CHAPTER II
.
=The History of the Grammar of English.=
1. =AN INFLECTED LANGUAGE.=--When, in the fifth century, our English speech was brought over from the Continent, it was a highly inflected or =Synthetic= language; and it remained in this condition for several centuries. The coming of the Danes had the effect of beginning the dropping off of inflections. The coming of the Normans extended very much and hastened this process, which has gone on with considerable rapidity down to the present day. We may put the general fact in this way:
The English Language was a =Synthetic Language= down to about the year 1100; since that time, it has been becoming more and more of an =Analytic Language=.
2. =THE GRAMMAR OF NOUNS.=--In the very oldest English--or, as it is commonly called, _Anglo-Saxon_--nouns were declined in different ways, and had several declensions, just as German and Latin have. Each of these declensions had four cases. Nowadays we have only one declension and only one inflection for the cases of nouns. That one inflection is =’s= for the possessive case. The following is an example of an old declension:
Declension of =EAGE=, the eye.
_Sing._ _Plur._ _Nom._ Eage (eye). Eagan. _Pos._ Eag-an (of). Eag-ena. _Dat._ Eag-an (to). Eag-am. _Obj._ Eage. Eagan.
Again, in this English, gender did not follow sex, but was poetic and fantastic. _Tongue_ and _week_ were feminine nouns, as they still are in modern German; _star_ and _sea_, masculine; _wife_ and _child_, neuter.--In old English there were a great many plural endings, as =-as=, =-an=, =-u=, =-a=, =-o=. After the Norman Conquest they were greatly reduced, =-es= or =-s= being now the ordinary ending, =-en= being exceptional.
3. =THE GRAMMAR OF ADJECTIVES.=--Adjectives had also cases. Adjectives had four cases, three genders, and two numbers. Now we say _good_ for all cases, genders, and numbers. In the fourteenth century the only ending which adjectives possessed was =e= for the plural. Thus Chaucer (1340-1400) writes of the little birds:
And _smalë_ fowlës maken melodie.
4. =GRAMMAR OF DEFINITE ARTICLE.=--This article was declined like an adjective, in three different genders. Now it has no inflections at all. It has still, however, a clear and distinct memory of one case, which survives in such phrases as, ‘The more, the merrier.’ This sentence might be written, ‘þŷ more, þŷ merrier.’ That is to say, ‘By that more, by that merrier.’ The measure of the increase of the company is the measure of the increase of the merriment.
5. =GRAMMAR OF THE PERSONAL PRONOUN.=--The personal pronoun was also highly inflected in the oldest English; and the two personal pronouns of the first and second persons possessed this remarkable peculiarity, that it had three numbers, singular, dual, and plural. The dual form stood for _We two_ and for _You two_; and, if we cared to trouble ourselves nowadays with a host of inflections, these would certainly be very convenient.
All this is now very much changed. The dual number is completely gone; the use of _thou_, except in religious compositions, has been given up, and the true possessive of _it_, which is =his=, has given place to the incorrect form _its_. The possessive _its_ is very seldom found in Shakspeare, and there is only one instance of it in our present translation of the Bible: ‘That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap’ (Lev. xxv. 5). But another reading is, ‘of it own accord.’
6. =GRAMMAR OF VERBS.=--The verb possessed also, in the oldest times, before the language was at all influenced by Norman-French, a large number of inflections. At the present time a verb has only five inflections; but, if it belongs to the strong conjugation, it may have six. Let us look at the old verb _niman_, to take, which still survives in our adjective _nimble_, which means _quick at taking_.
The chief tenses of =niman= were inflected as follows:
PRESENT TENSE.
_Sing._ _Plural._ 1. nime. nimath. 2. nimest. nimath. 3. nimeth. nimath.
PAST TENSE.
_Sing._ _Plural._ 1. nám. námon. 2. náme. námon. 3. nám. námon.
Of all the inflections in the above, only two still remain, _st_ in the second person singular, and _th_ in the third person; and even these two inflections are nowadays hardly used at all.
7. =FRAGMENTS OF NOUN INFLECTIONS.=--Although our language, in the course of its history, has lost almost all of its inflections, there still remain, here and there, in our grammar, fragments of inflections which are often curiously disguised, and therefore difficult to recognise. Thus, at first sight, it is not easy to see that _vixen_ is the feminine of _fox_. But _vixen_ is simply the same as _fixen_, or _fyxen_, and it was one of the laws of Anglo-Saxon vowel-change that _o_ became _y_. It was very usual to make the plural of nouns in _en_. Thus we said _shoon_, _hosen_, _tren_, _been_ (for _bees_), _toon_ (for _toes_), _flon_ (for _arrows_), and _fleen_ (for _fleas_). But, of all these and other similar plurals, we now possess only one--_oxen_. The plurals _children_ and _brethren_ are really double plurals. The oldest plurals were _cildru_, afterwards _childer_; and _brether_. It was then forgotten that these were real plurals, and an _en_ was added.
8. =FRAGMENTS OF ADJECTIVE INFLECTIONS.=--We have the comparative _rather_ (rightly pronounced in Ireland rayther); but we have no _rathe_ or _rathest_. An old writer, speaking of a star, says: ‘It rose rather and rather (earlier).’ =Nighest= becomes _next_; because the =g + s= is equal to an =x=. So there was in our country an old proverb, ‘When bale is hext, bone is next’--that is, ‘When evil is highest, boon is nighest.’ _Over_ is now only used as a preposition. But it is really the comparative degree of the old adjective _ov_, which is a form of _up_ or _off_.
9. =FRAGMENTS OF PRONOUN INFLECTIONS.=--The _t_ in _it_ (which was formerly _hit_, as the neuter of _he_) is simply the sign of the neuter gender, and is the same _t_ that is found in _tha-t_, _wha-t_ (the neuter of _who_), etc. Hence the true possessive of _it_ is _his_; and this is the form in use in Shakspeare and Bacon, and even down to the middle of the seventeenth century. _Its_, as we have already seen, is a blunder. _They_ is not the true plural of _he_; but really of the old definite article _thaet_.
10. =FRAGMENTS OF VERB INFLECTIONS.=--The inflections of the verb are very strangely disguised; and, if learned men had not worked hard, and made diligent inquiry in many directions, we should never have known what they really are. Thus the _m_ in _am_ is the same _m_ that is found in _me_; and the oldest form known of the verb _am_, in the oldest language, is _asmi_.--The _t_ which we find in the second person of some verbs, such as _art_, _wast_, _shalt_, and _wilt_, is the same as the _th_ in _thou_. This _t_ is therefore the pronoun _thou_ added to the verb.--The _th_ in the old-fashioned third person singular _writeth_, _hopeth_, etc., is the same _th_ that we find in _the_ and _that_. Accordingly, we may say that _burneth_ is = _that_ (_thing_) _burns_.--The last _d_ in _did_ is not the same as the _ed_ in _walked_. _Did_ is not = _doed_. An older form of _did_ is _dude_; and from this we see that the past tense was formed by doubling the present--by reduplication. Thus we see that it is the last _d_ that represents the _do_.--The word _worth_ in the well-known lines from the _Lady of the Lake_--
Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, That cost thy life, thou gallant gray!--
is not an adjective, but the remnant of an old verb. This verb is _weorthan_, to become; and _worth_ is the imperative of it. When a verb has lost one of its parts, it goes to another verb, and borrows the use of one of its parts. Thus _went_, the past tense of _go_, is borrowed from _wend_.
11. =FRAGMENTS OF INFLECTIONS IN ADVERBS.=--Adverbs contain a great number of disguised inflections. In the present day, we make adverbs from adjectives by adding _ly_ to them--as _neat_, _neatly_; _warm_, _warmly_. But, in old English, the adverb was made by employing the dative of the adjective. Thus, _brightë_ was = _in a bright manner_; _swiftë_ was = _swiftly_. Then _ë_ very soon dropped off; and the word was left in its bare root--stripped of inflections. And so it has happened that we have many adverbs which are used in their simplest form, and are just the same as adjectives. We do not say, ‘He runs fastly,’ but ‘He runs fast;’ ‘He works hardly,’ but ‘He works hard.’--But the remnants of other cases are also found in adverbs. Thus _needs_, _always_, _sideways_, _once_ (for _onës_), _twice_ (for _twiës_), _unawares_, _whence_ (for _whennës_) and others, are all old possessives.--_Seldom_ is an old dative plural. _Seld_ meant _rare_; and _seldom_ means _at rare times_.--_The_ in the phrase, ‘The older the better,’ is an ablative or _instrumental_ case; and therefore means _by that_. Accordingly this sentence means: ‘By that older, by that better.’ The measure of the increase of age is the measure of the increase of the quality.
12. =FRAGMENTS OF INFLECTIONS IN PREPOSITIONS.=--_Since_ is the possessive case of the old English word _sithen_. The following are the steps: _Sithennës_; _sithens_; _sithence_; _since_.--_After_ is the comparative degree of the old preposition _af_ (= of), which meant _from_. _Over_ is another comparative form, from a root which appears in _up_.
##