The English Language Part 75

"In the Old Slavish, or the language of the church, there are three methods of expressing the past tense: one of them consists in the union of the verb substantive with the participle; as,

_Rek esm'_ _chital esmi'_ _Rek esi'_ _chital esi'_ _Rek est'_ _chital est'_.

"In the corresponding tense of the Slavonic dialect we have the verb substantive placed before the participle:

_Yasam imao_ _mi' smo_ _imali_ _Ti si imao_ _vi' ste_ _imali_ _On ye imao_ _omi su_ _imali_.

"In the Polish it appears as a suffix:

_Czytalem_ _czytalismy_ _Czytales_ _czytaliscie_ _Czytal_ _czytalie_.

"And in the Servian it follows the participle:

_Igrao sam_ _igrali smo_ _Igrao si_ _igrali ste_ _Igrao ye_ _igrali su_.

"The ending _ao_, of _igrao_ and _imao_, stands for the Russian _al_, as in some English dialects _a'_ is used for _all_."

{392}

PART V.

SYNTAX.

CHAPTER I.

ON SYNTAX IN GENERAL.

-- 467. The word _syntax_ is derived from the Greek _syn_ (_with_ or _together_), and _taxis_ (_arrangement_). It relates to the arrangement, or putting together of words. Two or more words must be used before there can be any application of studied syntax.

Much that is considered by the generality of grammarians as syntax, can either be omitted altogether, or else be better studied under another name.

-- 468. To reduce a sentence to its elements, and to show that these elements are, 1, the subject, 2, the predicate, 3, the copula; to distinguish between simple terms and complex terms,--this is the department of logic.

To show the difference in force of expression, between such a sentence as _great is Diana of the Ephesians_, and _Diana of the Ephesians is great_, wherein the natural order of the subject and predicate is reversed, is a point of rhetoric.

_I am moving._--To state that such a combination as _I am moving_ is grammatical, is undoubtedly a point of syntax. Nevertheless it is a point better explained in a separate treatise, than in a work upon any particular language. The expression proves its correctness by the simple fact of its universal intelligibility.

_I speaks._--To state that such a combination as _I speaks_, {393} admitting that _I_ is exclusively the p.r.o.noun in the first person, and that _speaks_ is exclusively the verb in the third, is undoubtedly a point of syntax. Nevertheless, it is a point which is better explained in a separate treatise, than in a work upon any particular language. An expression so ungrammatical, involves a contradiction in terms, which una.s.sisted common sense can deal with. This position will again be reverted to.

_There is to me a father._--Here we have a circ.u.mlocution equivalent to _I have a father_. In the English language the circ.u.mlocution is unnatural. In the Latin it is common. To determine this, is a matter of idiom rather than of syntax.

_I am speaking, I was reading._--There was a stage in the Gothic languages when these forms were either inadmissible, or rare. Instead thereof, we had the present tense, _I speak_, and the past, _I spoke_. The same is the case with the cla.s.sical languages in the cla.s.sical stage. To determine the difference in idea between these pairs of forms is a matter of metaphysics.

To determine at what period each idea came to have a separate mode of expression is a matter of the _history_ of language. For example, _vas laisands_ appears in Ulphilas (Matt. vii. 29). There, it appears as a rare form, and as a literal translation of the Greek [Greek: en didaskon] (_was teaching_). The Greek form itself was, however, an uncla.s.sical expression for [Greek: edidaske]. In Anglo-Saxon this mode of speaking became common, and in English it is commoner still.--Deutsche Grammatik, iv. 5. This is a point of idiom involved with one of history.

_Swear by your sword--swear on your sword._--Which of these two expressions is right? This depends on what the speaker means. If he mean _make your oath in the full remembrance of the trust you put in your sword, and with the imprecation, therein implied, that it shall fail you, or turn against you if you speak falsely_, the former expression is the right one. But, if he mean swear _with your hand upon your sword_, it is the latter which expresses his meaning. To take a different view of this question, and to write as a rule that {394} _verbs of swearing are followed by the preposition on_ (or _by_) is to mistake the province of the grammar.

Grammar tells no one what he should wish to say. It only tells him how what he wishes to say should be said.

Much of the criticism on the use of _will_ and _shall_ is faulty in this respect. _Will_ expresses one idea of futurity, _shall_ another. The syntax of the two words is very nearly that of any other two. That one of the words is oftenest used with a first person, and the other with a second, is a fact, as will be seen hereafter, connected with the nature of _things_, not of words.

-- 469. The following question now occurs. If the history of forms of speech be one thing, and the history of idioms another; if this question be a part of logic, and that question a part of rhetoric; and if such truly grammatical facts as government and concord are, as matters of common sense, to be left uninvestigated and unexplained, what remains as syntax?

This is answered by the following distinction. There are two sorts of syntax; theoretical and practical, scientific and historical, pure and mixed. Of these, the first consists in the a.n.a.lysis and proof of those rules which common practice applies without investigation, and common sense appreciates, in a rough and gross manner, from an appreciation of the results. This is the syntax of government and concord, or of those points which find no place in the present work, for the following reason--_they are either too easy or too hard for it_. If explained scientifically they are matters of close and minute reasoning; if exhibited empirically they are mere rules for the memory. Besides this they are universal facts of languages in general, and not the particular facts of any one language.

Like other universal facts they are capable of being expressed symbolically. That the verb (A) agrees with its p.r.o.noun (B) is an immutable fact: or, changing the mode of expression, we may say that language can only fulfil its great primary object of intelligibility when A = B. And so on throughout. A formal syntax thus exhibited, and even devised _a priori_, is a philological possibility. And it is also the measure of philological anomalies. {395}

-- 470. _Pure syntax._--So much for one sort of syntax; _viz._, that portion of grammar which bears the same relation to the practice of language, that the investigation of the syllogism bears to the practice of reasoning. The positions concerning it are by no means invalidated by such phrases as _I speaks_ (for _I speak_), &c. In cases like these there is no contradiction; since the peculiarity of the expression consists not in joining two incompatible persons, but in mistaking a third person for a first--_and as far as the speaker is concerned, actually making it so_. I must here antic.i.p.ate some objections that may be raised to these views, by stating that I am perfectly aware that they lead to a conclusion which to most readers must appear startling and to some monstrous, _viz._, to the conclusion that _there is no such thing as bad grammar at all_; _that everything is what the speaker chooses to make it_; _that a speaker may choose to make any expression whatever, provided it answer the purpose of language, and be intelligible_; _that, in short, whatever is is right_.

Notwithstanding this view of the consequence I still am satisfied with the truth of the premises. I may also add that the terms _pure_ and _mixed_, themselves suggestive of much thought on the subject which they express, are not mine but Professor Sylvester's.

-- 471. _Mixed syntax._--That, notwithstanding the previous limitations, there is still a considerable amount of syntax in the English, as in all other languages, may be seen from the sequel. If I undertook to indicate the essentials of mixed syntax, I should say that they consisted in the explanation of combinations _apparently_ ungrammatical; in other words, that they ascertained the results of those causes which disturb the regularity of the pure syntax; that they measured the extent of the deviation; and that they referred it to some principle of the human mind--so accounting for it.

_I am going._--Pure syntax explains this.

_I have gone._--Pure syntax will not explain this. Nevertheless, the expression is good English. The power, however, of both _have_ and _gone_ is different from the usual power of those words. This difference mixed syntax explains. {396}

-- 472. Mixed syntax requires two sorts of knowledge--metaphysical, and historical.

1. To account for such a fact in language as the expression _the man as rides to market_, instead of the usual expression _the man who rides to market_, is a question of what is commonly called metaphysics. The idea of comparison is the idea common to the words _as_ and _who_.

2. To account for such a fact in language as the expression _I have ridden a horse_ is a question of history. We must know that when there was a sign of an accusative case in English the word _horse_ had that sign; in other words that the expression was, originally, _I have a horse as a ridden thing_. These two views ill.u.s.trate each other.

-- 473. In the English, as in all other languages, it is convenient to notice certain so-called figures of speech. They always furnish convenient modes of expression, and sometimes, as in the case of the one immediately about to be noticed, _account_ for facts.

-- 474. _Personification._--The ideas of apposition and collectiveness account for the apparent violations of the concord of number. The idea of personification applies to the concord of gender. A masculine or feminine gender, characteristic of persons, may be subst.i.tuted for the neuter gender, characteristic of things. In this case the term is said to be personified.

_The cities who aspired to liberty._--A personification of the idea expressed by _cities_ is here necessary to justify the expression.

_It_, the sign of the neuter gender, as applied to a male or female _child_, is the reverse of the process.

-- 475. _Ellipsis_ (from the Greek _elleipein_=_to fall short_), or a _falling short_, occurs in sentences like _I sent to the bookseller's_.

Here the word _shop_ or _house_ is understood. Expressions like _to go on all fours_, and _to eat of the fruit of the tree_, are reducible to ellipses.

-- 476. _Pleonasm_ (from the Greek _pleonazein_=_to be in excess_) occurs in sentences like _the king, he reigns_. Here the word _he_ is superabundant.

In many _pleonastic_ {397} expressions we may suppose an interruption of the sentence, and afterwards an abrupt renewal of it; as _the king_--_he reigns_.

The fact of the word _he_ neither qualifying nor explaining the word _king_, distinguishes pleonasm from apposition.

Pleonasm, as far as the view above is applicable, is reduced to what is, apparently, its opposite, _viz._, ellipsis.

_My banks, they are furnished_,--_the most straitest sect_,--these are pleonastic expressions. In _the king, he reigns_, the word _king_ is in the same predicament as in _the king, G.o.d bless him_.

The double negative, allowed in Greek and Anglo-Saxon, but not admissible in English, is pleonastic.

The verb _do_, in _I do speak_, is _not_ pleonastic. In respect to the sense it adds intensity. In respect to the construction it is not in apposition, but in the same predicament with verbs like _must_ and _should_, as in _I must go_, &c.; _i. e._ it is a verb followed by an infinitive. This we know from its power in those languages where the infinitive has a characteristic sign; as, in German,

Die Augen _thaten_ ihm winken.--GOETHE.