CHAPTER XVIII

PROGRESS

§ 1. Nominal Forms. § 2. Irregularities Original. § 3. Syntax. § 4. Objections. § 5. Word Order. § 6. Gender. § 7. Nominal Concord. § 8. The English Genitive. § 9. Bantu Concord. § 10. Word Order Again. § 11. Compromises. § 12. Order Beneficial? § 13. Word Order and Simplification. § 14. Summary.

XVIII.--§ 1. Nominal Forms.

In the flexion of substantives and adjectives we see phenomena corresponding to those we have just been considering in the verbs. The ancient languages of our family have several forms where modern languages content themselves with fewer; forms originally kept distinct are in course of time confused, either through a phonetic obliteration of differences in the endings or through analogical extension of the functions of one form. The single form _good_ is now used where OE. used the forms _god_, _godne_, _gode_, _godum_, _godes_, _godre_, _godra_, _goda_, _godan_, _godena_; Ital. _uomo_ or French _homme_ is used for Lat. _homo_, _hominem_, _homini_, _homine_--nay, if we take the spoken form into consideration, Fr. [ɔm] corresponds not only to these Latin forms, but also to _homines_, _hominibus_. Where the modern language has one or two cases, in an earlier stage it had three or four, and still earlier seven or eight. The difficulties inherent in the older system cannot, however, be measured adequately by the number of forms each word is susceptible of, but are multiplied by the numerous differences in the formation of the same case in different classes of declension; sometimes we even find anomalies which affect one word only.

Those who would be inclined to maintain that new irregularities may and do arise in modern languages which make up for whatever earlier irregularities have been discarded in the course of the historical development will do well to compile a systematic list of _all_ the flexional forms of two different stages of the same languages, arranged exactly according to the same principles: this is the only way in which it is possible really to balance losses and profits in a language. This is what I have done in my _Progress in Language_ § 111 ff. (reprinted in ChE § 9 ff.), where I have contrasted the case systems of Old and Modern English: the result is that the former system takes 7 (+ 3) pages, and the latter only 2 pages. Those pages, with their abbreviations and tabulations, do not, perhaps, offer very entertaining reading, but I think they are more illustrative of the real tendencies of language than either isolated examples or abstract reasonings, and they cannot fail to convince any impartial reader of the enormous gain achieved through the changes of the intervening nine hundred years in the general structure of the English language.

For our general purposes it will be worth our while here to quote what Friedrich Müller (Gr i. 2. 7) says about a totally different language: “Even if the Hottentot distinguishes ‘he,’ ‘she’ and ‘it,’ and strictly separates the singular from the plural number, yet by his expressing ‘he’ and ‘she’ by one sound in the third person, and by another in the second, he manifests that he has no perception at all of our two grammatical categories of gender and number, and consequently those elements of his language that run parallel to our signs of gender and number must be of an entirely different nature.” Fr. Müller should not perhaps throw too many stones at the poor Hottentots, for his own native tongue is no better than a glass house, and we might with equal justice say, for instance: “As the Germans express the plural number in different manners in words like _gott--götter_, _hand--hände_, _vater--väter_, _frau--frauen_, etc., they must be entirely lacking in the sense of the category of number.” Or let us take such a language as Latin; there is nothing to show that _dominus_ bears the same relation to _domini_ as _verbum_ to _verba_, _urbs_ to _urbes_, _mensis_ to _menses_, _cornu_ to _cornua_, _fructus_ to _fructūs_, etc.; even in the same word the idea of plurality is not expressed by the same method for all the cases, as is shown by a comparison of _dominus--domini_, _dominum--dominos_, _domino--dominis_, _domini--dominorum_. Fr. Müller is no doubt wrong in saying that such anomalies preclude the speakers of the language from conceiving the notion of plurality; but, on the other hand, it seems evident that a language in which a difference so simple even to the understanding of very young children as that between one and more than one can only be expressed by a complicated apparatus must rank lower than another language in which this difference has a single expression for all cases in which it occurs. In this respect, too, Modern English stands higher than the oldest English, Latin or Hottentot.

XVIII.--§ 2. Irregularities Original.

It was the belief of the older school of comparativists that each case had originally one single ending, which was added to all nouns indifferently (e.g. _-as_ for the genitive sg.), and that the irregularities found in the existing oldest languages were of later growth; the actually existing forms were then derived from the supposed unity form by all kinds of phonetic tricks and dodges. Now people have begun to see that the primeval language cannot have been quite uniform and regular (see, for instance, Walde in Streitberg’s _Gesch._, 2. 194 ff.). If we look at facts, and not at imagined or reconstructed forms, we are forced to acknowledge that in the oldest stages of our family of languages not only did the endings present the spectacle of a motley variety, but the kernel of the word was also often subject to violent changes in different cases, as when it had in different forms different accentuation and (or) different apophony, or as when in some of the most frequently occurring words some cases were formed from one ‘stem’ and others from another, for instance, the nominative from an _r_ stem and the oblique cases from an _n_ stem. In the common word for ‘water’ Greek has preserved both stems, nom. _hudōr_, gen. _hudatos_, where _a_ stands for original [ən]. Whatever the origin of this change of stems, it is a phenomenon belonging to the earlier stages of our languages, in which we also sometimes find an alteration between the _r_ stem in the nominative and a combination of the _n_ and the _r_ stems in the other cases, as in Lat. _jecur_ ‘liver,’ _jecinoris_; _iter_ ‘voyage,’ _itineris_, which is supposed to have supplanted _itinis_, formed like _feminis_ from _femur_. In the later stages we always find a simplification, one single form running through all cases; this is either the nominative stem, as in E. _water_, G. _wasser_ (corresponding to Gr. _hudōr_), or the oblique case-stem, as in the Scandinavian forms, Old Norse _vatn_, Swed. _vatten_, Dan. _vand_ (corresponding to Gr. _hudat-_), or finally a contaminated form, as in the name of the Swedish lake _Vättern_ (Noreen’s explanation), or in Old Norse and Dan. _skarn_ ‘dirt,’ which has its _r_ from a form like the Gr. _skōr_, and its _n_ from a form like the Gr. genitive _skatos_ (older [skəntos]). The simplification is carried furthest in English, where the identical form _water_ is not only used unchanged where in the older languages different case forms would have been used (‘the water is cold,’ ‘the surface of the water,’ ‘he fell into the water,’ ‘he swims in the water’), but also serves as a verb (‘did you water the flowers?’), and as an adjunct as a quasi-adjective (‘a water melon,’ ‘water plants’).

In most cases irregularities have been done away with in the way here indicated, one of the forms (or stems) being generalized; but in other cases it may have happened, as Kretschmer supposes (in Gercke and Norden, _Einleit. in die Altertumswiss._, I, 501) that irregular flexion caused a word to go out of use entirely; thus in Modern Greek _hêpar_ was supplanted by _sukōti_,[84] _phréar_ by _pēgadi_, _húdōr_ by _neró_, _oûs_ by _aphtí_ (= _ōtíon_), _kúōn_ by _skullí_; this possibly also accounts for _commando_ taking the place of Lat. _jubeo_.

Some scholars maintain that the medieval languages were more regular than their modern representatives; but if we look more closely into what they mean, we shall see that they are not speaking of any regularity in the sense in which the word has here been used--the only regularity which is of importance to the speakers of the language--but of the regular correspondence of a language with some earlier language from which it is derived. This is particularly the case with E. Littré, who, in his essays on _L’Histoire de la Langue Française_, was full of enthusiasm for Old French, but chiefly for the fidelity with which it had preserved some features of Latin. There was thus the old distinction of two cases: nom. sg. _murs_, acc. sg. _mur_, and in the plural inversely nom. _mur_ and acc. _murs_, with its exact correspondence with Latin _murus_, _murum_, pl. _muri_, _muros_. When this ‘règle de _l_’s’ was discovered, and the use or omission of _s_, which had hitherto been looked upon as completely arbitrary in Old French, was thus accounted for, scholars were apt to consider this as an admirable trait in the old language which had been lost in modern French, and the same view obtained with regard to the case distinction found in other words, such as OFr. nom. _maire_, acc. _majeur_, or nom. _emperere_, acc. _emperëur_, corresponding to the Latin forms with changing stress, _májor_, _majórem_, _imperátor_, _imperatórem_, etc. But, however interesting such things may be to the historical linguist, there is no denying that to the users of French the modern simpler flexion is a gain as compared with this more complex system. “Des sprachhistorikers freud ist des sprachbrauchers leid,” as Schuchardt somewhere shrewdly remarks.

XVIII.--§ 3. Syntax.

There were also in the old languages many irregularities in the syntactic use of the cases, as when some verbs governed the genitive and others the dative, etc. Even if it may be possible in many instances to account historically for these uses, to the speakers of the languages they must have appeared to be mere caprices which had to be learned separately for each verb, and it is therefore a great advantage when they have been gradually done away with, as has been the case, to a great extent, even in a language like German, which has retained many old case forms. Thus verbs like _entbehren_, _vergessen_, _bedürfen_, _wahrnehmen_, which formerly took the genitive, are now used more and more with the simple accusative--a simplification which, among other things, makes the construction of sentences in the passive voice easier and more regular.

The advantage of discarding the old case distinctions is seen in the ease with which English and French speakers can say, e.g., ‘with or without my hat,’ or ‘in and round the church,’ while the correct German is ‘mit meinem hut oder ohne denselben’ and ‘in der kirche und um dieselbe’; Wackernagel writes: “Was in ihm und um ihn und über ihm ist.” When the prepositions are followed by a single substantive without case distinction, German, of course, has the same simple construction as English, e.g. ‘mit oder ohne geld,’ and sometimes even good writers will let themselves go and write ‘um und neben dem hochaltare’ (Goethe), or ‘Ihre tochter wird meine frau mit oder gegen ihren willen’ (these examples from Curme, _German Grammar_ 191). Cf. also: ‘Ich kann deinem bruder nicht helfen und ihn unterstützen.’

Many extremely convenient idioms unknown in the older synthetic languages have been rendered possible in English through the doing away with the old case distinctions, such as: Genius, demanding bread, is given a stone after its possessor’s death (Shaw) (cf. my ChE § 79) | he was offered, and declined, the office of poet-laureate (Gosse) | the lad was spoken highly of | I love, and am loved by, my wife | these laws my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey (Fielding) | he was heathenishly inclined to believe in, or to worship, the goddess Nemesis (id.) | he rather rejoiced in, than regretted, his bruise (id.) | many a dun had she talked to, and turned away from her father’s door (Thackeray) | their earthly abode, which has seen, and seemed almost to sympathize in, all their honour (Ruskin).

XVIII.--§ 4. Objections.

Against my view of the superiority of languages with few case distinctions, Arwid Johannson, in a very able article (in IF I, see especially p. 247 f.), has adduced a certain number of ambiguous sentences from German:

Soweit die deutsche zunge klingt und _gott_ im himmel lieder singt (is _gott_ nominative or dative?) | Seinem landsmann, dem er in seiner ganzen bildung ebensoviel verdankte, wie _Goethe_ (nominative or dative?) | Doch würde die gesellschaft _der Indierin_ (genitive or dative?) lästig gewesen sein | Darin hat Caballero wohl nur einen konkurrenten, die Eliot, _welche_ freilich _die spanische dichterin_ nicht ganz erreicht | Nur Diopeithes feindet insgeheim dich an und _die schwester_ des Kimon und _dein weib_ Telesippa. (In the last two sentences what is the subject, and what the object?)

According to Johannson, these passages show the disadvantages of doing away with formal distinctions, for the sentences would have been clear if each separate case had had its distinctive sign; “the greater the wealth of forms, the more intelligible the speech.” And they show, he says, that such ambiguities will occur, even where the strictest rules of word order are observed. I shall not urge that this is not exactly the case in the last sentence if _die schwester_ and _dein weib_ are to be taken as accusatives, for then _an_ should have been placed at the very end of the sentence; nor that, in the last sentence but one, the mention of George Eliot as the ‘konkurrent’ of Fernan Caballero seems to show a partiality to the Spanish authoress on the part of the writer of the sentence, so that the reader is prepared to take _welche_ as the nominative case; _freilich_ would seem to point in the same direction. But these, of course, are only trifling objections; the essential point is that we must grant the truth of Johannson’s contention that we have here a flaw in the German language; the defects of its grammatical system may and do cause a certain number of ambiguities. Neither is it difficult to find the reasons of these defects by considering the structure of the language in its entirety, and by translating the sentences in question into a few other languages and comparing the results.

First, with regard to the formal distinctions between cases, the really weak point cannot be the fewness of these endings, for in that case we should expect the same sort of ambiguities to be very common in English and Danish, where the formal case distinctions are considerably fewer than in German; but as a matter of fact such ambiguities are more frequent in German than in the other two languages. And, however paradoxical it may seem at first sight, one of the causes of this is the greater wealth of grammatical forms in German. Let us substitute other words for the ambiguous ones, and we shall see that the amphibology will nearly always disappear, because most other words will have different forms in the two cases, e.g.:

Soweit die deutsche zunge klingt und _dem allmächtigen_ (or, _der allmächtige_) lieder singt | Seinem landsmann, dem er ebensoviel verdankte, wie _dem grossen dichter_ (or, _der grosse dichter_) | Doch würde die gesellschaft _des Indiers_ (or, _dem Indier_) lästig gewesen sein | Darin hat Calderon wohl nur einen konkurrenten, Shakespeare, _welcher_ freilich _den spanischen dichter_ nicht erreicht (or, _den_ ... _der spanische dichter_ ...) | Nur Diopeithes feindet dich insgeheim an, und _der bruder_ des Kimon und _sein freund_ T. (or, _den bruder_ ... _seinen freund_).

It is this very fact that countless sentences of this sort are perfectly clear which leads to the employment of similar constructions even where the resulting sentence is by no means clear; but if all, or most, words were identical in the nominative and the dative, like _gott_, or in the dative and genitive, like _der Indierin_, constructions like those used would be impossible to imagine in a language meant to be an intelligible vehicle of thought. And so the ultimate cause of the ambiguities is the inconsistency in the formation of the several cases. But this inconsistency is found in all the old languages of the Aryan family: cases which in one gender or with one class of stems are kept perfectly distinct, are in others identical. I take some examples from Latin, because this is perhaps the best known language of this type, but Gothic or Old Slavonic would show inconsistencies of the same kind. _Domini_ is genitive singular and nominative plural (corresponding to, e.g., _verbi_ and _verba_); _verba_ is nominative and accusative pl. (corresponding to _domini_ and _dominos_); _domino_ is dative and ablative; _dominæ_ gen. and dative singular and nominative plural; _te_ is accusative and ablative; _qui_ is singular and plural; _quæ_ singular fem. and plural fem. and neuter, etc. Hence, while _patres filios amant_ or _patres filii amant_ are perfectly clear, _patres consules amant_ allows of two interpretations; and in how many ways cannot such a proposition as _Horatius et Virgilius poetæ Varii amici erant_ be construed? _Menenii patris munus_ may mean ‘the gift of father Menenius,’ or ‘the gift of Menenius’s father’; _expers illius periculi_ either ‘free from that danger’ or ‘free from (sharing) that person’s danger’; in an infinitive construction with two accusatives, the only way to know which is the subject and which the object is to consider the context, and that is not always decisive, as in the oracular response given to the Æacide Pyrrhus, as quoted by Cicero from Ennius: “Aio _te_, Æacida, _Romanos_ vincere posse.” Such drawbacks seem to be inseparable from the structure of the highly flexional Aryan languages; although they are not logical consequences of a wealth of forms, yet historically they cling to those languages which have the greatest number of grammatical endings. And as we are here concerned not with the question how to construct an artificial language (and even there I should not advise the adoption of many case distinctions), but with the valuation of natural languages as actually existing in their earlier and modern stages, we cannot accept Johannson’s verdict: “The greater the wealth of forms, the more intelligible the speech.”

XVIII.--§ 5. Word Order.

If the German sentences quoted above are ambiguous, it is not only on account of the want of clearness in the forms employed, but also on account of the German rules of word order. One rule places the verb last in subordinate sentences, and in two of the sentences there would be no ambiguity in principal sentences: Die deutsche zunge klingt und _singt gott_ im himmel lieder; or, Die deutsche zunge klingt, und _gott im himmel singt_ lieder | _Sie erreicht_ freilich nicht die spanische dichterin; or, Die spanische dichterin _erreicht sie_ freilich nicht. In one of the remaining sentences the ambiguity is caused by the rule that the verb must be placed immediately after an introductory subjunct: if we omit _doch_ the sentence becomes clear: Die _gesellschaft der Indierin würde_ lästig gewesen sein, or, _Die gesellschaft würde der Indierin_ lästig gewesen sein. Here, again we see the ill consequences of inconsistency of linguistic structure; some of the rules for word position serve to show grammatical relations, but in certain cases they have to give way to other rules, which counteract this useful purpose. If you change the order of words in a German sentence, you will often find that the meaning is not changed, but the result will be an unidiomatic construction (bad grammar); while in English a transposition will often result in perfectly good grammar, only the meaning will be an entirely different one from the original sentence. This does not amount to saying that the German rules of position are useless and the English ones all useful, but only to saying that in English word order is utilized to express difference of meaning to a far greater extent than in German.

One critic cites against me “one example, which figures in almost every Rhetoric as a violation of clearness: _And thus the son the fervid sire address’d_,” and he adds: “The use of a separate form for nominative and accusative would clear up the ambiguity immediately.” The retort is obvious: no doubt it would, but so would the use of a natural word order. Word order is just as much a part of English grammar as case-endings are in other languages; a violation of the rules of word order may cause the same want of intelligibility as the use of _dominum_ instead of _dominus_ would in Latin. And if the example is found in almost every English Rhetoric, I am glad to say that equally ambiguous sentences are very rare indeed in other English books. Even in poetry, where there is such a thing as poetic licence, and where the exigencies of rhythm and rime, as well as the fondness for archaic and out-of-the-way expressions, will often induce deviations from the word order of prose, real ambiguity will very seldom arise on that account. It is true that it has been disputed which is the subject in Gray’s line:

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

but then it does not matter much, for the ultimate understanding of the line must be exactly the same whether the air holds stillness or stillness holds the air. In ordinary language we may find similar collocations, but it is worth saying with some emphasis that there can never be any doubt as to which is the subject and which the object. The ordinary word order is, Subject-Verb-Object, and where there is a deviation there must always be some special reason for it. This may be the wish, especially for the sake of some contrast, to throw into relief some member of the sentence. If this is the subject, the purpose is achieved by stressing it, but the word order is not affected. But if it is the object, this may be placed in the very beginning of the sentence, but in that case English does not, like German and Danish, require inversion of the verb, and the order consequently is, Object-Subject-Verb, which is perfectly clear and unambiguous. See, for instance, Dickens’s sentence: “_Talent, Mr. Micawber_ has; _capital, Mr. Micawber_ has not,” and the following passage from a recent novel: “Even Royalty had not quite their glow and glitter; _Royalty you_ might see any day, driving, bowing, smiling. The Queen had a smile for every one; but _the Duchess no one, not even Lizzie_, ever saw.” Thus, also, in Shakespeare’s:

_Things base and vilde_, holding no quantity, _Loue_ can transpose to forme and dignity (_Mids._ I. 1. 233),

and in Longfellow’s translation from Logau:

A blind man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is; For the former seeth no man, and _the latter no man_ sees.

The reason for deviating from the order, Subject-Verb-Object, may again be purely grammatical: a relative or an interrogative pronoun must be placed first; but here, too, English grammar precludes ambiguity, as witness the following sentences: This picture, which surpasses Mona Lisa | This picture, which Mona Lisa surpasses | What picture surpasses Mona Lisa? | What picture does not Mona Lisa surpass? In German (dieses bild, welches die M. L. übertrifft, etc.) all four sentences would be ambiguous, in Danish the two last would be indistinguishable; but English shows that a small number of case forms is not incompatible with perfect clearness and perspicuity. If the famous oracular answer (_Henry VI, 2nd Part_, I. 4. 33), “The Duke yet liues, that Henry shall depose,” is ambiguous, it is only because it is in verse, where you expect inversions: in ordinary prose it could be understood only in one way, as the word order would be reversed if _Henry_ was meant as the object.

XVIII.--§ 6. Gender.

Besides case distinctions the older Aryan languages have a rather complicated system of gender distinctions, which in many instances agrees with, but in many others is totally independent of, and even may be completely at war with, the natural distinction between male beings, female beings and things without sex. This grammatical gender is sometimes looked upon as something valuable for a language to possess; thus Schroeder (_Die formale Unterscheidung_ 87) says: “The formal distinction of genders is decidedly an enormous advantage which the Aryan, Semitic and Egyptian languages have before all other languages.” Aasen (_Norsk Grammatik_ 123) finds that the preservation of the old genders gives vividness and variety to a language; he therefore, in constructing his artificial Norwegian ‘landsmaal,’ based it on those dialects which made a formal distinction between the masculine and feminine article. But other scholars have recognized the disadvantages accruing from such distinctions; thus Tegnér (SM 50) regrets the fact that in Swedish it is impossible to give such a form to the sentence ‘sin make må man ej svika’ as to make it clear that the admonition is applicable to both husband and wife, because _make_, ‘mate,’ is masculine, and _maka_ feminine. In Danish, where _mage_ is common to both sexes, no such difficulty arises. Gabelentz (Spr 234) says: “Das grammatische geschlecht bringt es weiter mit sich dass wir deutschen nie eine frauensperson als einen menschen und nicht leicht einen mann als eine person bezeichnen.”

As a matter of fact, German gender is responsible for many difficulties, not only when it is in conflict with natural sex, as when one may hesitate whether to use the pronoun _es_ or _sie_ in reference to a person just mentioned as _das mädchen_ or _das weib_, or _er_ or _sie_ in reference to _die schildwache_, but also when sexless things are concerned, and _er_ might be taken as either referring to the man or to _der stuhl_ or to _der wald_ just mentioned, etc. In France, grammarians have disputed without end as to the propriety or not of referring to the (feminine) word _personnes_ by means of the pronoun _ils_ (see Nyrop, _Kongruens_ 24, and Gr. iii. § 712): “Les personnes que vous attendiez sont _tous logés_ ici.” As a negative pronoun _personne_ is now frankly masculine: ‘personne n’est _malheureux_.’ With _gens_ the old feminine gender is still kept up when an adjective precedes, as in _les bonnes gens_, thus also _toutes les bonnes gens_, but when the adjective has no separate feminine form, schoolmasters prefer to say _tous les honnêtes gens_, and the masculine generally prevails when the adjective is at some distance from _gens_, as in the old school-example, _Instruits par l’expérience, toutes les vieilles gens sont soupçonneux_. There is a good deal of artificiality in the strict rules of grammarians on this point, and it is therefore good that the Arrêté ministériel of 1901 tolerates greater liberty; but conflicts are unavoidable, and will rise quite naturally, in any language that has not arrived at the perfect stage of complete genderlessness (which, of course, is not identical with inability to express sex-differences).

Most English pronouns make no distinction of sex: _I_, _you_, _we_, _they_, _who_, _each_, _somebody_, etc. Yet, when we hear that Finnic and Magyar, and indeed the vast majority of languages outside the Aryan and Semitic world, have no separate forms for _he_ and _she_, our first thought is one of astonishment; we fail to see how it is possible to do without this distinction. But if we look more closely we shall see that it is at times an inconvenience to have to specify the sex of the person spoken about. Coleridge (_Anima Poetæ_ 190) regretted the lack of a pronoun to refer to the word _person_, as it necessitated some stiff and strange construction like ‘not letting the person be aware wherein offence had been given,’ instead of ‘wherein he or she has offended.’ It has been said that if a genderless pronoun could be substituted for _he_ in such a proposition as this: ‘It would be interesting if each of the leading poets would tell us what he considers his best work,’ ladies would be spared the disparaging implication that the leading poets were all men. Similarly there is something incongruous in the following sentence found in a German review of a book: “Was Maria und Fritz so zueinander zog, war, dass _jeder_ von ihnen _am anderen_ sah, wie _er_ unglücklich war.” Anyone who has written much in Ido will have often felt how convenient it is to have the common-sex pronouns _lu_ (he or she), _singlu_, _altru_, etc. It is interesting to see the different ways out of the difficulty resorted to in actual language. First the cumbrous use of _he or she_, as in Fielding _TJ_ 1. 174, the reader’s heart (if he or she have any) | Miss Muloch _H._ 2. 128, each one made his or her comment.[85] Secondly, the use of _he_ alone: If anybody behaves in such and such a manner, he will be punished (cf. the wholly unobjectionable, but not always applicable, formula: Whoever behaves in such and such a manner will be punished). This use of _he_ has been legalized by the

## Act 13 and 14 Vict., cap. 21. 4: “That in all acts words importing the

masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females.” Third, the sexless but plural form _they_ may be used. If you try to put the phrase, ‘Does anybody prevent you?’ in another way, beginning with ‘Nobody prevents you,’ and then adding the interrogatory formula, you will perceive that ‘does he’ is too definite, and ‘does he or she’ too clumsy; and you will therefore naturally say (as Thackeray does, _P_ 2. 260), “Nobody prevents you, do they?” In the same manner Shakespeare writes (_Lucr._ 125): “Everybody to rest themselves betake.” The substitution of the plural for the singular is not wholly illogical; for _everybody_ is much the same thing as ‘all men,’ and _nobody_ is the negation of ‘all men’; but the phenomenon is extended to cases where this explanation will not hold good, as in G. Eliot, _M._ 2. 304, I shouldn’t like to punish any one, even if _they’d_ done me wrong. (For many examples from good writers see my MEG. ii. 5, 56.)

The English interrogative _who_ is not, like the _quis_ or _quæ_ of the Romans, limited to one sex and one number, so that our question ‘Who did it?’ to be rendered exactly in Latin, would require a combination of the four: _Quis hoc fecit?_ _Quæ hoc fecit?_ _Qui hoc fecerunt?_ _Quæ hoc fecerunt?_ or rather, the abstract nature of _who_ (and of _did_) makes it possible to express such a question much more indefinitely in English than in any highly flexional language; and indefiniteness in many cases means greater precision, or a closer correspondence between thought and expression.

XVIII.--§ 7. Nominal Concord.

We have seen in the case of the verbs how widely diffused in all the old Aryan languages is the phenomenon of Concord. It is the same with the nouns. Here, as there, it consists in secondary words (here chiefly adjectives) being made to agree with principal words, but while with the verbs the agreement was in number and person, here it is in number, case and gender. This is well known in Greek and Latin; as examples from Gothic may here be given Luk. 1. 72, _gamunan triggwos weihaizos seinaizos_, ‘to remember His holy covenant,’ and 1. 75, _allans dagans unsarans_, ‘all our days.’ The English translation shows how English has discarded this trait, for there is nothing in the forms of (_his_), _holy_, _all_ and _our_, as in the Gothic forms, to indicate what substantive they belong to.

Wherever the same adjectival idea is to be joined to two substantives, the concordless junction is an obvious advantage, as seen from a comparison of the English ‘my wife and children’ with the French ‘ma femme et mes enfants,’ or of ‘the _local_ press and committees’ with ‘_la_ presse _locale_ et _les_ comités _locaux_.’ Try to translate exactly into French or Latin such a sentence as this: “What are the present state and wants of mankind?” (Ruskin). Cf. also the expression ‘a verdict of wilful murder against _some_ person or persons _unknown_,’ where _some_ and _unknown_ belong to the singular as well as to the plural forms; Fielding writes (_TJ_ 3. 65): “_Some

## particular_ chapter, or perhaps chapters, _may be obnoxious_.” Where an

English editor of a text will write: “Some (indifferently singular and plural) word or words wanting here,” a Dane will write: “Et (sg.) eller flere (pl.) ord (indifferent) mangler her.” These last examples may be taken as proof that it might even in some cases be advantageous to have forms in the substantives that did not show number; still, it must be recognized that the distinction between one and more than one rightly belongs to substantival notions, but logically it has as little to do with adjectival as with verbal notions (cf. above, Ch. XVII § 11). In ‘black spots’ it is the spots, but not the qualities of black, that we count. And in ‘two black spots’ it is of course quite superfluous to add a dual or plural ending (as in Latin _duo_, _duæ_) in order to indicate once more what the word _two_ denotes sufficiently, namely, that we have not to do with a singular. Compare, finally, E. _to the father and mother_, Fr. _au père et à la mère_, G. _zu dem vater und der mutter_ (_zum vater und zur mutter_).

If it is admitted that it is an inconvenience whenever you want to use an adjective to have to put it in the form corresponding in case, number and gender to its substantive, it may be thought a redeeming feature of the language which makes this demand that, on the other hand, it allows you to place the adjective at some distance from the substantive, and yet the hearer or reader will at once connect the two together. But here, as elsewhere in ‘energetics,’ the question is whether the advantage counter-balances the disadvantage; in other words, whether the fact that you are free to place your adjective where you will is worth the price you pay for it in being always saddled with the heavy apparatus of adjectival flexions. Why should you want to remove the adjective from the substantive, which naturally must be in your thought when you are thinking of the adjective? There is one natural employment of the adjective in which it has very often to stand at some distance from the substantive, namely, when it is predicative; but then the example of German shows the needlessness of concord in that case, for while the adjunct adjective is inflected (ein _guter_ mensch, eine _gute_ frau, ein _gutes_ buch, _gute_ bücher) the predicative is invariable like the adverb (der mensch ist _gut_, die frau ist _gut_, das buch ist _gut_, die bücher sind _gut_). It is chiefly in poetry that a Latin adjective is placed far from its substantive, as in Vergil: “Et bene apud memores veteris stat gratia facti” (_Æn._ IV. 539), where the form shows that _veteris_ is to be taken with _facti_ (but then, where does _bene_ belong? it might be taken with _memores_, _stat_ or _facti_). In Horace’s well-known aphorism: “Æquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem,” the flexional form of _æquam_ allows him to place it first, far from _mentem_, and thus facilitates for him the task of building up a perfect metrical line; but for the reader it would certainly be preferable to have had _æquam mentem_ together at once, instead of having to hold his attention in suspense for five words, till finally he comes upon a word with which to connect the adjective. There is therefore no economizing of the energy of reader or hearer. Extreme examples may be found in Icelandic skaldic poetry, in which the poets, to fulfil the requirements of a highly complicated metrical system, entailing initial and medial rimes, very often place the words in what logically must be considered the worst disorder, thereby making their poem as difficult to understand as an intricate chess-problem is to solve--and certainly coming short of the highest poetical form.

XVIII.--§ 8. The English Genitive.

If we compare a group of Latin words, such as _opera virorum omnium bonorum veterum_, with a corresponding group in a few other languages of a less flexional type: OE. _ealra godra ealdra manna weorc_; Danish _alle gode gamle mænds værker_; Modern English _all good old men’s works_, we perceive by analyzing the ideas expressed by the several words that the Romans said really: ‘work,’ plural, nominative or accusative + ‘man,’ plural, masculine, genitive + ‘all,’ plural, genitive + ‘good,’ plural, masculine, genitive + ‘old,’ plural, masculine, genitive. Leaving _opera_ out of consideration, we find that plural number is expressed four times, genitive case also four times, and masculine gender twice;[86] in Old English the signs of number and case are found four times each, while there is no indication of gender; in Danish the plural number is marked four times and the case once. And finally, in Modern English, we find each idea expressed once only; and as nothing is lost in clearness, this method, as being the easiest and shortest, must be considered the best. Mathematically the different ways of rendering the same thing might be represented by the formulas: anx + bnx + cnx = (an + bn + cn)x = (a + b + c)nx.

This unusual faculty of ‘parenthesizing’ causes Danish, and to a still greater degree English, to stand outside the definition of the Aryan family of languages given by the earlier school of linguists, according to which the Aryan substantive and adjective can never be without a sign indicating case. Schleicher (NV 526) says: “The radical difference between Magyar and Indo-Germanic (Aryan) words is brought out distinctly by the fact that the postpositions belonging to co-ordinated nouns can be dispensed with in all the nouns except the last of the series, e.g. _a jó embernek_, ‘dem guten menschen’ (_a_ for _az_, demonstrative pronoun, article; _jó_, good; _ember_, man, _-nek_, _-nak_, postposition with pretty much the same meaning as the dative case), for _az-nak_ (annak) _jó-nak ember-nek_, as if in Greek you should say το ἀγαθο ἀνθρώπῳ. An attributive adjective preceding its noun always has the form of the pure stem, the sign of plurality and the postposition indicating case not being added to it. Magyars say, for instance, _Hunyady Mátyás magyar király-nak_ (to the Hungarian king Mathew Hunyady), _-nak_ belonging here to all the preceding words. Nearly the same thing takes place where several words are joined together by means of ‘and.’”

Now, this is an exact parallel to the English group genitive in cases like ‘all good old men’s works,’ ‘the King of England’s power,’ ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays,’ ‘somebody else’s turn,’ etc. The way in which this group genitive has developed in comparatively recent times may be summed up as follows (see the detailed exposition in my ChE ch. iii.): In the oldest English _-s_ is a case-ending, like all others found in flexional languages; it forms together with the body of the noun one indivisible whole, in which it is sometimes impossible to tell where the kernel of the word ends and the ending begins (compare _endes_ from _ende_ and _heriges_ from _here_); only some words have this ending, and in others the genitive is indicated in other ways. As to syntax, the meaning or function of the genitive is complicated and rather vague, and there are no fixed rules for the position of the genitive in the sentence.

In course of time we witness a gradual development towards greater regularity and precision. The partitive, objective, descriptive and some other functions of the genitive become obsolete; the genitive is invariably put immediately before the word it belongs to; irregular forms disappear, the _s_ ending alone surviving as the fittest, so that at last we have one definite ending with one definite function and one definite position.

In Old English, when several words belonging together were to be put in the genitive, each of them had to take the genitive mark, though this was often different in different words, and thus we had combinations like _anes reades mannes_, ‘a red man’s’ | _þære godlican lufe_, ‘the godlike love’s’ | _ealra godra ealdra manna weorc_, etc. Now the _s_ used everywhere is much more independent, and may be separated from the principal word by an adverb like _else_ or by a prepositional group like _of England_, and one _s_ is sufficient at the end even of a long group of words. Here, then, we see in the full light of comparatively recent history a giving up of the old flexion with its inseparability of the constituent elements of the word and with its strictness of concord; an easier and more regular system is developed, in which the ending leads a more independent existence and may be compared with the ‘agglutinated’ elements of such a language as Magyar or even with the ‘empty words’ of Chinese grammar. The direction of this development is the direct opposite of that assumed by most linguists for the development of languages in prehistoric times.

XVIII.--§ 9. Bantu Concord.

One of the most characteristic traits of the history of English is thus seen to be the gradual getting rid of concord as of something superfluous. Where concord is found in our family of languages, it certainly is an heirloom from a primitive age, and strikes us now as an outcome of a tendency to be more explicit than to more advanced people seems strictly necessary. It is on a par with the ‘concord of negatives,’ as we might term the emphasizing of the negative idea by seemingly redundant repetitions. In Old English it was the regular idiom to say: _n_an man _n_yste _n_an þing, ‘no man not-knew nothing’; so it was in Chaucer’s time: he _n_euere yet _n_o vileynye _n_e sayde In all his lyf unto _n_o manner wight; and it survives in the vulgar speech of our own days: there was _n_iver _n_obody else gen (gave) me _n_othin’ (George Eliot); whereas standard Modern English is content with one negation: no man knew anything, etc. That concord is really a primitive trait (though not, of course, found equally distributed among all ‘primitive peoples’) will be seen also by a rapid glance at the structure of the South African group of languages called Bantu, for here we find not only repetition of negatives, but also other phenomena of concord in specially luxuriant growth.

I take the following examples chiefly from W. H. I. Bleek’s excellent, though unfortunately unfinished, _Comparative Grammar_, though I am well aware that expressions like _si-m-tanda_ (we love him) “are never used by natives with this meaning without being determined by some other expression” (Torrend, p. 7). The Zulu word for ‘man’ is _umuntu_; every word in the same or a following sentence having any reference to that word must begin with something to remind you of the beginning of _umuntu_. This will be, according to fixed rules, either _mu_ or _u_, or _w_ or _m_. In the following sentence, the meaning of which is ‘our handsome man (or woman) appears, we love him (or her),’ these reminders (as I shall term them) are printed in italics:

_umu_ntu _w_etu _omu_chle _u_yabonakala, si_m_tanda (1) man ours handsome appears, we love.

If, instead of the singular, we take the corresponding plural _abantu_, ‘men, people’ (whence the generic name of Bantu), the sentence looks quite different:

_aba_ntu _b_etu _aba_chle _ba_yabonakala, si_ba_tanda (2).

In the same way, if we successively take as our starting-point _ilizwe_, ‘country,’ the corresponding plural _amazwe_, ‘countries,’ _isizwe_, ‘nation,’ _izizwe_, ‘nations,’ _intombi_, ‘girl,’ _izintombi_, ‘girls,’ we get:

_ili_zwe _l_etu _eli_chle _li_yabonakala, si_li_tanda (5) _ama_zwe _e_tu _ama_chle _a_yabonakala, si_wa_tanda (6) _isi_zwe _s_etu _esi_chle _si_yabonakala, si_si_tanda (7) _izi_zwe _z_etu _ezi_chle _zi_yabonakala, si_zi_tanda (8) _in_tombi _y_etu _en_chle _i_yabonakala, si_yi_tanda (9) _izin_tombi _z_etu _ezin_chle _zi_yabonakala, si_zi_tanda (10) (girls) our handsome appear, we love.[87]

In other words, every substantive belongs to one of several classes, of which some have a singular and others a plural meaning; each of these classes has its own prefix, by means of which the concord of the parts of a sentence is indicated. (An inhabitant of the country of _U_ganda is called _mu_ganda, pl. _ba_ganda or _wa_ganda; the language spoken there is _lu_ganda.)

It will be noticed that adjectives such as ‘handsome’ or ‘ours’ take different shapes according to the word to which they refer; in the Zulu Lord’s Prayer ‘thy’ is found in the following forms: _l_ako (referring to _i_gama, ‘name,’ for _ili_gama, 5), _b_ako, (_ubu_kumkani, ‘kingdom,’ 14), _y_ako (_in_tando, ‘will,’ 9). So also the genitive case of the same noun has a great many different forms, for the genitive relation is expressed by the reminder of the governing word + the ‘relative particle’ _a_ (which is combined with the following sound); take, for instance, _inkosi_, ‘chief, king’:

_umu_ntu _w_enkosi, ‘the king’s man’ (1; _we_ for _w_ + _a_ + _i_). _aba_ntu _b_enkosi, ‘the king’s men’ (2). _ili_zwe _l_enkosi, ‘the king’s country’ (5). _ama_zwe _e_nkosi, ‘the king’s countries’ (6). _isi_zwe _s_enkosi, ‘the king’s nation’ (7). _uku_tanda _kw_enkosi, ‘the king’s love’ (15).

Livingstone says that these apparently redundant repetitions “impart energy and perspicuity to each member of a proposition, and prevent the possibility of a mistake as to the antecedent.” These prefixes are necessary to the Bantu languages; still, Bleek is right as against Livingstone in speaking of the repetitions as cumbersome, just as the endings of Latin _multorum virorum antiquorum_ are cumbersome, however indispensable they may have been to the contemporaries of Cicero.

These African phenomena have been mentioned here chiefly to show to what lengths concord may go in the speech of some primitive peoples. The prevalent opinion is that each of these prefixes (_umu_, _aba_, _ili_, etc.) was originally an independent word, and that thus words like _umuntu_, _ilizwe_, were at first compounds like E. _steamship_, where it would evidently be possible to imagine a reference to this word by means of a repeated _ship_ (our ship, which ship is a great ship, the ship appears, we love the ship); but at any rate the Zulus extend this principle to cases that would be parallel to an imagined repetition of _friendship_ by means of the same _ship_, or to referring to _steamer_ by means of the ending _er_ (Bleek 107). Bleek and others have tried to find out by an analysis of the words making up the different classes what may have been the original meaning of the class-prefix, but very often the connecting tie is extremely loose, and in many cases it seems that a word might with equal right have belonged to another class than the one to which it actually belongs. The connexion also frequently seems to be a derived rather than an original one, and much in this class-division is just as arbitrary as the reference of Aryan nouns to each of the three genders. In several of the classes the words have a definite numerical value, so that they go together in pairs as corresponding singular and plural nouns; but the existence of a certain number of exceptions shows that these numerical values cannot originally have been associated with the class prefixes, but must be due to an extension by analogy (Bleek 140 ff.). The starting-point may have been substantives standing to each other in the relation of ‘person’ to ‘people,’ ‘soldier’ to ‘army,’ ‘tree’ to ‘forest,’ etc. The prefixes of such words as the latter of each of these pairs will easily acquire a certain sense of plurality, no matter what they may have meant originally, and then they will lend themselves to forming a kind of plural in other nouns, being either put instead of the prefix belonging properly to the noun (_ama_zwe, ‘countries,’ 6; _ili_zwe, ‘country,’ 5), or placed before it (_ma-lu_to, ‘spoons,’ 6, _lu_to, ‘spoon,’ 11).

In some of the languages “the forms of some of the prefixes have been so strongly contracted as almost to defy identification.” (Bleek 234). All the prefixes probably at first had fuller forms than appear now. Bleek noticed that the _ma-_ prefix never, except in some degraded languages, had a corresponding _ma-_ as particle, but, on the contrary, is followed in the sentence by _ga-_, _ya-_, or _a-_, and _mu-_ (3) generally has a corresponding particle _gu-_. Now, Sir Harry Johnston (_The Uganda Protectorate_, 1902, 2. 891) has found that on Mount Eldon and in Kavirondo there are some very archaic forms of Bantu languages, in which _gumu-_ and _gama-_ are the commonly used forms of the _mu-_ and _ma-_ prefixes, as well as _baba-_ and _bubu-_ for ordinary _ba-_, _bu-_; he infers that the original forms of _mu-_, _ma-_ were _ngumu-_, _ngama-_. I am not so sure that he is right when he says that these prefixes were originally “words which had a separate meaning of their own, either as directives or demonstrative pronouns, as indications of sex, weakness, littleness or greatness, and so on”--for, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, such grammatical instruments may have been at first inseparable parts of long words--parts which had no meaning of their own--and have acquired some more or less vague grammatical meaning through being extended gradually to other words with which they had originally nothing to do. The actual irregularity in their distribution certainly seems to point in that direction.

XVIII.--§ 10. Word Order Again.

Mention has already been made here and there of word order and its relation to the great question of simplification of grammatical structure; but it will be well in this place to return to the subject in a more comprehensive way. The theory of word order has long been the Cinderella of linguistic science: how many even of the best and fullest grammars are wholly, or almost wholly, silent about it! And yet it presents a great many problems of high importance and of the greatest interest, not only in those languages in which word order has been extensively utilized for grammatical purposes, such as English and Chinese, but in other languages as well.

In historical times we see a gradual evolution of strict rules for word order, while our general impression of the older stages of our languages is that words were often placed more or less at random. This is what we should naturally expect from primitive man, whose thoughts and words are most likely to have come to him rushing helter-skelter, in wild confusion. One cannot, of course, apply so strong an expression to languages such as Sanskrit, Greek or Gothic; still, compared with our modern languages, it cannot be denied that there is in them much more of what from one point of view is disorder, and from another freedom.

This is especially the case with regard to the mutual position of the subject of a sentence and its verb. In the earliest times, sometimes one of them comes first, and sometimes the other. Then there is a growing tendency to place the subject first, and as this position is found not only in most European languages but also in Chinese and other languages of far-away, the phenomenon must be founded in the very nature of human thought, though its non-prevalence in most of the older Aryan languages goes far to show that this particular order is only natural to _developed_ human thought.

Survivals of the earlier state of things are found here and there; thus, in German ballad style: “Kam ein schlanker bursch gegangen.” But it is well worth noticing that such an arrangement is generally avoided, in German as well as in the other modern languages of Western Europe, and in those cases where there is some reason for placing the verb before the subject, the speaker still, as it were, satisfies his grammatical instinct by putting a kind of sham subject before the verb, as in E. _there_ comes a time when ..., Dan. _der_ kommer en tid da ..., G. _es_ kommt eine zeit wo ..., Fr. _il_ arrive un temps où....

In Keltic the habitual word order placed the verb first, but little by little the tendency prevailed to introduce most sentences by a periphrasis, as in ‘(it) is the man that comes,’ and as that came to mean merely ‘the man comes,’ the word order Subject-Verb was thus brought about circuitously.

Before this particular word order, Subject-Verb, was firmly established in modern Gothonic languages, an exception obtained wherever the sentence began with some other word than the subject; this might be some important member of the proposition that was placed first for the sake of emphasis, or it might be some unimportant little adverb, but the rule was that the verb should at any rate have the second place, as being felt to be in some way the middle or central part of the whole, and the subject had then to be content to be placed after the verb. This was the rule in Middle English and in Old French, and it is still strictly followed in German and Danish: Gestern _kam das schiff_ | Pigen _gav jeg kagen, ikke drengen_. Traces of the practice are still found in English in parenthetic sentences to indicate who is the speaker (‘Oh, yes,’ said he), and after a somewhat long subjunct, if there is no object (‘About this time died the gentle Queen Elizabeth’), where this word order is little more than a stylistic trick to avoid the abrupt effect of ending the sentence with an isolated verb like _died_. Otherwise the order Subject-Verb is almost universal in English.

XVIII.--§ 11. Compromises.

The inverted order, Verb-Subject, is used extensively in many languages to express questions, wishes and invitations. But, as already stated, this order was not originally peculiar to such sentences. A question was expressed, no matter how the words were arranged, by pronouncing the whole sentence, or the most important part of it, in a peculiar rising tone. This manner of indicating questions is, of course, still kept up in modern speech, and is often the only thing to show that a question is meant (‘John?’ | ‘John is here?’). But although there was thus a natural manner of expressing questions, and although the inverted word order was used in other sorts of sentences as well, yet in course of time there came to be a connexion between the two things, so that putting the verb before the subject was felt as implying a question. The rising tone then came to be less necessary, and is much less marked in inverted sentences like ‘Is John here?’ than in sentences with the usual word order: ‘John is here?’

Now, after this method of indicating questions had become comparatively fixed, and after the habit of thinking of the subject first had become all but universal, these two principles entered into conflict, the result of which has been, in English, Danish and French, the establishment in some cases of various kinds of compromise, in which the interrogatory word order has formally carried the day, while really the verb, that is to say the verb which means something, is placed after its subject. In English, this is attained by means of the auxiliary _do_: instead of Shakespeare’s “Came he not home to-night?” (_Ro._ II. 4. 2) we now say, “Did he not (or, Didn’t he) come home to-night?” and so in all cases where a similar arrangement is not already brought about by the presence of some other auxiliary, ‘Will he come?’, ‘Can he come?’, etc. Where we have an interrogatory pronoun as a subject, no auxiliary is required, because the natural front position of the pronoun maintains the order Subject-Verb (Who came? | What happened?). But if the pronoun is not the subject, _do_ is required to establish the balance between the two principles (Who(m) did you see? | What does he say?).

In Danish, the verb _mon_, used in the old language to indicate a weak necessity or a vague futurity, fulfils to a certain extent the same office as the English _do_; up to the eighteenth century _mon_ was really an auxiliary verb, followed by the infinitive: ‘Mon han komme?’; but now the construction has changed, the indicative is used with _mon_: ‘Mon han kommer?’, and _mon_ is no longer a verb, but an interrogatory adverb, which serves the purpose of placing the subject before the verb, besides making the question more indefinite and vague: ‘Kommer han?’ means ‘Does he come?’ or ‘Will he come?’ but ‘Mon han kommer?’ means ‘Does he come (Will he come), do you think?’

French, finally, has developed two distinct forms of compromise between the conflicting principles, for in ‘Est-ce que Pierre bat Jean?’ _est-ce_ represents the interrogatory and _Pierre bat_ the usual word order, and in ‘Pierre bat-il Jean?’ the real subject is placed before and the sham subject after the verb. Here also, as in Danish, the ultimate result is the creation of ‘empty words,’ or interrogatory adverbs: _est-ce-que_ in every respect except in spelling is one word (note that it does not change with the tense of the main verb), and thus is a sentence prefix to introduce questions; and in popular speech we find another empty word, namely _ti_ (see, among other scholars, G. Paris, _Mélanges ling._ 276). The origin of this _ti_ is very curious. While the _t_ of Latin _amat_, etc., coming after a vowel, disappeared at a very early period of the French language, and so produced _il aime_, etc., the same _t_ was kept in Old French wherever a consonant protected it,[88] and so gave the forms _est_, _sont_, _fait_ (from _fact_, for _facit_), _font_, _chantent_, etc. From _est-il_, _fait-il_, etc., the _t_ was then by analogy reintroduced in _aime-t-il_, instead of the earlier _aime il_. Now, towards the end of the Middle Ages, French final consonants were as a rule dropped in speech, except when followed immediately by a word beginning with a vowel. Consequently, while _t_ is mute in sentences like ‘Ton frère _dit_ | Tes frères _disent_,’ it is sounded in the corresponding questions, ‘Ton frère _dit-il_? Tes frères _disent-ils_?’ As the final consonants of _il_ and _ils_ are also generally dropped, even by educated speakers, the difference between interrogatory and declarative sentences in the spoken language depends solely on the addition of _ti_ to the verb: written phonetically, the pairs will be:

[tɔ̃ frɛ·r di--tɔ̃ frɛ·r di ti] [te frɛ·r di·z--te frɛ·r di·z ti].

Now, popular instinct seizes upon this _ti_ as a convenient sign of interrogative sentences, and, forgetting its origin, uses it even with a feminine subject, turning ‘Ta sœur di(t)’ into the question ‘Ta sœur di ti?’, and in the first person: ‘Je di ti?’ ‘Nous dison ti?’ ‘Je vous fais-ti tort?’ (Maupassant). In novels this is often written as if it were the adverb _y_: C’est-y pas vrai? | Je suis t’y bête! | C’est-y vous le monsieur de l’Académie qui va avoir cent ans? (Daudet). I have dwelt on this point because, besides showing the interest of many problems of word order, it also throws some light on the sometimes unexpected ways by which languages must often travel to arrive at new expressions for grammatical categories.

It was mentioned above that the inverted order, Verb-Subject, is used extensively, not only in questions, but also to express wishes and invitations. Here, too, we find in English compromises with the usual order, Subject-Verb. For, apart from such formulas as ‘Long live the King!’ a wish is generally expressed by means of _may_, which is placed first, while the real verb comes after the subject: ‘May she be happy!’, and instead of the old ‘Go we!’ we have now ‘Let us go!’ with _us_, the virtual subject, placed before the real verb. When a pronoun is wanted with an imperative, it used to be placed after the verb, as in Shakespeare: ‘_Stand thou_ forth’ and ‘_Fear_ not _thou_,’ or in the Bible: ‘_Turn ye_ unto him,’ but now the usual order has prevailed: ‘_You try!_’ ‘_You take_ that seat, and _somebody fetch_ a few more chairs!’ But if the auxiliary _do_ is used, we have the compromise order: ‘_Don’t you stir!_’

XVIII.--§ 12. Order Beneficial?

I have here selected one point, the place of the subject, to illustrate the growing regularity in word order; but the same tendency is manifested in other fields as well: the place of the object (or of two objects, if we have an indirect besides a direct object), the place of the adjunct adjective, the place of a subordinate adverb, which by coming regularly before a certain case may become a preposition ‘governing’ that case, etc. It cannot be denied that the tendency towards a more regular word order is universal, and in accordance with the general trend of this inquiry we must next ask the question: Is this tendency a beneficial one? Does the more regular word order found in recent stages of our languages constitute a progress in linguistic structure? Or should it be deplored because it hinders freedom of movement?

In answering this question we must first of all beware of letting our judgment be run away with by the word ‘freedom.’ Because freedom is desirable elsewhere, it does not follow that it should be the best thing in this domain; just as above we did not allow ourselves to be imposed on by the phrase ‘wealth of forms,’ so here we must be on our guard against the word ‘free’: what if we turned the question in another way: Which is preferable, order or disorder? It may be true that, viewed exclusively from the standpoint of the speaker, freedom would seem to be a great advantage, as it is a restraint to him to be obliged to follow strict rules; but an orderly arrangement is decidedly in the interest of the hearer, as it very considerably facilitates his understanding of what is said; it is therefore, though indirectly, in the interest of the speaker too, because he naturally speaks for the purpose of being understood. Besides, he is soon in his turn to become the hearer: as no one is exclusively hearer or speaker, there can be no real conflict of interest between the two.

If it be urged in favour of a free word order that we owe a certain regard to the interests of poets, it must be taken into consideration, first, that we cannot all of us be poets, and that a regard to all those of us who resemble Molière’s M. Jourdain in speaking prose without being aware of it is perhaps, after all, more important than a regard for those very few who are in the enviable position of writing readable verse; secondly, that a statistical investigation would, no doubt, give as its result that those poets who make the most extensive use of inversions are not among the greatest of their craft; and, finally, that so many methods are found of neutralizing the restraint of word order, in the shape of particles, passive voice, different constructions of sentences, etc., that no artist in language need despair.

So far, we have scarcely done more than clear the ground before answering our question. And now we must recognize that there are some rules of word order which cannot be called beneficial in any way; they are like certain rules of etiquette, in so far as one can see no reason for their existence, and yet one is obliged to bow to them. Historians may, in some cases, be able to account for their origin and show that they had a _raison d’être_ at some remote period; but the circumstances that called them into existence then have passed away, and they are now felt to be restraints with no concurrent advantage to reconcile us to their observance. Among rules of this class we may reckon those for placing the French pronouns now before, and now after, the verb, now with the dative and now with the accusative first, ‘elle _me le_ donne | elle _le lui_ donne | donnez-_le moi_ | ne _me le_ donnez pas.’ And, again, the rules for placing the verb, object, etc., in German subordinate clauses otherwise than in main sentences. That the latter rules are defective and are inferior to the English rules, which are the same for the two kinds of sentences, was pointed out before, when we examined Johannson’s German sentences (p. 341), but here we may state that the real, innermost reason for condemning them is their inconsistency: the same rule does not apply in all cases. It seems possible to establish the important principle that the more consistent a rule for word order is, the more useful it is in the economy of speech, not only as facilitating the understanding of what is said, but also as rendering possible certain thoroughgoing changes in linguistic structure.

XVIII.--§ 13. Word Order and Simplification.

This, then, is the conclusion I arrive at, that as simplification of grammatical structure, abolition of case distinctions, and so forth, always go hand in hand with the development of a fixed word order, this cannot be accidental, but there must exist a relation of cause and effect between the two phenomena. Which, then, is the _prius_ or cause? To my mind undoubtedly the fixed word order, so that the grammatical simplification is the _posterius_ or effect. It is, however, by no means uncommon to find a half-latent conception in people’s minds that the flexional endings were first lost ‘by phonetic decay,’ or ‘through the blind operation of sound laws,’ and that then a fixed word order had to step in to make up for the loss of the previous forms of expression. But if this were true we should have to imagine an intervening period in which the mutual relations of words were indicated in neither way; a period, in fact, in which speech was unintelligible and consequently practically useless. The theory is therefore untenable. It follows that a fixed word order must have come in first: it would come quite gradually as a natural consequence of greater mental development and general maturity, when the speaker’s ideas no longer came into his mind helter-skelter, but in orderly sequence. If before the establishment of some sort of fixed word order any tendency to slur certain final consonants or vowels of grammatical importance had manifested itself, it could not have become universal, as it would have been constantly checked by the necessity that speech should be intelligible, and that therefore those marks which showed the relation of different words should not be obliterated. But when once each word was placed at the exact spot where it properly belonged, then there was no longer anything to forbid the endings being weakened by assimilation, etc., or being finally dropped altogether.

To bring out my view I have been obliged in the preceding paragraph to use expressions that should not be taken too literally; I have spoken as if the changes referred to were made ‘in the lump,’ that is, as if the word order was first settled in every respect, and after that the endings began to be dropped. The real facts are, of course, much more complicated, changes of one kind being interwoven with changes of the other in such a way as to render it difficult, if not impossible, in any particular case to discover which was the _prius_ and which the _posterius_. We are not able to lay our finger on one spot and say: Here final _m_ or _n_ was dropped, because it was now rendered superfluous as a case-sign on account of the accusative being invariably placed after the verb, or for some other such reason. Nevertheless, the essential truth of my hypothesis seems to me unimpeachable. Look at Latin final _s_. Cicero (_Orat._ 48. 161) expressly tells us, what is corroborated by a good many inscriptions, that there existed a strong tendency to drop final _s_; but the tendency did not prevail. The reason seems obvious; take a page of Latin prose and try the effect of striking out all final _s_’s, and you will find that it will be extremely difficult to determine the meaning of many passages; a consonant playing so important a part in the endings of nouns and verbs could not be left out without loss in a language possessing so much freedom in regard to word position as Latin. Consequently it was kept, but in course of time word position became more and more subject to laws; and when, centuries later, after the splitting up of Latin into the Romanic languages, the tendency to slur over final _s_ knocked once more at the door, it met no longer with the same resistance: final _s_ disappeared, first in Italian and Rumanian, then in French, where it was kept till about the end of the Middle Ages, and it is now beginning to sound a retreat in Spanish; see on Andalusian Fr. Wulff, _Un Chapitre de Phonétique Andalouse_, 1889.

The main line of development in historical times has, I take it, been the following: first, a period in which words were placed somewhere or other according to the fancy of the moment, but many of them provided with signs that would show their mutual relations; next, a period with retention of these signs, combined with a growing regularity in word order, and at the same time in many connexions a more copious employment of prepositions; then an increasing indistinctness and finally complete dropping of the endings, word order (and prepositions) being now sufficient to indicate the relations at first shown by endings and similar means.

Viewed in this light, the transition from freedom in word position to greater strictness must be considered a beneficial change, since it has enabled the speakers to do away with more circumstantial and clumsy linguistic means. Schiller says:

Jeden anderen meister erkennt man an dem, was er ausspricht; Was er weise verschweigt, zeigt mir den meister des stils.

(Every other master is known by what he says, but the master of style by what he is wisely silent on.) What style is to the individual, the general laws of language are to the nation, and we must award the palm to that language which makes it possible “to be wisely silent” about things which in other languages have to be expressed in a troublesome way, and which have often to be expressed over and over again (vir_orum_ omn_ium_ bon_orum_ veter_um_, eal_ra_ god_ra_ eald_ra_ mann_a_). Could any linguistic expedient be more worthy of the genus _homo sapiens_ than using for different purposes, with different significations, two sentences like ‘John beats Henry’ and ‘Henry beats John,’ or the four Danish ones, ‘Jens slaar Henrik--Henrik slaar Jens--slaar Jens Henrik?--slaar Henrik Jens?’ (John beats Henry--H. beats J.--does J. beat H.?--does H. beat J.?), or the Chinese use of _či_ in different places (Ch. XIX § 3)? Cannot this be compared with the ingenious Arabic system of numeration, in which 234 means something entirely different from 324, or 423, or 432, and the ideas of “tens” and “hundreds” are elegantly suggested by the order of the characters, not, as in the Roman system, ponderously expressed?

Now, it should not be forgotten that this system, “where more is meant than meets the ear,” is not only more convenient, but also clearer than flexions, as actually found in existing languages, for word order in those languages which utilize it grammatically is used much more consistently than any endings have ever been in the old Aryan languages. It is not true, as Johannson would have us believe, that the dispensing with old flexional endings was too dearly bought, as it brought about increasing possibilities of misunderstandings; for in the evolution of languages the discarding of old flexions goes hand in hand with the development of simpler and more regular expedients that are rather less liable than the old ones to produce misunderstandings. Johannson writes: “In contrast to Jespersen I do not consider that the masterly expression is the one which is ‘wisely silent,’ and consequently leaves the meaning to be partly guessed at, but the one which is able to impart the meaning of the speaker or writer clearly and perfectly”--but here he seems rather wide of the mark. For, just as in reading the arithmetical symbol 234 we are perfectly sure that two hundred and thirty-four is meant, and not three hundred and forty-two, so in reading and hearing ‘The boy hates the girl’ we cannot have the least doubt who hates whom. After all, there is less guesswork in the grammatical understanding of English than of Latin; cf. the examples given above, Ch. XVIII § 4, p. 343.

The tendency towards a fixed word order is therefore a progressive one, directly as well as indirectly. The substitution of word order for flexions means a victory of spiritual over material agencies.

XVIII.--§ 14. Summary.

We may here sum up the results of our comparison of the main features of the grammatical structures of ancient and modern languages belonging to our family of speech. We have found certain traits common to the old stages and certain others characteristic of recent ones, and have thus been enabled to establish some definite tendencies of development and to find out the general direction of change; and we have shown reasons for the conviction that this development has on the whole and in the main been a beneficial one, thus justifying us in speaking about ‘progress in language.’ The points in which the superiority of the modern languages manifested itself were the following:

(1) The forms are generally shorter, thus involving less muscular exertion and requiring less time for their enunciation.

(2) There are not so many of them to burden the memory.

(3) Their formation is much more regular.

(4) Their syntactic use also presents fewer irregularities.

(5) Their more analytic and abstract character facilitates expression by rendering possible a great many combinations and constructions which were formerly impossible or unidiomatic.

(6) The clumsy repetitions known under the name of concord have become superfluous.

(7) A clear and unambiguous understanding is secured through a regular word order.

These several advantages have not been won all at once, and languages differ very much in the velocity with which they have been moving in the direction indicated; thus High German is in many respects behindhand as compared with Low German; European Dutch as compared with African Dutch; Swedish as compared with Danish; and all of them as compared with English; further, among the Romanic languages we see considerable variations in this respect. What is maintained is chiefly that there is a general tendency for languages to develop along the lines here indicated, and that this development may truly, from the anthropocentric point of view, which is the only justifiable one, be termed a progressive evolution.

But is this tendency really general, or even universal, in the world of languages? It will easily be seen that my examples have in the main been taken from comparatively few languages, those with which I myself and presumably most of my readers are most familiar, all of them belonging to the Gothonic and Romanic branches of the Aryan family. Would the same theory hold good with regard to other languages? Without pretending to an intimate knowledge of the history of many languages, I yet dare assert that my conclusions are confirmed by all those languages whose history is accessible to us. Colloquial Irish and Gaelic have in many ways a simpler grammatical structure than the Oldest Irish. Russian has got rid of some of the complications of Old Slavonic, and the same is true, even in a much higher degree, of some of the other Slavonic languages; thus, Bulgarian has greatly simplified its nominal and Serbian its verbal flexions. The grammar of spoken Modern Greek is much less complicated than that of the language of Homer or of Demosthenes. The structure of Modern Persian is nearly as simple as English, though that of Old Persian was highly complicated. In India we witness a constant simplification of grammar from Sanskrit through Prakrit and Pali to the modern languages, Hindi, Hindostani (Urdu), Bengali, etc. Outside the Aryan world we see the same movement: Hebrew is simpler and more regular than Assyrian, and spoken Arabic than the old classical language, Koptic than Old Egyptian. Of most of the other languages we are not in possession of written records from very early times; still, we may affirm that in Turkish there has been an evolution, though rather a slow one, of a similar kind; and, as we shall see in a later chapter, Chinese seems to have moved in the same direction, though the nature of its writing makes the task of penetrating into its history a matter of extreme difficulty. A comparative study of the numerous Bantu languages spoken all over South Africa justifies us in thinking that their evolution has been along the same lines: in some of them the prefixes characterizing various classes of nouns have been reduced in number and in extent (cf. above, § 9). Of one of them we have a grammar two hundred years old, by Brusciotto à Vetralla (re-edited by H. Grattan Guinness, London, 1882). A comparison of his description with the language now spoken in the same region (Mpongwe) shows that the class signs have dwindled down considerably and the number of the classes has been reduced from 16 to 10. In short, though we can only prove it with regard to a minority of the multitudinous languages spoken on the globe, this minority embraces _all_ the languages known to us for so long a period that we can talk of their history, and we may, therefore, confidently maintain that what may be briefly termed the tendency towards grammatical simplification is a universal fact of linguistic history.

That this simplification is progressive, i.e. beneficial, was overlooked by the older generation of linguistic thinkers, because they saw a kosmos, a beautiful and well-arranged world, in the old languages, and missed in the modern ones several things that they had been accustomed to regard with veneration. To some extent they were right: every language, when studied in the right spirit, presents so many beautiful points in its systematic structure that it may be called a ‘kosmos.’ But it is not in every way a kosmos; like everything human, it presents fine and less fine features, and a comparative valuation, such as the one here attempted, should take both into consideration. There is undoubtedly an exquisite beauty in the old Greek language, and the ancient Hellenes, with their artistic temperament, knew how to turn that beauty to the best account in their literary productions; but there is no less beauty in many modern languages--though its appraisement is a matter of taste, and as such evades scientific inquiry. But the æsthetic point of view is not the decisive one: language is of the utmost importance to the whole practical and spiritual life of mankind, and therefore has to be estimated by such tests as those applied above; if that is done, we cannot be blind to the fact that modern languages as wholes are more practical than ancient ones, and that the latter present so many more anomalies and irregularities than our present-day languages that we may feel inclined, if not to apply to them Shakespeare’s line, “Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,” yet to think that the development has been from something nearer chaos to something nearer kosmos.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Thus also the corresponding Lat. _jecur_ by _ficatum_, Fr. _foie_.

[85] This ungainly repetition is frequent in the Latin of Roman law, e.g. _Digest._ IV. 5. 2, _Qui quæve_ ... capite _diminuti diminutæ_ esse dicentur, in _eos easve_ ... iudicium dabo. | XLIII. 30, _Qui quæve_ in potestate Lucii Titii est, si _is eave_ apud te est, dolove malo tuo factum est quominus apud te esset, ita _eum eamve_ exhibeas. | XI. 3, Qui _servum servam alienum alienam_ recepisse persuasisseve quid ei dicitur dolo malo, quo _eum eam_ deteriorem faceret, in eum, quanti ea res erit, in duplum iudicium dabo. I owe these and some other Latin examples to my late teacher, Dr. O. Siesbye. From French, Nyrop (_Kongruens_, p. 12) gives some corresponding examples: _tous ceux et toutes celles_ qui, ayant été orphelins, avaient eu une enfance malheureuse (Philippe), and from Old French: Lors donna congié à _ceus et à celes_ que il avoit rescous (Villehardouin).

[86] If instead of _omnium veterum_ I had chosen, for instance, _multorum antiquorum_, the meaning of masculine gender would have been rendered four times: for languages, especially the older ones, are not distinguished by consistency.

[87] The change of the initial sound of the reminder belonging to the adjective is explained through composition with a ‘relative particle’ _a_; _au_ becoming _o_, and _ai_, _e_. The numbers within parentheses refer to the numbers of Bleek’s classes. Similar sentences from Tonga are found in Torrend’s _Compar. Gr._ p. 6 f.

[88] This protecting consonant was dropped in pronunciation at a later period.

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