempting to define exactly what is meant
by Honouring parents. — R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments, p. 125. The really
dubious cases are those which arise from the natural contiguity of the
infinitive to the noun-substantive. In fact these two may blend so closely as
to defy all attempts at a line of demarcation. I will therefore only say,
that in such instances as the following I think the meaning is better
apprehended by regarding them as verb-substantives, that is to say,
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2. FLEXIONAL. 543 versing. I
once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. George Herbert. flying.
Johnny watched the swallows trying Which was cleverest at flying. prelating,
labouring, lording. Amend therfore, and ye that be prelates loke well to your
office, for right prelatynge is busye labourynge and not lordyng. — Hugh
Latimer, The Ploughen, 1549. 580 h. While we are on this flexional infinitive,
I must call attention to one of the finest of our provincialisms. It is when
this infinitive is used as something between active and passive, as if it
were a neutral voice, like the so-called middle voice in Greek. In all
classes of society in Yorkshire it may be heard; as, ' Do you want the tea
making/ 1 1 want my coat brushing/ ' Father wants the door shut |
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544 X. OF SYNTAX. to the
tenacity of such forms as still remain. The steady eye may now and then
restore some ancient outline which has been all but eclipsed by the
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3. PHRASAL, 545 has greatly
enlarged its sphere. Take for example the passive verb, which had a complete
flexional apparatus in Greek as cfukovfiai with its parts, and in Latin as
amor with its parts — all these flexions have disappeared, and in place of
each one of them has stepped in a function of this symbolic verb: Amor, I am
loved. Amabar, I was loved. Amabor, I shall be loved. Amarer, I should be
loved. 582. The great power of this symbol-verb for revolutionizing flexional
structures was long dormant. The Hebrew is an eminently flexional language,
especially in regard to its system of verbs. The symbol-verb w r as indeed
there in full development, but in very limited action. The following
statement will give some idea of the case. In the English version of the
little Book of Jonah I count forty-two occurrences of the verb 'to be/ but
when I refer to the original, I find that only six of these are represented
by the verb 'to be' in Hebrew. And as one of the cases is not symbolic but
substantive, we have the still wider ratio of five to forty-one: — the Hebrew
text has the symbol-verb only five times, where the English translation has
it forty-one times. It is this extension of the field of the symbol-verb
which has occasioned that stagnation of verbal development and the
corresponding enlargement of the nounal ranks which has been noticed above.
386. 583. When a new movement of this sort rises in language, it commonly
pushes itself forward till it awakens resistance. So we see this symbol-verb
ramifying with luxuriant variations, such as is being, was being, is to be,
is to do, have to be, had better be. N n |
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546 X. OF SYNTAX. was being.
Eric was a high-spirited son of a jarl of Jadar in Norway, who, opposing the
encroachments of the king upon his feudal rights, in common with his class,
was forced to flee the country. Escaping with his son, he established himself
in Iceland, which was then being peopled by such refugees from tyranny and
wrong; and a society was being formed which, for love of liberty and the
actual possession of republican freedom, has never been excelled. — Isaac J.
Hayes, M.D., Greenland, ch. iv. were being. He saw, too, that in the name of
liberty a hundred artificial and impossible laws — laws not only limiting
individual freedom, but binding nature herself, if nature could be bound, and
annihilating every wholesome influence in order to form one
Frankenstein-monster of a state — were being seriously considered. — Mrs.
Oliphant, Monlalembert, vol. ii. p. 142. were to be. The schoolmaster replied
that if the best histories and the works of the best poets were to be
excluded, then a new language and a new literature must be invented. — House
of Commons, June 24, 1870. is to. If accuracy in numbers is to determine the
historical credibility and value of ancient writers, there must be a vast
holocaust offered on the stern altar of historic truth. — Henry Hart Milman,
History of the Jews, 1863, p. xxxi. have to be. Many things have to be
remembered before we can reason with safety on this intricate subject. — The
Times, February 14, 1873. had better be. A history of religious or political
convictions conducted on this system had better be entitled A history of
prejudices. — J. Venn, Hulsean Lectures for 1869, p. 32. From an early friend
of Dr. Newman's I learnt that he had long ago expressed a strong dislike to
the cumulate formula is being. I desired to be more particularly informed,
and Dr. Newman wrote as follows to his friend: ' It surprises me that my
antipathy to " is being" existed so long ago. |
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3. PHRASAL. 547 It is as keen
and bitter now as ever it was, though I don't pretend to be able to defend
it.' After giving certain reasons (which are omitted, because this is a point
in which reasons are secondary and a good judgment when we can get one is
primary), he continues: ' Now I know nothing of the history of the language,
and cannot tell whether all this will stand, but this I do know, that,
rationally or irrationally, I have an undying, never-dying hatred to "
is being," whatever arguments are brought in its favour. At the same time
I fully grant that it is so convenient in the present state of the language,
that I will not pledge myself I have never been guilty of using it V 584. The
topmost pinnacle of symbolic phraseology is attained when the symbol-verb
joins with some symbol-adverb to produce a predication of great compass with
proportionately vague and often untranslateable import; as there is, there
was, there has been, — to be off, about, up to him, with which may be joined
other hardly less symbolic phrases, as to take to, to come by, to go in for,
and the imperatives come on, go to. I had no intention of going in for — that
is the phrase now — going in for the romantic. — George MacDonald, Annals of
a Quiet Neighbourhood, ch. vii. And by such means we attain to a subtle and
impalpable diction, such as is possible only in languages that have had many
centuries of culture. And in proportion as the sense of such symbolic phrases
is no longer amenable to etymology or logic, but a masterful work of the
aggregate mind, we return to an interjectional pliability of signification,
by which we perceive that we have come round full circle and are 1 Every one
sees that these hearty words were not measured for print, and I am the more
obliged to Dr. Newman for allowing this use of his undesigned evidence. N n 2
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54-8 X. OF SYNTAX. approaching
the point from which we set out. Thus come on is no longer a call to
approach, but simply a note of encouragement, as in Exodus i. 10, where both
Luther and De Wette express it by the interjection rcotylart; and Miles
Coverdale has simply Vp. In Genesis xi. the same cry is three times rendered
by Goe to. 585. Keeping a sort of company with the verb to be, there is •
found in all the great languages a verb which signifies to come to be, to get
to be. This is in Greek yiveadai, in Latin fieri, in French devenir, and in
German trerben — symbol-verbs of great mark each in its own language. In our
native tongue the old word was weorlSan, the analogue of the German rcerfcen,
but we gradually lost it; and now we retain only a relic of it in the
imperative or subjunctive worth, as in the expression, ' Woe worth the day/
Instead of this weorSaii we have qualified a new word for its place, a
compound of the verb come, namely become. In early times the sense of coming
was dominant in this word. In the Saxon Gospels, Luke ii. 38, ' theos thsere
tide becumende ' answers to our ' she coming-in that instant.' Even as late
as Shakspeare this sense was still vigorous; as — Riu. But Madam, where is
Warwicke then become? Gray. I am inform'd that he comes towards London. 3
Henry VI, iv. 4. 25. In our days where and hecome will not construe together,
because the latter has lost all signification of locality. Either we should
ask ' Where is Warwick gone to? ' or ' What is become of Warwick?' In short,
the word has been thoroughly symbolised, and so qualified to take the place
of our lost verb weor^an. And here again, as in so many other places, we have
followed the French. It is the French |
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3. PHRASAL. 549 devenir that we
give expression to (nay, that we mimic) in our modern verb become. This is
however a matter of only superficial importance so far as syntax is
concerned. What does it matter whether a certain function is discharged by
weorfSan or by devenir? it is functions and not roots that structural
philology attends to. In so far as we construe our become differently from
the construction of the old weor^an, so far is the change structural, and no
further. Broadly speaking, the analogues of this become have a general
resemblance of construction in all the great languages, so that the fact of
our having changed our word under French tuition is a matter of small
structural consideration. 586. Now we come to a symbol- verb of a peculiarly
insular character, namely, the auxiliary do. And in touching this verb, let
us first dispose of that use which is common to us with French, and even,
though less markedly, with other languages. I mean that use in which it
figures as a representative or vicegerent for any antecedent verb: — A wise man
will make better use of an idle pamphlet, then a fool will do of sacred
Scripture. — John Milton, Areopagitica. The auxiliary use is different. It
sprang from the French /aire, as in /aire /aire, ' to cause a thing to be
done.' And, at first, even in English, its action was just the same as is
that of the auxiliary /aire to this day in French. Thus ' dede translate'
meant not the same as our 'did translate,' but ' caused to be translated.' At
length it became a symbolic expression of tense, both in affirmative and
negative sentences. This is its peculiarly English function. The following
quotations exhibit these two uses in combination: — I delybered in myself to
translate it in to our maternal tonge / And whan I so had achyeued [achieved]
the sayd translacion / 1 dyde doo set in |
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550 X. OF SYNTAX. enprynte a
certeyn nombre of theym / Which anone were depesshed and solde. — William
Caxton, The Game of the Chesse, a.d. 1474; Preface. My lord Abbot of
Westmynster did do shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in old
Englisshe, for to reduce it into Englisshe now vsid, &c. — William
Caxton, Mneidos, Prologue (Blaydes' Life of Caxton, vol. i. p. 66). But now
it has dropped half its function, for it is not used with the affirmative
verb unless something more than the ordinary force of assertion is required.
The affirmative and negative verb therefore are thus declined: — Affirmatvie.
Negative. I wish. I do not wish. I wished. I did not wish. Go. Do not go. If
I go. If I do not go. If I went. If I did not go. Thus we see the affirmative
side is clear of this auxiliary: — But natural selection only weeds, and does
not plant. — J. B. Mozley, Essays, ii. 397. And yet the affirmative will also
take it when antithesis provokes energy: — True fortitude of the understanding
consists in not suffering what we do know to be disturbed by what we do not
know. — William Paley, Natural Theology. Apart from emphasis, it is confined
to the negative proposition, and to interrogations: — Where did you go? What
do you think *? Apart then from emphasis, and speaking only of the quiet and
gentle use of this auxiliary, we may exhibit its presence and its absence in
three sentences: — Butler rested the proof f religion o 1 Analogy. Did Butler
rest the proof of religion on Analogy? Butler did not rest the proof of
religion on Analogy. |
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3. PHRASAL. 551 But in the
earlier usage it went even with the gentlest affirmatives, and this usage
still holds in provincial dialects, as in the following from the Dorset
poems: — Where wide and slow The stream did flow, And flags did grow and
lightly flee, Below the grey-leaved withy tree; Whilst clack clack clack from
hour to hour Did go the mill by cloty Stour. How thoroughly this is an
auxiliary of the modern language, and how recently it ascertained its own
final place and function, may be seen from the following quotation, wherein
Spenser, a contemporary of Shakspeare, yokes did with a verb in the
preterite: — Astond he stood, and up his heare did hove. The Faery Queene, i.
2. 31. At present this auxiliary is not used to form indicative tenses of the
verb to be, but we find it so used in the Ballads and Romances. Thus in Eger
and Grime: — Gryme sayd, 'how farr haue wee to that citye whereas that Ladyes
dwelling doth bee?' Line 758. ' why Sir,' said shee, ' but is it yee that in
such great perill here did bee?' Line 788. It was a heauenly Melodye for a
Knight that did a louer bee. Line 926. However, we retain the use of this
auxiliary in the Imperative mood of the verb to be; as ' Do be good,' ' Don't
be surprised.' 587. Thus we have added do, did to our auxiliaries, and this
is an insular acquisition, as are also get, got, will, would. The great bulk
of the auxiliaries of our language are ancestral, and they will be found to
correspond to the verbal modes of expression which are used in German and the
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552 X. OF SYNTAX. other dialects
of the Gothic stock. I speak of such auxiliaries as shall, should, may,
might, can, could, lei. These auxiliaries are characteristic of our family of
languages. An example or two will suffice to indicate how greatly we are in a
state of contrast with the Romanesque tongues on this feature. |
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3. PHRASAL. 553 One verbal
structure which existed in Saxon, and was reinforced in the French period,
has not rooted itself permanently, and that is the Reflexive. We find
endeavour ourselves in the Common Prayer Book, but on the whole it may be
said that the examples of this sort are now antiquarian curiosities. Another
verbal structure, which came to us through both sources, and which we
inherited in all its fullness, has also fallen into disuse, and that is the
Impersonal verb: — me semed. . . . there was an excellent doctonr of dyuynyte
in the royame of fraunce of the ordre of thospytal of Saynt Johns of
Jherusalem whiche entended the same, and hath made a book of the chesse
moralysed . whiche at such tyme as I was resident at brudgys [Bruges] in the
counte of Flaundres cam in to my handes / whiche whan I had redde and ourseen
/ me semed ful necessayre for to be had in englisshe. — William Caxton, The
Game of the Chesse, a.d. 1474; Preface. likeih you. ... for this liketh you,
O yee children of Israel. — Amos iv. 5 (1611). Modern English has made a new
phrasal verb, and one that yet waits for a name. In this new verb the pronoun
it, referring to no noun, acts as an objective accompaniment, and runs next
after the verb: — Come and trip it as you go, On the light fantastic toe.
John Milton, V Allegro. I '11 prose it here, I '11 verse it there, And
picturesque it everywhere. William Combe, Doctor Syntax in search of the
Picturesque, Canto i. Thus we have seen that the verbal symbolism, that which
gives our verbs the phrasal turn, consists in pronouns and in symbol-adverbs,
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554 X. OF SYNTAX. The Explicit
Noun. 589. If we turn now from the symbolism that is found in and about the
verb, to that which is attendant upon the noun, we shall see that the latter
is most prominently drawn from the articles and the prepositions. These are
the symbolic satellites of the noun. And there is perceivable a certain
co-operation with one another in their action. When two substantives are
united by a genitival relation, as ' servus servorum,' ' haelejm hleo,' 'man -kind,'
and you substitute of for the genitival flexion or genitival relation of the
one noun, you find yourself often induced to give the other noun an article;
thus, ' a servant of servants ' ' heroes' shelter' avoiding both preposition
and article, — or using them both, ■ the shelter of heroes/ ' the family of man.' If we compare the Versions of
1535 and of 161 1 in Daniel i. 2, the elder has ' and there brought them into
his gods treasury'; but the younger has it ' into the treasure-house of his
god.' The change of structure from flexional to symbolic has thus brought in
two symbols to attend on the noun — namely, the preposition and the article.
590. There are in English two great formulas for the construction of
substantival phrases, and there is perhaps no more convenient, as there
certainly cannot be a more national medium of exhibiting these, than through
the long and short titles of our Acts of Parliament. According to one of
these formulas, the words and phrases which constitute a substantival whole,
are concatenated by means of symbols thus: — An Act further to amend the Laws
relating to the Representation of the "People in England and Wales. An
Act for the Abolition of Compulsory Church Rates. |
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3. PHRASAL. $55 An Act to make
further Amendments in the Laws for the Relief of the Poor in England and
Wales. An Act for the Amendment of the Act of Uniformity. The other formula
merely collocates the chief nounal words in juxtaposition, and that in a
reversed order; as — The Representation of the People Act. The Compulsory
Church Rate Abolition Act. The Poor Law Amendment Act. The Act of Uniformity
Amendment Act. And so for all complex notions we have a short familiar way of
naming them, as well as a stately formula of designation l . Our speech has
acquired this faculty and range of variation by its historical combination of
the two great linguistic elements of Western civilization, the Roman and the
Gothic. The long style of structure is that which we have learned from the
French: the short and (as it now seems) reversed style is our own native
Saxon. Between these two formulas, so widely divergent, there lies the whole
region of Flexion, and the prepositions of the longer formula have come in as
substitutes for case-endings. As there is a triple variety in our syntax, so
it is an hereditary and congenial usage to speak and write with that
variation which the nature and growth of our speech has put within our power.
And this variation has moreover its utility, as when in antithesis it removes
the contrast from the ear, and leaves it only to the mind, thus purging the
language of a certain sensual importunity; as may be seen by the following
example, wherein the italics are happily placed for our purpose: — 1 See i
Cor. iii. u; and compare the Contents. |
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5$6 X. OF SYNTAX. God grant when
men are at their wits end, they may be at the beginning of their faith,
valiantly to hold out in the Truth. — Thomas Fuller, Abel Redevivus; the
Epistle to the Reader, 1 65 1. 591. The substitution of the preposition
instead of the case of the noun, has been extended also to the pionoun. Hence
a variety of pronounal phrases, such as few of us, one of you, all of them;
and cumulative phrases also, as of my own, of yours, of theirs, from thence.
of itself. Warsaw is not of itself a strong fortress, but it closes the
railway and defends the passage of the Vistula. And the conjunctions which
are formed from the pronouns soon catch this phrasal habit. out of which to.
But those wise and good men whose object it had been all along to save what they
could of the wreck, out of which to construct another ark, &c. — Blunt,
History of the Reformation, ch. ix. This has been felt to be a Frenchism or a
classicism, and the English humour has never thoroughly liked it. At best it
is but book-English. It is one of the most salient of the features of
Addison's style that he asserted the native idiom in this particular; as, '
This is the thing which I spoke to you of.' This English reluctance to
welcome ' of which,' ' to which/ ' from which,' as conjunctions, is to be
noted as the point where our instincts lead us to resist the further progress
of the French element. At this point there is, however, much vacillation and
uncertainty: the English ear not being quite satisfied with either
construction. The following is from one of Addison's papers: — This Morning I
received from him the following Letter, which, after having rectified some
little Orthographical Mistakes, 1 shall make a Present of to the Publick. —
The Spectator, No. 499. |
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3. PHRASAL. 557 The contact of
the symbols of to is not pleasing. But notwithstanding the untowardness of
these little collisions, it still holds, that when point is desired, the
native fashion, the so-called Addisonian, is resorted to. In the following
quotation, as usual, the typography is carefully preserved: — The next great
question is, what they did this for. That it was for a miraculous story of
some kind or other, is to my apprehension extremely manifest; — William
Paley, Evidences, Prop. I. ch. x. 592. One of the prepositions has acquired
for itself a very remarkable function, in attendance not on a noun, but on a
verb; and yet it is a noun also; it is at the point of union between noun and
verb, that is to say, the Infinitive. Here the preposition to has made for itself
a permanent place, just as at has in Danish, and a (Latin ad) in Wallachian. |
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$$8 X. OF SYNTAX. of little
shoots will forthwith enter into a competition, which will increase in
severity with every season, and nature's pruning will lop out year by year
the weakest, until at length a very few will have established for themselves
a post of permanence. The sprays of language are these phrasal forms which
are produced by the combination of symbolic words. They are constantly
springing up in particular classes of society, in particular localities or
crafts or schools; and in the same sphere they mostly pass their existence
until they are ousted by some phrase of newer device. Now and then it happens
that one escapes beyond the pale of its class and becomes more generally
known, but even then, in most cases it is only to enjoy a short career, and
be soon forgotten. An instance of this occurred in the recent expression to
make it out; which originated about thirty years ago in the aristrocratic
region, got enlarged so far as to be current among the whole of the educated
classes, and then passed quietly into oblivion. A distinguished Queen's Counsel
told me how he found himself one day seated at a dinner table where the
company was mostly of higher rank than he had been used to, and that by way
of opening conversation with the lady next him, he asked her the question of
the hour, Whether she had been to the Royal Academy? She had not; she had not
been able to make it out. ' Make it out '! thought my friend to himself, '
What can that mean? This is one of their aristocratic phrases that they
understand among themselves.' In course of time it became more public, and
was heard on all sides, and it meant the same as to make time for a thing.
But it had no chance of permanence, because there was already a
well-established and more necessary use of this very phrase, ' to make it
out,' in the sense of clearing up a difficulty or uncertainty. |
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3. PHRASAL. 559 Let us take an
example from the other end of the community. In Somersetshire the ordinary
phrase ' to have to do a thing,' is in frequent and varied use. The negative
' not to have to do ' is common as a euphemism for saying that the thing is
prohibited. The parson came suddenly upon some rustic children who were
swinging where they had no right to be, and as he drove them off, one boy
made himself the spokesman: ' Please, sir, we did n know as we had n had to
swing here!' |
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560 X. OF SYNTAX. discord of
thought, across which the mind has to scramble after the sense. Sometimes in
language, as in music, such a discord may be entertaining: — Some girls were
asked by one of our inspectors of schools, whether they knew what was the
meaning of the word scandal. One little girl stepped vigorously forward, and
throwing her hand up in that semaphore fashion by which children indicate the
possession of knowledge, attracted the notice of the inspector. He desired
her to answer the question, upon which she uttered these memorable words: '
Nobody does nothing, and everybody goes on telling of it everywhere.' . . .
Listen to it again. ' Nobody does nothing (regard the force of that double
negative), and everybody goes on (note the continuity of slander) telling of
it everywhere.' — Good Words, August 1872: ' A Conversation of Certain
Friends in Council.' 595. We have shewn abundant readiness to do justice to
the claims of the logical sense. Our dismissal of the elder negative, and our
rule that two negatives are equal to an affirmative, are an instance in which
logical sense rather than speech-instinct has had the sway. In the latter
part of last century we had reached a sort of culminating point in the matter
of logical syntax, and since that time there has been a relaxation and some
little disposition to admit structures that are expressive or pleasing, though
they cannot quite give a logical account of themselves. Nothing is plainer,
for example, than this, that two or more subjects united by ' and ' form
plurality, and should logically have a plural verb; and therefore the
following is logically right: — Mr. Jenkins's house was about a mile from Mr.
Benson's: it was delightfully situated; there were a beautiful lawn and canal
before it, and a charming garden behind; Mrs. Trimmer, Fabulous Histories,
ch. x. No one hardly would write so now-a-days: it offends from excess of
logic. Here is another instance in which the logic is. too rigid: — A very
small number of similar reminiscences of my own is also added. — Sir George
Henry Rose, Marchmont Papers; Preface. |
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3. PHRASAL. 561 And here is an
example of the freedom resulting from watching the thought rather than the
words: Parliament were more particular about their sport than about the
object of it. — J. B. Mozley, Essays, 'Archbishop Laud/ p. 137. 596. Nouns of
multitude enjoy the privilege of construing either as singulars or as
plurals: but if within the same sentence they take both constructions, there
arises the sense of illogicality, as in this: — Samaria for their sinnes, is
captiuated. — 2 Kings xvii; Contents. The logical quality of speech is contingent
on a variety of attendant circumstances. What has been logical once is not
logical always. In Exodus iv. Contents, we read, ' The people beleeueth them/
where we should now say 'The people believe them.' There is here a double
adjustment, first as concerns the grammatical Number of this collective noun,
and secondly as to that of the termination -eth, which was once a plural
termination. Not however to analyze all this, it suffices for the present to
observe that while the two forms of this sentence above given have been
equally logical each in its day, the latter only seems logical now. By
universal assent the French is reputed the most logical of languages. This is
not due to any special sensitiveness which the nation has displayed upon this
subject: on the contrary, they have followed the natural speech-instinct with
greater simplicity than we have, as is witnessed by the different conduct of
the two nations in the matter of the Double Negative. Nor is there any
language which is fuller of idioms defying logical analysis. But the meaning
upon the French page is transparent, and the mind follows the language not
only without impediment, but also with the enjoyment of a perceptible concord
between the structure and the sense. o |
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CHAPTER XI OF COMPOUNDS. |
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OF COMPOUNDS IN GENERAL. $6$ of
off-hand compound has always been one of the recog nised means of being
humorous. Index-learning. How Index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds
the eel of Science by the tail. Alexander Pope, Dunciad, i. 279.
honse-and-village-sprinklcd. Rough hills descend, and mingle with the wide
Grove-tufted, house-and-village-sprinkled plain; — William Allingham,
Laurence Bloomfield, c. v. 291. Passing over this sort, which are hardly to
be ranged as compounds at all, we have such loose examples as forgetme-not,
and such compact examples as mankind, nostril., boatswain, which through long
use are so well knit as to be more like simple words than compounds. The
compound state, properly so called, is an intermediate condition between the
phrase and the word; a transition which the phrase passes through in order to
become gradually condensed into a simple word. We are of old familiar with
the grammatical idea that phrases are made out of words, but here we
recognise that the reverse of this is also true, and that words are made out
of phrases. 598. The distinctive condition which marks that a compound has
been formed, is the change of accent. The difference between 'black bird' and
'blackbird' is one of accent. Or, when it is stated of a horse that he is '
two years old,' each of these words has its own several tone; but make a
trisvllable of it, and say ' a two-year-old,' and the sound is greatly
altered. The second and third words lean enclitically upon the first, while
the first has gathered up all the smartness of tone into itself, and goes off
almost like the snap of a trigger. 002 |
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564 XI. OF COMPOUNDS The written
sign which is used to signify that a compound is intended, is the hyphen;
which may therefore be regarded as being indirectly a note of accent. This is
the reason why the hyphen is so much more used in poetry than in prose. The
poet is attending to his cadences, and therefore he appreciates the accentual
value of the hyphen. Our prose (on the other hand) is sprinkled with
compounds which are written as if they were in construction. There is no need
to search for examples, they offer themselves on the page of the moment. On
the page that happens to be under my eye, I find two compounds, both without
hyphens: — coast- line. Indeed these old coal layers call to mind our peat
bogs We find a layer of peat nearly everywhere on our coast line between high
and low water mark. I think most people would read coal layers and peat bogs
as compounds also; but on these there might be a difference of opinion. The
same may be said of millstone grit in the next quotation: but there can be no
doubt as to coal-producing. You know that if you heat a poker it expands; the
heat making it longer. The earth is in the same state as a hot poker, and
parts of it expand or contract as the heat within it ebbs and flows. 1 have
here a section of the coal measures of Lancashire. Upon a thick ba^e of
mills'one grit, of which most of our hills are composed, you have the coal
producing rocks, which, instead of being horizontal as they were originally,
have been tilted up. — W. Boyd Dawkins, On Coal. 599. An incident which
attends upon the act of compounding is this, — that the old grammatical habit
of the final member is subjected to the grammatical idea of the new compound.
Any part of speech will assume in compounding the substantive character, and
will pluralise as such. Thus forget-me-?wi ) plural forget-me-nots. I
remember a quaker |
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IN GENERAL. $6$ lady, who, with
the grave and gentle dignity that formed part of her beautiful character,
disapproved of chimney-ornament?, on the ground that they were need-nois.
Moreover, a plural form, on entering into composition, takes a new character
as a singular, and withal a new power of receiving a new plurality. Thus,
singular sixpence, plural sixpences. Inasmuch then as compounds are in their
nature and origin nothing but fragments of structure in a state of cohesion,
it follows that they will most naturally be classified according to the
divisions of syntax. Although a precise classification may hardly be
practicable, owing to the vast play of fancy, and the consequent
inter-crossing of the kinds of compounds, yet we shall experience in following
such a division some of that practical convenience which attends a method
that is substantially true to nature. The relation between the members of a
compound is expressed in one of three ways; either (i) by their relative
position, as in the difference between pathfield, racehorse, and fieldpalh,
horserace', or (2) by an inflection of one of the parts, as in
subtlecadenced; or (3) by the intervention of a symbolic word, as in
man-of-war, bread-and-cheese. The first and third are the methods in greatest
vogue; the second is rather literary. Often it may be observed that the first
and third are alternatives; thus in the north they say breadloaf, but in the
south loaf-of-bread; and for a drink of water we find waterdrink in the
Ormulum ii. 149: — Alls iff Jni drunnke waterrdrinnch. As if thou drankst a
water drink. We will speak of these three as Compounds of the First Order,
Compounds of the Second Order, and Compoun is of the Third Order. |
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566 XI. COMPOUNDS. |
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1. OF THE FIRST ORDER. j6j 601.
But by far the most characteristic are those which are made of two
substantives, the first acting as an adjective. Such are the following: —
air-balloon main-spring boat-swain nut-shell cart-horse oak-apple dog-kennel
path-way edge-tool quern-stone fish-wife rick-yard gift-horse ship-mate
horse-guards time-piece ink-horn upas-tree jelly-fish vine-yard king-cup
water-hole (Australia) lamp-oil yoke- fellow This form of compound is homely,
idiomatic, and familiar; and it is put aside for the compound of the third
order when dignity is aimed at. But there is a cycle in these things, and now
we see this compound recovering some of its lost ground. In the following
quotation, instead of ' music of the spheres/ we have sphere-music. In any
point of Space, in any section of Time, let there be a living Man; and there
is an Infinitude above him and beneath him, and an Eternity encompasses him
on this hand and on that; and tones of Sphere-music, and tidings from loftier
worlds, will flit round him, if he can but listen, and visit him with holy
influences, even in the thickest press of trivialities, 0/ the din of busiest
life. — Thomas Carlyle, State of German Literature, ad fin. 602. This is the
sort of compound for which the German language is proverbial 1 . The flat
syntax has disappeared from that language, and it has gone to swell the
numbers of |
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568 XI. COMPOUNDS. their flat
compounds. Examples are such as |)anb*fdjuf) (hand-shoe) glove, mmjer^ut
(finger-hat) thimble, (Srbfunfce (earth-knowledge) geography, 8pract)4ef)re
speech-lore. There is so close an affinity between the German and English
compounds of the first order, that the one will occasionally supply a comment
on the other. Handywork affords an example of this. As we find it printed, it
has the appearance of our adjective- handy combined with a substantive work.
But the German <§anbwerf suggests a truer etymology. It consists, in fact,
of two substantives, namely hand and geweorc, or (mediaevally) ywork; so that
it would be more correctly written thus hand-ywork. But if this looks too
archaic, it should be spelt handiwork. The Saxon original is found in Deuteronomy
iv. 28: — And ge beowiab frenulum godura, And ye (shall) serve foreign gods,
manna hand geweorc, treowene and men's handiwork, tree-en and stonen,
staenene, la ne geseob, ne ne gehirab, that see not, nor hear; and they eat
ne hig ne etab, ne hig ne drinca]). not, and drink not. 603. Other Saxon
compounds there are of the same mould, but none that have so nearly preserved
their original form as handiwork has. There is no hyphen in Saxon
manuscripts, but words that have an accentual attraction were often written
somewhat nearer to one another \ Some words were thus divided in two, which
have coalesced since. |
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1. OF THE FIRST ORDER. 569 |
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5;o XT. COMPOUNDS. interesting
to the philologer, and so frequent in his discourse, namely, Flexion. A
slight indication of the process is all that can be attempted in this place.
The chief attention being usually fixed on the fore-part of the compound, the
after -part is left free to undergo alteration. This has been attended with
remarkable consequences, in certain instances, where the termination was
already of a widely generic character. The slighting of the tone and the
generalisation of the sense, go on together and favour one another. At length
the termination reaches a symbolic value, and we obtain those forms in which
the after-part is merely an abstract or collective sign to the forepart; as
childhood, friendship, happiness, kingdom, kindred, warfare, wedlock. Other
cases there are in which the second part passes into a sort of adjectival or
adverbial termination; as graceful, careless, froward, contrariwise. So far
we can still regard these as a sort of compounds. But the symbolising process
goes on, and with it the waning of the form of the second part, until we are
landed in Flexion: thus from good-like we at length get goodly. 254 (2). A very
large majority of the words of a mature language, if we could analyse them
correctly, would be found to dissolve into Compounds, and these again into
phrases. So that we may reverse the ordinary grammatical view whereby words
are regarded as the material of sentences; and we should be philologically
justified in this seeming paradox: — The Sentence is the raw material of the
Word. |
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1. OF THE FIRST ORDER. 57 1 Of
Particle-Composition. 606. The class of Compounds to which this name is given
belongs to the First Order, and they are the relics of a symphytism between
verbs or adjectives and their prepositive adverbs. Other combinations have
grown out of these; but where the relation is other than adverbial, it is not
a case of Particle-Composition: as in forehead, where the first part is
adjectival; or in afternoon, because, contraband, post-obit, where it is a
preposition. 606 a. First in order we will take the Saxon group, once large,
now much reduced in numbers. a-. A very influential Saxon prefix, of which
few examples now survive: — abide, ago, alight, arise, awake. after-: —
aftermath, afterthought, afterward. all-: — almighty, alone, all-powerful,
already, all-sufficient, all-wise. For the adverbial use of all see 208 and
500. This prefix has attached itself in a special manner to another prefix
lower down in this Saxon list, viz. to; so that we get the compound prefix
all-to. And a certaine woman cast a piece of a milstone vpon Abimelechs head,
and all to brake his scull. — Judges ix. 53. This composite prefix appears at
its fullest in the fourteenth century, and a long list of its combinations
may be seen in the Glossary to the Wyclifnte Versions x . 1 It has recently
been contended that all is a separate adverb here, that to goes strictly with
brake, and that there is no sort of symphytism between all and to. The ground
of this contention is the close attachment of to in to brecan and other like
compounds in Saxon, a fact which cannot be dis; uted. The issue is a fine and
delicate one, and it is very little helped by evidence from books or
manuscripts. At the time in question there were no hyphens, and the spacing
of words in writing was much guided by tradition. It is almost wholly a
matter for the ear to decide, helped however by the sort of combinations with
all to. It will be interesting to those |
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5J2 XI. COMPOUNDS. and-, an-: —
andiron, answer (A.S. andswaru); corrupted to hand-: — handloom (A.S.
andloma), handicap, handiron. at. The Saxon mt made many compounds, of which
one only remains, and that as a fragment hardly recognisable, in twit, which
is A.S. aet-witan to upbraid, rebuke. be-, by- -. — become, behalf, behest,
behoof, belief, belong; word, by-lane, by-path, by-siander, by-way, by-work
306. for-, fore-: — forbid, forebode, foreclose, forget, forgive, forego ',
forlorn, forerigh /, foreshorten , forestall, forward. fore-right. If well
thou hast begun, go on fore-right.' Robert Herrick. forth- '.—forthcoming.
fro- '.—froward. gain-: — gainsay, gain-giving Shakspeare. ge-. A participial
and generalising prefix, which once was rife in our language, and which still
flourishes with a fine effect in German. With us it has dwindled into a rare
poetical curiosity, and it has taken the form of y- or other forms still less
recognisable. y chain d. Yet first to those ychahi'd in sleep, The wakeful
trump of doom must thunder through the deep. John Milton, On the Morning of
Christ^ Nativity, xvi. |
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1. OF THE FIRST ORDER. 573
yclept. But come thou Goddess fair and free, In Heaven ycleap'd Euphrosyue.
Id. L 'Allegro. ypoiniing. What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones. Or that his hallow'd reliques should be
hid, Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid? Id. On Shakespear, 1630. It also appears
as i and e; as iwis A.S. gewis gett)tf 256, enow, enough, A.S. genoh genug.
in-: — income, inland, inmate, inroad, insight, instep, ifiward, mis-. A
Gothic prefix of wide area, found in a large number of Saxon compounds; now
greatly reduced, but with a few compensations: — misbehave, miscall, miscarry,
misdeem, misgiving, misgovernment, mislay, mislead, mislike, mismanagement,
missenl, mistake, mistrust. Carried by the Franks into Gaul, it lives in
modern French, and by that road we have received misadventure,
mischief,??iiscreanl, misnomer, misuse, and the imperfectly naturalised
misalliance. of-, off-: — offal, offset, offshoot, off scouring, offspring.
out-: — outdo, outgoing, outlaw, output ' a great output of coal,' outrun,
outset, outshine, outstrip, outwork, outward. Not outrage; which is a French substantive
in -age 335, based upon outre beyond, Old French oltre, Latin ultra. The
Italian form is oltraggio. over-: — overbearing, overcoat, overcome,
overdrive, overfloiv, overlook, overmuch, overthwart, overturn, overwork.
thorough-: — thoroughfare, thoroughgoing. to-: — toward, to-brake Judges ix.
53, Luther gcrfcrad). In Saxon there was a good list of these. to-brekith.
The pot to-brtkith, and farwel al is go. The Chanones Yemannes Tale,
Preamble. |
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574 XI - COMPOUNDS. un-: —
unlawful, unlikely, unwilling. In German this prefix goes only with
substantives and adjectives, as Unfraut weed, ungut bad. But in English it
combines very freely with verbs also. 307. This is one of the few Saxon
prefixes that have entered freely into composition with Roman words, as
unhesitating, unjust, unmitigated, unscrupulous. under-: — undergo,
underhand, understand, undertake. up-: — upland, uplong, upon, upright,
upset, upshot, upward. well-: — well-beloved, welcome, well-wisher. with-: —
withdraw, withhold, withstand. 606 b. In the French list the most important
is that which comes first in alphabetical order. The particle a as a prefix
may in some cases be an altered of, as in adown, which may be explained from
the Saxon of dune; or an altered on, as about from Saxon onbutan, asleep from
Saxon on sloepe. But in the bulk this prefix is to be identified with the
French preposition a, Latin ad: and even in the alterations from the Saxon,
this French preposition has been influential: abed, afar, afield, afoot,
ajar, akin, along, aloud, aright, astir, athwart, away. amain. And with his
troupes doth march amaine to London. 3 Henry VI, iv. 8. 4. This is a
favourite strain of words in the seafaring life, as aback, abaft, aboard,
afloat, aground, ahead, ahoy, aloft, alongside, aloof, alow, ashore, astern.
alow, aloft. Stunsails alow and aloft! said he, As soon as the foe he saw.
John Harrison, Three Ballads. counter- (French contre against): — counteract,
counterfeit, countermove, counter -reformation, counter-revolution. Altered
form — country-dance, French contre- da use. |
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1. OF THE FIRST ORDER. 575 en-
and em-: — embalm, enact, encamp, endeavour, enfranchise, engender, enjoy,
enlighten, enlist, enquire, ensample, ensue, enthrall, e?itice, entire. pur-
(French pour): — purchase, purlieu, purloin, purport, pursue, pursuivant,
purtenance, purvey. 606 c. The Latin composites of this class have largely
displaced the Saxon ones, and absorbed those of French derival. An F attached
to a word indicates its French complexion. In some instances the particles
have been so thoroughly domesticated, that they have formed new homemade
combinations. a-, ab-, or abs-, (from) -.—avert, abrogate, ads-lain. ad-
(to): — adapt, adequate, adherent, admit, advert. ante- and anti- (before): —
a?itecedenl, antechapel, antediluvian, ante-room, anticipate. circum-
(around): — circumference, circumlocution, circumnavigate, circumspect,
circumslajice (F). con- and co- (with): — consonant, coeval, company (F),
contemporary. contra- and contro- (against): — contradict, controversy. de-
(from): — deject, descend, despair (F.) Home-made deodorize. dis- has the
notion of undoing, scattering hither and thither; sometimes of mere
separation or subtraction: — disadvantage (F), discount (F), discredit,
disdain (F), dissent, disturb. This prefix has sometimes displaced the Saxon
mis-. as in dislike for mislike. Spenser reduces this dis- to s- by an
Italian imitation, and hence such forms as sdeigned [Faery Queene, iii. 1.
40, 55), spighl. e- or ex- (from, out of): — eject, elude, expect. Prefixed
to titles it designates persons who have recently quitted office, as
Ex-Chancellor, Ex-Mayor. |
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576 XI. COMPOUNDS. in- or im-
(in): — inject ', inoculate, insert, inspect, intrude; imbue, impoverish,
improve. inter- (between): — international, interview (F). ob- or op-
(against, facing you): — object, obloquy, oppose, obstacle, obverse. per-
(through): — perceive (F), perquisite, permanent. post- (after): — postpone,
postscript. prge-, only in its French form pre- (before, beforehand,
forward): — precede, predestinate, prefer, prejudice, premature. pro-
(forward, for): — promontory, pronounce, proportion, protest. re- and red-
begins in the idea of reverse or reciprocal action, but it has acquired a
signification so vague that explanation is hopeless, and the shades of its
meaning are now so familiar to us that it speaks for itself. And indeed it
has so completely established itself in English, as to have extinguished
almost every other means of expressing the same notion. It is a fine example
of the versatility of these highly symbolised ingredients and of the hold
"which they may get on the aggregate mind: — rebel, rebut (F), receive
(F), reedify, refer, regard (F), red-integrate, reject, rejoinder (F),
relate, remark (F), renown (F), repent (F), request (F), resemble (F), return
(F), reunion (F), revisit, revenge (F), review (F), revolve, redundant,
reward (F). Home-made react, reagent, recall, re-elect, re-invest. sub-
(under): — subaqueous, subdivide, subject, subordinate. Home-made
subcommittee, subway. trans- (across): — trans-atlantic, transform, transmit,
transpose. ultra- (beyond) '.—ultramontane, ultra-radical. 606 d. The Greek
examples are largely concerned with literary and scientific terminology, and
are for the most part common to the European languages. |
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2. OF THE SECOND ORDER. 577
anti- (opposite): — anticlinal (Geology), antidote, antipathy , antipodes,
antithesis, antitype. # apo- (from), apocalypse, apocrypha, apogee
(Astronomy), apology, apostrophe. auto- (self): — autobiography, autocrat,
autograph, automatic, autonomous, autopsy. epi- (in addition to): — epicycle
(Astronomy), epidemic, epidermis (Anatomy), epigram, epilogue, epitaph,
epitome. mono- (one): — monogram, monograph, monologue, monopoly, monosyllable
, monotony. para- (beside, against): — paradox, paraphrase, parasite, Mrasol.
peri- (around): — periphery, periphrasis, perigee (Astronomy), perihelion
(Astronomy). poly- (many): — polygamy, polyglot, polygon, polysyllabic,
polytechnic, polytheism. pro- (before): — -programme (F), prolegomena,
prologue, prophesy. pseudo- (false-, sham-, nominal-, unreal-): —
pseudo-martyr, pseudo -ph ilosophy . pseudo-erudition. There is perhaps no
kind of caste-feeling more hateful than the selfglorifying arrogance of a
pseudo-erudition. — F. W. Farrar, The Life, i. 424. syn- and sym- (with): —
synclinal (Geology), sympathy, syntax, and by assimilation of n to /,
syllogism. |
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57 8 XI. COMPOUNDS. consequence
of this that we are once more invited, and now for the last time, to consider
some Flexional forms as holding a middle place between the Flat and the
Phrasal. This is the natural arrangement; for we may speak generally and say:
— Flexion occupies ike middle zone of the whole sphere of human language as
it is historically known to us. Here we make two groups. The first, of
compounds retaining traces of flexion in the first member, as beadsman,
bondsman, craftsman, daysman, draftsman, guardsman, headsman, helms?7ian,
herdsman, kinsman, kinsfolk, landsman, marksman, pointsman, salesman,
seedsman, spokesman, sportsman, swordsman, tradesman, tradespeople, wealsmen
Sh. In Saxon this was syntactic, as ' se scyres man Leofric,' the shires man
Leofric, Cod. Dipt. 929: and even in Chaucer 'no craftys men' Ca?zterbury
Tales 1899. money's-worth. To an offer of money, such an one replies — ' Oh 1
I don't like that sort of thing '; but nevertheless he does not object to
money's-worth. — Herbert Spencer, The Morals of Trade. The second group
consists of those in which the connection of the parts of the compound is
indicated by flexion of the final member. Many compounds have terminal
flexion without belonging to this group, as far-seeing. It is when the
inflection is applied in such a manner as to belong only to the combination
and not to either part by itself, that we have a compound which is distinctly
flexional. In the above example, seeing is equally an inflected word whether
it be in or out of the compound, and the -ing has no more special relation to
the compound than the -ful has in the compound all-powerful. But if we take
long-legged, this is a flexional compound. It is not a combination of long
and legged, but rather of long and leg or legs, which are clamped together
into one formation by the participial inflection. |
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2. OF THE SECOND ORDER. 579 Such
are the following, of which the less common are marked with the initials of
Milton or Tennyson: — arrow-wounded (T) meek-eyed (M) broad-shouldered
neat-handed (M) cross-barred (M) open-hearted deep-throated (M) pure-eyed (M)
eagle-eyed (M) royal-towered (M) far-fetched self-involved (T) golden-shafted
(T) thick-leaved (T) high-toned vermeil-tinctured (M) icy-pearled (M)
white-handed (M) large-moulded (T) yellow-ringleted (T) I was bred a
blacksmith, and knew my art as well as e'er a blackthumb'd, leathern-apron'd,
swart-faced knave of that noble mystery. — Walter Scott, Kenilworth, xi. 608.
This group of compounds is seen in its highest perfection in the Greek
language, and the authors who have used this form of speech with the greatest
effect and in the most opposite ways are iEschylus and Aristophanes. What was
a trumpet to the former was employed as a bauble by the latter. Our modern
poets are great performers upon this instrument. Keats handled it very
effectively. In his Endymion we read of ' yellow-girted bees '; also
subtlecadenced 219; lidless-eyed. Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train
Of planets all were in the blue again. . Mr. Robert Browning has elf-needled,
fairy-cupped, fruil shaped, honey-coloured, billowy -bosomed. Hush! if
you saw some western cloud All billowy-bosomed, overbowed By many
benedictions. fawn - skin - dappled. That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers. P p
2 |
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580 XI. COMPOUNDS. 609. In such
instances the inflection reacts on the whole compound with a consolidating
force. Several words may thus be strung together. When the last member of a
linked composite has an inflection, it seems to shoot back pervadingly
through the others, locking the whole together with a bolt of coherence. We
do not use this power so freely as the Germans do. Where we read ' O thou of
little faith' in Matthew xiv. 31, Luther has £) bu Jtleinglciubiger. Richard
Rothe said of his student life at Heidelberg, that it was cm
Voctif(^*reIigi6gstt)iffen(^aftn(^e8 Sbtytt. In the following quotation,
though it is not so printed, yet the word old is a member of the compound and
a partner in the services of the termination: old friend-ish-ness. The author
having settled within himself the most direct mode of securing the ear of his
readers, throws himself upon their favour with an air of trustfulness and old
friend-ish-ness, which cannot fail to secure him welcome and audience. —
Quarterly Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 545. Here also seem to belong those
instances in which the last member is a present participle, governing the first
part of the compound: As a tool-and-weapon-using being, man stands alone. —
E. T. Stevens, Flint Chips, Preface. home-enfolding. The lonely wand'rer
under other skies Thinks on the happy fields he may not see, The
home-enfolding landscape seems to rise With sunlight on the lea. Horace
Smith, Alma Mater, i860. 610. The Compounds of the First and Second Orders
are for the most part the offspring of an early and undeveloped Syntax. They
are the natural instruments for saying a great deal in brief compass, and
with all the entailed consequences of inexplicitness. Among these
consequences |
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3. OF THE THIRD ORDER. 58 1 may
be reckoned advantages as well as disadvantages. It is sometimes a
disadvantage that the meaning is clouded, but then this turns to advantage in
certain aspects, as when illusion is sought by the poet. Thus, sea-path
sunset-paved; Aubrey de Vere, Legends of Saint Patrick, 1872; p. 48. As an
example of the uncertainty attending on compounds we may cite the famous
Greek compound in Luke vi. 1, which literally rendered in English is
'secondfirst.' Our version gives it ' second sabbath after the first';
another explanation is ' second of the principal sabbaths,' and a third '
first sabbath after the second day of the Passover.' So this compound c
second-first ' has suggested three distinct interpretations: — second after
first, second among first, first after second. This will serve to indicate
the liability of compounds to vagueness. The logical faculty loves an
explicit syntax, but the imagination has an affection for compounds, and
especially for those of the first and second order. That logical language,
the French, is stronger in syntax than in compounds, as it is also more
excellent in prose than in poetry. 3. Compounds of the Third Order. 611. Here
belong all those compounds which are formed by an accentual union of phrases
wherein the syntactical connection is entirely or mainly symbolic. There was
a mediaeval English expression for vain regret, which was made up of the
words ' had I wist,' that is to say, ' Oh, if I had only known what the
consequence would be.' It was variously written, and the variations depend on
the degree of accentual intensification: — |
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5§2 XI. COMPOUNDS.
hadde-y-wisie. And kepe pe well from hadde-y-\viste. Babees Book (E.E.T. S.),
P- 15. hady-wyst. When dede is doun hit ys to lat; be ware of hady-wyst. The
chief symbol which threads together the Compounds of this Order is the
preposition ' of/ as coal-ofarms, willd-the-wisp, cat-d -nine-tails,
man-of-war, lighl-d-love, ticketof-leave. The distinction between compounds
and constructs is a delicate one, so much so that two persons of like birth
and education may be found to difTer upon it. When however we see the of
abraded to o\ or when we hear it in speech, as we often hear man-d-war, then
there is no doubt of the compound state of that expression. 612. This class
of compounds is essentially French, and it is from our neighbours that we
have caught the art of making them. Thus, we say after them: — mot-d'ordre word-of-command
point-d'honneur point-of-honour. But the instances in which we make use of it
are far less numerous than those in which we keep to our natural compound,
that of the First Order. It is only necessary to offer a few examples by
which it will appear how very far we are from overtaking the French in the
use of their compound: — chef-d'oeuvre master-piece maison-de-campagne
country-house chemin-de-fer rail-road bonnet-de-nuit night-cap |
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3. OF THE THIRD ORDER. 583
tete-de-pavot poppy-head culottes-de-peluche plush-breeches Bureau-de-Poste
Post-Office. And if we are slow to accept their compounds with de, still less
do we concern ourselves to imitate those which they so readily make with
other prepositions; as — arc-en-ciel rain-bow verre a vin wine-glass manche a
balai broom-stick. So strong is our preference for our own old hereditary
compound, that even where we substantially adopt a French compound, we alter
it to the world-old form, as in the case of coup-de- Bourse, which in the
following newspaper-cutting is turned into Exchange-stroke. Secretary
Boutwell was in New York almost on the eve of the outbreak. He was aware, as
indeed the whole city was, that a conspiracy was brewing — that what we might
call an ' Exchange stroke ' was contemplated. The Americans outstrip us in
converting these French compounds of the Third Order into English compounds
of the First Order. Thus we' say point of view, after the French point de
vue; but in American literature we meet with view-point. The inmates of the
Eureka House, from a social view-point, were not attractive. — Bret Harte, A
Lonely Ride. 613. The transition from the construct to the compound state is
a slight and delicate thing, but it takes time to accomplish. The symbolic
syntax has produced few as yet; the flexional syntax has produced far more,
for the compounds of the second order have been greatly fostered by the study
of Greek. But the great shoal of English compounds is derived from the eldest
form of syntax, and they have their roots in a time immeasurably old. They
claim kindred with |
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584 XI. COMPOUNDS. Red-Inclian
compounds like Tso-mec-cos-tee and Tso-me-coste-won-dee and Pah-puk-kee'na
and Pah-Puk-Keewis and other such, of which the ready and popular repertory
is the Song of Hiawatha. A General Conclusion. [Added 1879.] A word may here
be said by way of general conclusion to all the foregoing chapters, for the
one that now remains is in some respects a thing apart. If we turn and cast a
glance behind us over the ground we have travelled, what does the general
review suggest towards the formation of a comprehensive judgment upon the
character of the English Language? We behold a stupendous aggregation of
variety — a vast intermixture of diverse formations, powers, and processes;
and when all this is compared with our models the ancient classics, we know
that the general verdict is unfavourable to English, and that it is commonly
expressed in some such form as the following sentence from a periodical of
high educational standing: — ' Irregularity is the characteristic of the
English language, as order and rule are, upon the whole, the characteristic
of the Latin' (1873). This amounts to a charge of confusion, for Irregularity
as against Order and Rule can mean nothing less. But if the reader has taken
the trouble to follow the analysis step by step, especially if he has
attended to the examples of Cumulation and Variation, I hope he will be
prepared to form a very different conclusion; — I hope that he will be able
to join me in the opinion that our language, though beyond precedent
complicated, is not in a state of confusion, but on the contrary that it
possesses at least the outlines of the most highly organised constitution
that is to be found among the languages of the world. 1. |
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CHAPTER XII. OF PROSODY, OR THE
MUSICAL ELEMENT IN SPEECH. There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; And as
the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased — William Cowper, The Task, vi. I.
614. The first of these chapters was on the Alphabet, out of which, by a multiplicity
of combinations, a conventional garb has been devised for the visible
representation of language. By the artifice of literature, speech is
presented to the eve as an object of sight. Partly in consequence of the
pains which we are at to acquire literary culture; partly also, perhaps, in
consequence of the greater permanency of the visual impressions upon the
mind, — certain it is, that the cultivated modern is apt to think of language
rather as a written than as a spoken thing. And this, although he still makes
far greater use of it by the oral than by the literary process. It is,
notwithstanding, quite plain that writing is but an external and necessarily
imperfect vesture, while the natural and authentic form of language is that
which is made of sound, and addressed to the ear. Human speech consists of
two essential elements, and these are Voice and Meaning. I say ' meaning '
rather than ' thought/ because it seems a more comprehensive term, |
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586 XII. OF PROSODY. including
the whole sphere of cognisance, from its innermost and least explored centre
to its outermost frontiers in physical sensation. Voice will, moreover, be
found to consist of two parts, by a distinction worthy to be observed. For,
in the first place, there is the voice which is the necessary vehicle of the
meaning; and, in the second place, there is the voice which forms a
harmonious accompaniment to the meaning. It is the former of these which is
represented in literature; for the latter, literature is almost silent. Here
the mechanical arts of writing and printing can do but little. One may put
her words down, and remember them, but how describe her sweet tones, sweeter
than musick? — W. M. Thackeray, Esmo?id, Bk. ii. ch. xv. 615. Here then we
must distinguish between the necessary and the noble sound, between
Articulation and Modulation. Poetry, which is the highest form of literature,
makes great efforts to express, or at least to intimate to the mind, this
finest part of the voicing of language. All the peculiar characteristics of
poetry, such as alliteration, assonance, verse, metre, rhyme, are directed
towards this end. In prose this is more faintly and remotely indicated by
such means as punctuation and italics and parentheses. Yet the distinction
here drawn applies to prose as well as to poetry. It is perfectly well known,
and generally recognised. It lies at the base of the demand for * good
reading.' A man may articulate every word, pronounce faultlessly, read
fluently, and observe the punctuation, and yet be far from a good reader. So
much of voice as is the vehicle of sense is given, but the harmony is
wanting, and there is no pleasure in listening to him. It is felt that,
besides the sound which conveys the sense of the words, there is |
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NOBLE SOUND. 587 a further and a
different kind of sound due as an illustrative accompaniment, and it is the
rendering of this which crowns the performance of the good reader, as it is
the perception of this which constitutes the appreciative listener. Or again.
Consider the sound of a passionless Oh as it might be uttered by a schoolboy
in a compulsory reading lesson, and then consider the infinite shades of
meaning of which this interjection is capable under the emotional vibrations
of the voice, and we must acknowledge that the distinction between these two
elements of vocal sound is of a character not unlikely to be attended with
philological consequences. Of sound as the necessary vehicle of speech, and
as the passive material of those phenomena which our science is concerned to
investigate, we have already treated in the first and second chapters. But of
sound as bearing an accordant, concentive, illustrative part, as being an
outer harmony to the strains of the inner meaning; of sound as an
illustrative, a formative, and almost a creative power in the region of
language, we must endeavour to render some account in this concluding
chapter. The distinction here urged is akin to that which is mechanically
effected by the musical instrument maker. A musical note on an instrument is a
noble sound, from which another sort of sound, namely that which we call
Noise, has been eliminated. All mechanical collision produces sound, and that
natural sound is ordinarily of a complex kind, being in fact a noise with
which a musical note is confusedly blended. It is the work of art to contrive
mechanical means whereby these two things may be parted, so that the musical
notes which give pleasure may be placed at the command of men. What the
musical instrument maker does physically, we may do mentally. |
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588 XII. OF PROSODY. We may
separate in our minds between the mere brute sound necessary to speech, and
that musical tone which more or less blends with it according to the temper
and quality of the voice and its companion mind. The latter is a sovereign
agency in the illustration and formation and development of language, and
this is the Sound of which the present chapter treats *. |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 589 The period at which quantity was consciously and studiously
observed as an element of ordinary speech must have been very remote. Perhaps
we may even venture speculatively to regard quantity as the speech-note of
that primitive period before the rise of flexion, when language was (as it
still is in some respectable nations) monosyllabic or agglutinative. We know
from a thousand experiences how conservative poetry is, and we may reasonably
imagine that the quantitive measure of Greek poetry had descended with a
continuous stream of song from high antiquity. With the decay of the Roman
empire it ceased to *be a regulative principle even in poetry, and from that
time accent has been foremost, as it had previously been in the background.
We must not suppose the principle of quantity to be extinct; but it is no
longer formulated; it is absorbed into that general swelling and flowing
movement of language which is known under the somewhat vague name of Rhythm.
617. Leaving quantity then, we proceed to consider the illustrative value of
accent. In the first place, accent appears as the ally and colleague of sense
in the structure of words. In the first order of compounds we have to do with
words like the following: — ash-house, bake-house, brew-house, wood-house. In
these words the accent is on the predicate. That is to say, the stress of
sound falls on that member of the word which contains the assertion and bears
the burden of the meaning. That which is asserted in those words is not
house, but ash, bake, brew, wood. House is the subject or thing spoken of,
and that which is asserted concerning it is contained in the word prefixed.
And this word or syllable* is signalised, as with a flag, by having the
accent upon it. There is a difference between good man and goodman. |
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59° XII. OF PROSODY, The
difference in the sense ought to be rendered by a distinction in the sound.
Good man is a spondee: goodman is a trochee. Randle Cotgrave (16 1 1), under
the word 'Maistre/ says, towards the close of his definition — Also, a title
of honour (such as it is) belonging to all artificers, and tradesmen; whence
Maistre Pierre, Maistre Jehan, &c.; which we giue not so generally but
qualifie the meaner sort of them (especially in countrey townes) with the
title of Goodman (too good for many). This illustration is useful for the
understanding of Matthew xx. ii, 'the goodman of the house'; where the
Genevan of 1560 had 'the master of the house.' It is not always that we hear
this word properly pronounced in church; and our Bibles, from 161 1 down
nearly to our own time, appear to have printed it in two words. But in the
modern prints of the last thirty years this has been set right, and it may be
hoped that the true vocal rendering will also be restored by and by \ Just in
the same manner chapman has the accent on the first syllable. The meaning of
this word is a man engaged in ceap merchandise. It is of the same family of
words as Cheapside, which means market-side. It occurs in another form in
Chippenham, Chipping Norton, Chipping Ongar, and Copenhagen. It is still the
standard word in German for a merchant, ^aufmann. But when the French word
merchant had occupied the foremost place in English, the native word chapman
fell into homelier use. This may be seen in |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 59 1 the following quotation, which exhibits also the accentuation of
the word on its first or determining syllable: — Beauty is bought by
iudgement of the eye, Not uttred by base sale of chapmens tongues. Loues
Labour's lost, ii. I. 15. 618. Considering the relation of thought which
exists between the two parts of a compound, it is plain that there is a
harmony between the sense and the sound, when the specific and predicative
part of the compound is distinguished in the accentuation. We have hitherto
noticed only the instance of a compound consisting of two monosyllabic words,
as goodman, chapman, blackbird. But where the first element of the compound
has more than one syllable, there we find a secondary accent rests upon the
after, or generic part; or, if it cannot be said to have an accent, it
recovers its full tone, as water-course. Sometimes we fall in with a triple
compound, with its three storeys or stages of accentuation forming a little
cascade of gradations, as Spenser's holywater -sprinckle in the following
lines: — She always smyld, and in her hand did hold An holy-water-sprinckle,
dipt in deowe, With which she sprinckled favours manifold. The habit of
putting the specific or predicative part of a compound first, and the habit
which leads us to throw our accents back on the former part of a long word,
are apparently related habits, presenting an example of harmonious action
between the intelligence and the sentiency of the mind. 619. Even when the
reasons arising from the structure of a word are no longer present, there is
a tendency to pursue the track which habit has created, and to throw the
accent back. Many a word of French origin has thrown its accent back
according to this English principle of accentuation. |
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592 XII. OF PROSODY. The French
word revenue is a monument of this action. Two pronunciations of this word
are recognised, namely revenue in the French manner, and revenue in the
English manner. The latter is now almost universal, but the former is not
extinct. In the following quotation from Shakspeare we may trace both of
these pronunciations, for while the word is spelt as if for the French
pronunciation, the metre requires the English accentuation: Towards our
assistance, we do seize to us The plate, coine, reuennewes, and moueables,
Whereof our Uncle Gaunt did stand possest. Richard II, ii. I. 161. Many a
word has had its accent moved a syllable further Dack within the period of
the last generation. The protest of the poet Rogers has often been quoted, —
' Contemplate'; said he, 'is bad enough, but balcony makes me sick.'
Nowa-days contemplate is the usual pronunciation. It was already so
accentuated by Wordsworth. The good and evil are our own: and we Are that
which we would contemplate from far. The Excursion, Bk. V. The elder
pronunciation is indeed still used in poetry, as When I contemplate all
alone. In Memoriam, lxxxii. Contemplating her own unworthiness. Enid (1859),
p. 29. The pronunciation of balcony, which seemed such an abomination to
Rogers, is now the only pronunciation extant. The modern reader of John
Gilpin, if he reads with his ear as well as his eye, is absolutely taken
aback when he comes upon balcony in the following verse: — At Edmonton, his
loving wife From the balcony spied Her tender husband, wondering much To see
how he did ride. |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 593 620. We often find the Americans outrunning us in our national
tendencies. There are many instances in which they have thrown the accent
back one syllable further than is usual in the old country. When we speak of
St. Augustine, we put the accent on the second syllable, and we have no idea
of any other pronunciation. But in the following verse by Longfellow we have
the name accented on the first syllable. Saint Augustine! well hast thou
said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath
our feet each deed of shame! In the same way they say ally, invalid,
partisan, not for the ancient weapon ' pertuisan/ but for the more familiar
word; and I am informed by Mr. Fraser 1 that they also pronounce resources in
a manner that would suggest the union of the French spelling of the word
ressources, with the English trisyllabic pronunciation. Most people in New
England say vagary instead of vagary -. 621. Hitherto we have been chiefly
concerned with that interpretative power of sound which we call accent. We
must now distinguish between accent and emphasis. Accent is that elevation of
the voice which distinguishes one part of a word from another part of the
same word. Emphasis is a similar distinction made between one word and other
words in the same sentence. This may happen in two ways, either grammatically
or rhetorically. The grammatical emphasis rests upon such points as the
following. There are certain words which are naturally unaccented, and in a
general way it may be said that the symbolic words are so. It is the province
of |
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594 XII. OF PROSODY. grammar to
teach us what words are symbolic and what presentive. Grammar teaches, for
instance, when the word one is a numeral, and when it is an indefinite
pronoun. In the former case it is uttered with as full a note as any other
monosyllable; but in the latter case it is toneless and enclitic. It can
hardly be a good line wherein this word, standing as an indefinite pronoun,
receives the ictus of the metre. When we use the word one in the sense of the
French pronoun ' on/ it is incapable of antithesis, and therefore it cannot
carry emphasis. 622. To give another example. It belongs to grammar to direct
the attention towards the antecedent referred to by any pronoun; and according
as that antecedent is understood the pronoun will or will not carry emphasis.
In Psalm vii. 14 the word him admits of two renderings according to the
antecedent which it is supposed to represent: — 13 If a man will not turn, he
will whet his sword: he hath bent his bow and made it ready. 14 He hath
prepared for him the instruments of death: he ordaineth his arrows against
the persecutors. We sometimes hear it read as if it were a reflexive pronoun,
such as would be represented in Latin by sibi, in which case it is toneless.
But if the reference be, as it is generally understood, to ' the man who will
not turn,' spoken of in the preceding verse, then the reader ought to express
this by an emphatic utterance of the word him, such as shall make it apparent
that it is equivalent to for that man. Such an emphasis is used to mark a
grammatical distinction. But when words grammatically identical are exposed
to diversity of emphasis, this is due to the exigencies of the argument, and
we call such emphasis rhetorical. |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 595 The natural tone of symbolic 'words is low, / came, I saw, I
conquered. No one would emphasize the pronouns here. The same may be observed
of the pronouns in the following quotation: — I went by, and lo, he was gone;
I sought him, but his place could no where be found. — Psalm xxxvii. 37. But
words of this rank may receive the rhetorical emphasis. The reply of Sir
Robert Peel to Cobbett makes a good illustration: — Why does the hon. Member
attack me? I have done nothing to merit his assaults. / never lent him a
thousand pounds. Here the pronouns are emphasized, because there was a latent
allusion to Mr. Burdett, who had lent Cobbett a thousand pounds, and had been
rewarded with scurrility. And this allusion supplied a tacit antithesis. A
writer in the Christian Remembrancer for January 1866 undertook to shew that
almost any word may be so placed as to be the bearer of emphasis. In proof of
this an hexameter was produced with a and the emphasized: — A man might have
come in, but the man certainly never. This is a rhetorical emphasis, and such
an emphasis can be contrived for most words. You can emphasize any word to
which you can oppose a true antithesis. To the word one you can oppose in
some instances the word iu . or any other number. Thus one may be emphasized,
as — I asked for one, you gave me two. In other cases the word none would be
a natural antithesis to one. 623. Emphasis, then, is a distinct thing from
accent. The latter is an elevation of a syllable above the rest of the word;
the former is the elevation of a word over the rest Q q 2 |
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596 XII. OF PROSODF. of a
phrase. But it should be noticed that, while there is this difference of
relation between emphasis and accent, there is always, except in the case of
monosyllables, an identity of incidence. The emphasis rests on the selfsame
point as does the accent. We say indeed that the emphasis is on such and such
a word, because by it one word is distinguished above all other words in the
phrase. But the precise place of the emphasis is there where the accent is,
in all words that have an accent; that is to say, in all words that have more
than one syllable. In the case of a polysyllable, which has more than one
accented syllable, the emphasis falls on the syllable that has the higher
tone. An accented word is emphasized by the intensification of its chief
accent. In Acts xvii. 28, 'for we are also his offspring,' there is no doubt
that the emphatic word is ' offspring/ The Greek tells us so explicitly by
prefixing to this word a particle, which in our version is ill rendered by
'also.' A reader who enters into the spirit of the reasoning in this place
will very markedly distinguish the word 'offspring.' And he will do so by
sharpening the acuteness of that accent which already raises the first
syllable above the second. There is a well-known line in the opening of the
Satires of Juvenal, which the greatest of translators has thus rendered, and
thus emphasized by capitals: — Hear, always hear; nor once the debt repay? In
the disyllable here emphasized the emphasis rests on that syllable which had
the accent while the word was in its private capacity. In fact, emphasis is a
sort of public accent, which is incident to a word in regard of its external
and syntactical relations. 624. Where a polysyllable, like ek?ncniary, has
two accents, |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 597 the emphasis heightens the tone of that which is already the
higher. In a sentence like this, ' I was not speaking of grammar schools, but
of elementary schools,' the rhetorical emphasis falling on elementary will
heighten the tone of the third syllable. In all this there is no change of
quantity, no lengthening of the syllable so affected by accent and emphasis
together. It is true, we often hear such a syllable very sensibly lengthened,
as thus: ' I beg leave once more to repeat, that I was speaking only of
ele-ma-entary schools/ The syllable is isolated and elongated very markedly,
but then this is something more than emphasis, it is slress. 625. In living
languages accent and emphasis are unwritten. The French accents have but
secondarily to do with the accentuation of the language, and belong primarily
to its etymology and orthography. In Greek, as transmitted to us, the accents
are written, but they were an invention of the grammarians of Alexandria. In
the Hebrew Bible, not only are the accents written, but likewise the
emphasis; these signs are, however, no part of the original text, but a
scholastic notation of later times. Written accents are very useful as
historical guides to a pronunciation that might be lost without them. But for
the present and living exercise of a living language they are undesirable.
All writing tends to become traditional, and characters once established are
apt to survive their signification. Had our language been accentuated in the
early printed books, we should have had in them a treasure of information
indeed, but it would have been misleading in modern times, and probably it
would have cramped the natural development of the language. For example, we
now say whdtso and whoso, but in early times it was whatso and whoso. This
change is in natural and harmonious |
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59 ^ XII. OF PROSODY. keeping
with the changes that have taken place in the relative values and functions
of the words entering into these compounds. At the date of the combination,
who and what were Indefinite pronouns, and as such were toneless and
enclitic; while so took the lead in thought and carried the accent. Meanwhile
who and what have risen in importance, and so has declined. Here, therefore,
we see the accent in its office as an interpreter and illustrator. A survival
of the emphasis on so occurs in The Faery Queene, iii. 2. 7: — By sea, by
land, where so they may be mett. 628. But, while we make no attempt to write
accent, we may be said to attempt some partial and indirect tokens of
emphasis by means of our system of punctuation. It is, however, in our old
Saxon literature that we find emphasis in the most remarkable manner signalised.
The alliteration of the Saxon poetry not only gratified the ear with a
resonance like that of modern rhyme, but it also hadthe rhetorical advantage
of touching the emphatic words; falling as it did on the natural summits of
the construction, and tinging them with the brilliance of a musical
reverberation. Alliteration did not necessarily act on the initial letter of
the word; where the first syllable was naturally low-toned, the alliteration
played on the initial letter of the second syllable: and this rule is both
ancient and natural. We see an example of it in the following line of
Wordsworth: — Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page! The most convenient
illustration we can offer of the Saxon alliteration will perhaps be obtained
by selecting from the Song of the Fight of Maldon some of the staves |
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1. SOUND AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE
AGENCY. 599 |
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Sumbolau:
a A / æ Æ / e E / ɛ Ɛ / i I / o O
/ u U / w W / y Y /
MACRON: ā Ā / ǣ Ǣ /
ē Ē / ɛ̄ Ɛ̄
/ ī Ī /
ō Ō / ū Ū / w̄ W̄ / ȳ Ȳ /
MACRON + ACEN DDYRCHAFEDIG: Ā̀ ā̀ , Ḗ ḗ, Ī́
ī́ , Ṓ ṓ , Ū́ ū́, (w), Ȳ́ ȳ́
MACRON + ACEN DDISGYNEDIG: Ǟ ǟ , Ḕ ḕ, Ī̀ ī̀, Ṑ ṑ, Ū̀
ū̀, (w), Ȳ̀ ȳ̀
MACRON ISOD: A̱ a̱ , E̱ e̱ , I̱ i̱ , O̱ o̱, U̱ u̱, (w), Y̱ y̱
BREF: ă Ă / ĕ Ĕ / ĭ Ĭ
/ ŏ Ŏ / ŭ Ŭ / B5236: 
B5237: 
BREF GWRTHDRO ISOD: i̯, u̯
CROMFACHAU: ⟨ ⟩ deiamwnt
A’I PHEN I LAWR: ∀, ә, ɐ (u+0250) https: //text-symbols.com/upside-down/
ˡ ɑ ɑˑ aˑ a: / æ æ: /
e eˑe: / ɛ ɛ: / ɪ iˑ i: / ɔ oˑ o: / ʊ uˑ u: / ə / ʌ /
ẅ Ẅ / ẃ Ẃ / ẁ Ẁ
/ ŵ Ŵ /
ŷ Ŷ / ỳ Ỳ / ý Ý / ɥ
ˡ ð ɬ ŋ ʃ ʧ θ ʒ ʤ / aɪ ɔɪ əɪ uɪ ɪʊ aʊ ɛʊ əʊ / £
ә ʌ ẃ
ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ ẅ ẃ ẁ Ẁ ŵ
ŷ ỳ Ỳ Hungarumlaut: A̋ a̋
U+1EA0 Ạ U+1EA1 ạ
U+1EB8 Ẹ U+1EB9 ẹ
U+1ECA Ị U+1ECB ị
U+1ECC Ọ U+1ECD ọ
U+1EE4 Ụ U+1EE5 ụ
U+1E88 Ẉ U+1E89 ẉ
U+1EF4 Ỵ U+1EF5 ỵ
g
yn 
aith δ δ £ gyn aith δ δ £ U+2020 † DAGGER
wikipedia, scriptsource. org
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ǣ
---------------------------------------
Y TUDALEN
HWN:
www.kimkat.org/amryw/1_testunau/testun-246_philology-english-tongue_earle_1879_rhan-4_2125k.htm
Creuwyd: 15-11-2018
Ffynhonell: archive.org
Adolygiad diweddaraf: 15-11-2018
Delweddau:
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Freefind: |
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