A high school grammar, dealing with the science of the English language, the history of the parts of speech, the philosophy of the changes these have undergone, and present usage respecting forms in dispute

Front matter

$m gggs | m | Bam

■H

■a ffiHH am

Preface

This is a historical and scientific grammar. It has been written to supplement "Graded Lessons in English" and "Higher Lessons in English," — to help the student to a technical knowledge of the language which they do not attempt to give.

The scope of the present work has forced us to pay far less attention here to the sentence as a unit. We still believe that a patient study of the sentence is essential to an intelligent knowledge of the parts of speech, to a correct use of grammatical forms, and to an acquaintance with Jl general principles of discourse. We still believe that such study simplifies translation, and is the best logical discipline available for the student; that the greatest good to be attained through the study of English grammar is not skill in parsing, but skill in composing ; and that the thorough analysis of all kinds of sentences is, more than any other one thing, helpful to the student in constructing such sentences. This conviction is embodied in our former works.

But marking time is not marching on. In "Higher Lessons " great emphasis is laid upon the sentence as the

4 PREFACE

unit of thought, and upon its rigorous analysis for the sake of subsequent synthesis. This is ample reason for laying little or no stress upon it in a treatise designed for the student at a later stage of his linguistic training. The purpose of this work neither requires nor permits us to repeat, except in brief review, matter so fully presented in the preceding books.

The purpose of this book has forced us to do wholly or more fully here what was left undone, or but partly done, in our former books. In particular, it has forced us to pay great attention to the growth of our alphabet from its scanty beginnings ; to the development of words from roots ; to the gains of our vocabulary ; to the influence of the Norman-French upon spelling and pronunciation, and upon the structure of the sentence ; to the dropping of inflections, and to the forms which those that survive have assumed; to the terminology that historical continuity calls for ; and, in general, to the tracing of the parts of speech from their sources down.

More particularly, the purpose of this book has enforced earnest attention to the philosophy of the subjunctive mode and its employment in English; to the distinction between the essential and the incidental offices of tense ; to the sequence of tenses ; to the classification of verbs ; and to the demand for a distinct name for the verb-forms in -ing that have a nounal nature.

For any departure here from the method in which some

PBEFACE 5

of these subjects were formerly presented, reasons are given in the body of the work. The more significant of these changes in treatment were all distinctly foreshadowed in " Higher Lessons " (Eevised Edition, 1896) — as supplementary to which this book may be used.

We are most fortunate in having had for this treatise our former critic, Professor Francis A. March, the eminent grammarian and philologist. What his work upon these pages, on their way through the press, has been, no one need be told.

A closing word is personal. One of the authors of this grammar, Alonzo Eeed, died as the book was approaching completion. But he lived to write a portion of the text and to criticise minutely the rest of it. His wisdom is apparent in the plan of the work ; and his ripe scholarship is seen in every chapter of this, the last, effort of our joint labor.

Chapter I Page

Letters — Vowels and Consonants. Alphabets — Our English and its Imperfections 13

Chapter II

Words — Roots and Affixes. English Vocabulary and Effects of the Norman Conquest upon it. Sounds of O.E.

Letters ... 24

CHAPTER HI

The Simple Sentence. Subject and Predicate. Attribute and Object Complement. Compound Parts. Kinds of Sentences . 34

Chapter XXVI

The Conjunction. Classification of Connectives. Derivation.

Use. Omission 264

NOTE TO THE TEACHEB,

The historical part of this work is largely in foot-notes. Presuming that the student is equal to what is there said, we have asked questions and given exercises upon these notes. But the most difficult of these, and the questions upon them, should be omitted when the classes are not readv for them.

Chapter I

We are intelligent beings; we perceive, we know, we think. We are social beings as well ; we communicate our thought. For this communication language is needed- Language is chiefly verbal — spoken words and written words. Spoken words are made up of sounds ; written words, of characters representing the sounds.

Spoken words were used early, for men must early have needed words to aid gesture in the expression of wants; written words, recording thought for the thinker's contemplation, or for transmission to others, came into being later. Everything needful for spoken words — the air, the lungs, and the organs of the throat and mouth — was at hand ; the characters used in writing, and the materials and instruments for making them had to be prepared.

The importance of writing we appreciate; our remote ancestors did not and could not.

The characters composing written words are called Letters. The letters of a language are its Alphabet.

Vowels and Consonants. — The sounds of words are produced by air expelled from the lungs, and modified by the larynx, nose, palate, tongue, teeth, and lips. If the vocal cords are kept apart, and the air passes through the mouth or nostrils with little interference, we have simple breath; if the cords are brought together, and the expelled air makes them vibrate, we have voice.

If the mouth-passage is kept open and the voice rushes through without audible friction, we have a vowel sound ; if the mouth-passage is narrowed, and the air, slightly voiced or wholly voiceless, is impeded so as to cause perceptible friction, or is completely stopped, we have a consonant sound.

Vowels and Consonants are the terms ambiguously applied (1) to the sounds, and (2) to the letters representing the sounds.

In producing the various sounds, the mouth-organs occupy different relative positions. At each, the mouth-passage takes a distinct shape ; and, as the shape changes, the sound changes.

This change of shape and of sound is seen especially in the production of vowels. As the possible changes in the mouth-passage are many, the possible vowels are many ; even in English, where the vowel sounds are numerous, we do not make all that we might.

Vowels and consonants stand side by side in almost every word, and in almost every syllable — that is, so much of a word as is uttered by a single impulse of the voice. The vowel is the tonic element of words spoken or sung.

The Origin of Letters. — The earliest kinds of writing were pictorial. Men tried to place before each other their conceptions of things by rude pictures of them. These pictures, called hieroglyphs, differed from our words (1) in that they had a natural connection — resemblance — with visible objects, while words have such connection only with sounds; and (2) in that they represented things, and conceptions of things, without reference to their names, while words represent sounds, which may be the name of many objects. These hieroglyphs differed from our letters still more than from our words.

By what steps these hieroglyphs became (1) the names of the things they once pictured, (2) the syllables of the names, (3) the consonantal element of the syllables, and (4) the separate vowels and consonants of the syllables, is not fully known. But scholars agree that alphabets had their beginning in hieroglyphs, proper or symbolic, and that these gradually lost their pictorial character and became mere signs of speech-sounds — genuine, if not perfect, alphabets.

The Primitive Sounds. — A feature of our linguistic family is, that everything in it has developed; words have come from roots; complex sentences have grown from simple; grammar has added inflections; sounds, and the letters representing them, have increased.

The scheme of articulations in the theoretic parent-speech of the Indo-Europeans contains but three vowels, 1 a, i, and u, with

1 Said by Professor Whitney, in 1867, in his Language and the Study of Language, virtually repeated in 1875 in his Life and Groicth of Language^ and, so far as known, his latest deliverance on this point.

Professor Sievers, Eneyc. Britannica, Vol. XVIII., p. 788, says that the Aryan had five vocalic sounds —a, e, i, o, and u, besides diphthongs,— and more consonants than Professor Whitney allows.

If Aryan here means Indo-European, as elsewhere in the article it does, the "doctors disagree."

the sounds of a, e, and oo in far, the, and boot; and but twelve consonants, b, d, g, h, k, 1, m, n, p, r, s, and t — the h not a separate letter but closely combining with t, d, p, g, and k.

The oldest alphabet used by Indo-Europeans — the Sanskrit — has forty-seven letters, fourteen of them vowels, and thirty-three consonants.

The Alphabets from which the English is derived. — The

English, alphabet came from the Latin; the Latin, from the Greek ; the Greek, from the Phoenician ; and it is thought that the earlier forms of the Phoenician were devised by the Egyptians.

The Phoenician Alphabet consisted of twenty-two characters—all consonantal, though three of them could stand for the vowels a, i, and u. The Greeks borrowed most of these twenty-two, used many of them without material change of form or value, converted some into vowels, added others, and formed thus their alphabet of twenty-four letters. 1

The Latin Alphabet was taken from the Greek used by the Greek colonists in Sicily and western Italy. In their forms, its letters 2 do not differ greatly from the Greek; in their names, they do.

1 " In the Greek alphabet," says Professor Whitney, "for the first time ... we find realized what we cannot but regard as the true ideal of a mode of writing — namely, that it be simply a faithful representation of spoken speech, furnishing a visible sign for every audible sound that the voice utters, and not attempting to distinguish any class of sounds as of more importance than any other."

2 By Greek and Latin letters we here mean only capital letters ; the small, or cursive, letters are of mediaeval growth.

All but K of the fifteen characters for the original Indo- European "articulations" the Latin took from the Greek.

By a slight diacritical mark, the old Latin C, which stood for the Greek k and g, was converted into G. C then marked the k-sound alone ; and G, the g-sound.

F is the old Greek digamma.

Q is a form of an old Phoenician letter used in early Greek but dropped in later.

V is only another- form of U.

X was taken early from the Greek ; Y and Z, later.

The vowels E and are from the Greek, and are both Phoenician. E goes back to an Egyptian hieroglyph; does not.

The English Alphabet. — The Greek K, rejected by the Romans, has been restored to use in modern English.

J is a recent variant of I. I and J were treated as the same letter as late as Todd's Johnson's Dictionary, 1818.

W — double U or double V — has come into English since 1066.

The three letters — K, J, and W — plus the Latin twentythree form the twenty-six in English.

The oldest form of the English is Anglo-Saxon. The characters first used by the Saxons were called runes. On the Christianization of the Saxons their alphabet perished and the Latin was adopted. But to denote sounds not in the Latin — that of th in thick and that of w — two runes were retained. For the th in our that, the Saxons created a letter by crossing their d, making it fS.

Though this new Saxon alphabet was the one handed on to us, not all of our letters are Saxon. We have seen that J and W are not ; and Q, V ; and Z are not.

THE VOWELS OF OUR ALPHABET

The great division of our letters is into Vowels and Consonants. The vowels are a, e, i, o, and u ; the consonants are the remaining letters except w 1 and y.

The International Dictionary assigns eight sounds to a, five to e ? three to i, four to o ; and six to u.

The diacritical marks there given to the vowels and the key-words illustrating the vowel sounds are these: a in ale, a in senate, a in care, & in am, a in arm, a in ask, a in final, and a in all ; e in eve (first e), e in event (first e), e in end, e in fern, and e in recent (second e) ; I in ice, I in idea, i in ill ; o in old, o in obey, 6 in orb, and 5 in odd ; ii in use, u in unite, u in rude, u in full, u in up, and u in urn.

Classification 2 of the Vowels. — In forming the vowels there is always a " place of constriction," where some part

1 Peile, Encyc. Britannica, p. 1, says, "In sounding the i (the long e-sound) the tongue is raised so as almost to touch the palate, the passage left being so close that, if the tongue -was suffered for a second to rest on the palate, there would be not i but y ; and a similar relation exists between u and w. This is commonly expressed by calling w and y semivowels."

2 The material used in this classification of the vowels and consonants is largely taken from the exhaustive article, Guide to Pronunciation, in The International Dictionary.

of the tongue comes almost into touch with the throat behind or the mouth-roof above. This constriction divides the oral cavity into two connected cavities.

I. If this place is near the base of the tongue, we have the Open-throat Vowel a — the primary 1 sound — and its variant a.

II. If the constriction is made by arching up the tongue toward the hard palate, we have the Front Vowels, a, a, a, a, e, I, u, and u.

III. If the constriction is made by arching the tongue at the soft palate, the membranous curtain at the rear of the mouth, we have the Back Vowels, a, o, 6, 6, u, and u.

IV. If the passage at the place of constriction is not, as with the front and back vowels it is, concave on the palate and convex on the tongue, but concave on both, we have the Mixed Vowels, e, ii, and ii. 2

Any change in the vowel-chamber changes the sound.

In forming I, for instance, the mouth is closing ; hence the initial and the final element of the sound are unlike. The

1 In forming this vowel, Peile says : "The whole channel from the glottis . .-. to the lips ... is thoroughly open. All vowels except a are pronounced with a certain contraction of the organs. . . . It has absolutely no relation to any consonant ; it is the one primary, essential vowel. The farther we trace back the history of the language . . . the more nearly, if not entirely, does it become the one startingpoint from which all other vowel-sound is derived."

See also on this sound The Elements of English Pronunciation, second series of Professor Whitney's Oriental Linguistic Studies. Here, too, is Professor Whitney's instructive estimate of the percentages of the different sounds of the vowels and consonants used in our literature.

2 All that is here said of these vowel-sounds may easily be verified in making them.

sound begins as that of a, or something near it, and ends as that of I. It is not, then, a simple x sound.

THE CONSONANTS OF OUR ALPHABET

Classification. — I. Classifying Consonants with regard to Obstruction in the mouth, we have (1) those in which the breath is only checked, and (2) those in which it is stopped.

In the (1) class, called continuous, fricative, are (a) the liquids, 1, m, n, and r, — of which m and n are nasals, because the checked breath escapes through the nostrils ; (b) the sibilants, c soft (as in cent), s, s (= z, as in is), s (= sh, as in sure), s (= zh, as in vision), z, z ( = zh, as in seizure), and x (= z) when beginning words ; (c) the spirants, f, g soft (as in gin), j (= g soft), v, and w and y when consonants.

In the (2) class, called mutes, are b, c 3 hard (as in cat), d, g hard (as in go), h, 2 k, p, q, 3 t, x 3 (= ks, as in ivax). The x (= gz, as in exact), falls into both of these classes.

II. Classifying consonants with regard to Intonation, we have (1) voiced consonants, or sonants, subvocals; and (2) voiceless consonants, or surds. 4

1 We call it a diphthong. The a. e, o, u, ou, (as in out), and oi (as in oil), also are diphthongs. In pronouncing a diphthong, the voice makes what is called a glide — a transitional sound produced by the change of the mouth-organs in passing (1) from the beginning to the end of a diphthong, (2) from consonant to vowel or from vowel to consonant in a syllable, or (3) from one component to the other of a double consonant.

2 The h is unique. It is made through a vowel-chamber for the following vowel, and with some rustle all along the mouth-passage. It is usually called an aspirate.

3 The letters C, q, and x are superfluous. The sounds of C are those of k and 8 ; q = k(qu = kw); and x (1) (as in wax) =ks, (2) (as in exact) = gz, and (3) when beginning words = z.

4 Every surd except h bears a noteworthy relation to some sonant — c soft to z, C hard to g hard, f to v, k to g hard, p to b, q to g hard, S to z, s (= sh) to z (= zh), t

In the (1) class, sonants, are b, d, g soft, g hard, j, 1, m, n, r, s (= z), s (= zh), v, w when a consonant, x (= z), x ( = gi), y when a consonant, z, and z ( = zh).

In the (2) class, surds, are c soft, c hard, f, h, k, p, q, s, s (= sh), t, and x (= ks).

III. Classifying consonants with regard to their Place of Articulation, we have (1) those with this on the lips, and called labials ; (2) those with this on or near the front upper teeth, and called dentals ; (3) those with this at the hard palate, and called palatals; and (4) those with this at the root of the tongue, and called gutturals.

In the (1) class, labials, are b, m, p, and w when a consonant.

In the (2) class, dentals, are c soft, d, n, r (as in string), s, s (=z), t, x (= z), and z.

The f and v, made by the under lip and the upper teeth, are a union of (1) and (2) and are called labio-dentals.

In the (3) class, palatals, are g soft, j, 1, r (as in roar), s (= sh), s (= zh), y when a consonant, and z ( = zh).

In the (4) class, gutturals, are c hard, g hard, k, q, x (= ks), and x (=gz).

The h has no fixed place of articulation — the place varying with that of the letter to which it is joined. 1

to d, and x (=ks) to x (= gz). The mouth-organs are in the same position in making the letters of each pair ; the surd sound in any pair is the sonant sound in that pair minus all intonation.

1 Thus far single consonants. A word respecting digraphs — combinations, each, of two consonants to express a single sound. The digraphs are ch, gh, ph, sh, th, and ng.

The digraph ch (as in church) is the surd corresponding to the sonant j, and is a continuous, surd palatal; ch (as in machine) = s (as in sure), and is classed with it; and ch (as in chasm) = k, and is classed with it.

THE IMPERFECTION OF OUR ALPHABET

A perfect alphabet has as many letters as articulate sounds, and each letter always stands for the same sound. In a language with such an alphabet, one knows from the word as he hears it in what letters to write it ; and from the word as he sees it, with what sounds to pronounce it. The English alphabet is both redundant and defective.

I. Redundant (1) in that c, q, and x have no sounds not represented by s, k, and g ; and j and z are duplicated by g soft and by s (in is and vision).

Redundant (2) in that some letters, while having each a sound exclusively its own, have also a sound or sounds in common. For instance, a and o, as in what and not, have o in common ; a and e, as in say and prey, have a in common ; i and e, as in pique and eve, have e in common ; and o and u, (1) as in do and rude, have u in common; (2) as in wolf and /wZZ,.have u in common; and (3) as in son and sun, have u in common.

Redundant (3) in that some, of its letters — a, o, and u, etc. — are sometimes proper diphthongs, each a combination of two clearly pronounced vowel sounds^

II. Defective (1) in that it has twenty-four vowel sounds and only five letters to represent them; and (2) in that it sometimes takes two letters to represent a single sound — the th and the ng, for example.

The gh (as in ghost) = g hard, and the gh (as in cough) = f ; and the two are classed with g hard and f.

The ph (as in philosophy) = f, and the ph (in diphthong, as pronounced by some) =s p ; and the two are classed with f and p.

The sh (as in shine) = s (as in sure), and is classed with it.

The th (as in breath) is a continuous, surd lingua-dental, corresponding to the sonant lingua-dental th in breathe.

The ng (as in breathing), is a continuous, sonant, nasal guttural.

THE SUBJECTS OF THE CHAPTER, AND QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES UPON THEM

Subjects for Topical Recitation. — Language — Spoken and Written. Letters and their Origin. The Alphabets from which the English descends. The Fourfold Classification of Vowels. The Threefold Classification of Consonants. The Imperfections of our Alphabet.

Questions. — What is our need of language ? Relation of written words to spoken ? Which the earlier and why ? Letters, what ? An alphabet, what ? Difference between breath and voice ? between a vowel sound and a consonant ? Syllables, what ? Hieroglyphs, what ? and how differing from words and letters ? What sounds and letters in the primitive Indo-European ? Trace the succession of alphabets. The peculiarity of the Phoenician ? The relation of the Greek to the Phoenician ? What English letters not in Latin ? not in Anglo-Saxon ? The Anglo-Saxon characters called what ? How many sounds has each English vowel ? What is meant by " place of constriction"? How do we have four classes of vowels? Give, and justify, their names. What vowel sound is primary ? What does Peile say of it ? A semivowel, what ? a diphthong ? a glide ? Grouped with regard to obstruction, what are the two classes of consonants ? Into what classes is one of these subdivided ? Grouped in regard (1) to intonation, and (2) to place of articulation, what classes are there ? What consonants are superfluous ? and what letters do they duplicate ? What consonant is an aspirate ? What is unchanged in forming the surds and the sonants pairing them ? In what respect do the surd and the sonant differ in sound ? Digraphs, what ? Give and class them. A perfect alphabet, what ?

Exercises. — Give the various sounds of the several vowels, tell into which class — (1) open throat, (2) front, (3) back, or (4) mixed — each falls. Give the sounds of the consonants, and justify the division (1) into continuous and mute, (2) into sonants and surds, and (3) into labials, dentals, palatals, and gutturals.

Chapter II

The First Language Used. — In communication, verbal language is now mainly employed. But the cries and other vocal sounds of the infant and the undeveloped man were accompanied by a Natural Language of facial expression, of attitude, and of gestures by the hands and arms ; and it is thought that artificial language at first developed most rapidly in signs addressed to the eye, or gesture language.

But such language had its limitations — it could not have been used in the dark, when opaque objects or long distance intervened, or when the hands were otherwise engaged. The superiority of the vocal muscles to all others for communicating thought was eventually seen, and the voice came to supersede in large measure all other agencies of expression. But gesture language, though supplanted, is not extinct; we resort to it now to reenforce verbal.

The First Words. — The first words connoted wants, as hunger; and denoted things wanted, as food. Words denoting sensible things connote relations, actions, and qualities. All that we know, and can tell, of external things even now, is their relations, actions, and qualities.

Further, our ancestors could not have had — for we ourselves have not — words expressive each of all the acts or qualities of material substances or of persons. Most words are found to denote, etymologieally, only special features of things. By association, many words have come to stand for things as wholes, for our complexes of ideas respecting things.

Xow, whether the first words were (1) imitative, or (2) expressive of the feelings aroused by things, or (3) utterances accompanying gestures to call attention to things, or (4) originated in all these ways, it is reasonably certain that they were prevailingly monosyllabic — such as we now appropriately call roots. We do not come across these now because they were spoken, and perished in the speaking; nobody knows how long it was before spoken words were first written, nor how long after words were written before those which have reached us were written.

When any one, recalling the vocal signs made in directing his attention to particular things, used these signs himself for like purposes, and was understood in their use, then verbal language began. Using the vocal signs to denote the things, they could now speak of ,the things when away from them and when gestures of direction could not be made.

Roots. — In resolving Indo-European words into their elements we come even yet upon what are evidently roots, if not the primitive roots ; but the oldest Indo-European language is modern compared with primeval speech. These roots are mostly monosyllabic though many of them are still further resolvable.

Resolvable, for instance, may be separated into solv, re, and able. Solv gives the word its fundamental meaning, and gathers about itself, as nucleus, the modifying prefix re l and the suffix able.

The suffixes are divided into derivative 2 and inflectional 2 suffixes — the derivative being those that mark the part of speech to which the words having them belong; and the inflectional being the terminations that denote the number, case, person, or other grammatical modification of the words having them.

The English Vocabulary Composite. — The words in English were at first mostly of one stock. They were Anglo-Saxon, and belonged to the Low German — a branch of the Teu-

1 Max Miiller says, " What we now call a noun was originally a kind of sentence, consisting of the root, and some so-called suffix which pointed to something of which that root was predicated."

Professor Whitney says, "The endings of declension and conjugation and the prefixes and suffixes of derivation were originally independent elements, words which were first collocated with other words, and then entered into combination, and were more or less fused, with the latter, losing their primitive form and meaning, and becoming mere signs of modification and relation ; hence the historically traceable beginnings of speech were simple roots — not parts of speech even, and still less forms."

Professor Otto Jespersen of Copenhagen, while, in his Progress of Language, conceding that this is the theory prevalent among the leading linguists, and while conceding'that some inflectional forms have arisen in this way, nevertheless says, "But when the inference is, that all flectional forms are to be explained in this manner, and that here we have the key to flexion in general, great exception may be taken."

2 Truths illustrates both classes of suffixes. The th is derivative, making a noun out of the root tru ; and -s is inflectional, marking the plurality of the noun truth.

WOBDS 27

tonic, or Germanic, member of the great Indo-European family of languages. They formed the vocabulary of the tribes that, in the fifth century, left their home on the coast north of the Elbe, invaded Britain, subdued the Kelts inhabiting the island, and settled there. They and their language came to be called Englisc, i English ' ; and the island, Engla land, 'England.'