THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE P. H. CHAMBERS f BERKELEY L^ARY UNIvRplTY OF CALlfORNJA li Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/elementsoflanguaOOchamrich THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE BY F. H. CHAMBERS, M.A., Headmaster of the Lincoln Grammar School. LINCOLN : J. W. Ruddock & Sons, 287 High Street. Printed for the Author by J. W. Ruddock & Sons, High Street, Lincoln, from whom any required number of copies may be obtained, price 1/6 nett (postage extra, single copy 3d.). PIS'! C45 PREFACE. The following pages are quite unconventional and no doubt differ considerably from the accepted type of grammatical text book. They put forward, nevertheless, no new theory. They deal with a method rather than with a theory, and their aim is simple and definite — to meet certain practical difficulties which exist in the teaching of language, more especially of Latin, in certain kinds of school. The present writer has been responsible for a school of moderate size for the last nine years. He has been subject during most of that time to the restrictions of the Board of Education, and has had to deal with perhaps a larger proportion than usual of boys whose school life has been short — nearer three years than four, and who began it without any previous preparation in any language but their own. He has no desire to dogmatise about other schools and about other people's experience ; but, as far as his own goes, there is no question in his mind but that the problem of teaching Latin, and indeed language generally, in the modern State-controlled Secondary School is an utterly different one from what it was when time tables were roughly divided between Classics and Mathematics, and when school-life extended to seventeen or eighteen. IV. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE There was time then to get through those initial stages when the forms were learnt by heart, and used with painful unintelligence. After a period of this, the light dawned gradually, and, given time, a fair proportion of boys passed on to a real appreciation of language and its uses. Under present conditions there is no time. A lesson a day is all that most schools can afford. The study of Latin often ends altogether at sixteen ; and there are, in point of fact, dozens of boys who never get past the initial stages at all. These boys never really know what a Case is or a Mood ; their experience of Latin is the useless and barren one of learning forms by heart, of putting certain Cases after certain Verbs because the master or the text book tell them to, or of going through certain tricks with " ut " and a Subjunctive Mood ; their sole stimulus is that of the organ-grinder's monkey, stripes when they fail, sugar when they succeed. If Latin is to form a real part of the machinery of education, it seems to the writer essential that the early stages should become something very different from what convention at present makes them ; above all that they should be logical instead of being as at present, an arsenal of unintelligent rules. Commonsense surely points to this. In Mathematics, to use a formula unintelligently is a crime. Tricks with symbols, unsupported by a knowledge of principles, are not tolerated for a moment by any teacher who knows his business. Yet in Grammar the unintelligent formula is rampant . THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE V. There is no book on earth that dogmatises as a Latin Grammar does. To take examples at random : " Copulative Verbs take the same case after them as before them." " Verbs which govern the Dative in the Active are only used impersonally in the Passive." " Historic Tenses in the principal sentence are always followed by Historic Tenses in the Subordinate Clause." " The Imperfect Subjunctive in Conditional Sentences becomes Imperfect Subjunctive when thrown into the Oblique form." These are formulae pure and simple ; each and all of them and the dozens like them, which any work on syntax will reveal, need boldly challenging. If they are true, why are they true ? The writer asks, as a schoolmaster, whose business it is to stuff these things down young throats ? Are there no reasons to be found for all these rules ? Are there no first principles at the back of the formulas ? Has language really developed on lines of arbitrary and purposeless disorder ? Is it all that scholars can do for us, to tell us that these things are so, that they are idioms, that they have grown with use ? " Learning the alphabet is a dull business," they say, " nevertheless he who desires to read must do it." If the parallel holds, Latin ceases to be a right and proper instrument of education for certain Schools. To show that it does not hold, at any rate for a part of the field, is the object the writer has set before himself. The following chapters are the record of an attempt VI. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE to eliminate from the elements of language rules and formulae of any sort, and to teach from first principles only. The chapters grew in the schoolroom, coping with the muddle that mechanical rules always have produced and always will. They are left designedly exactly as they grew. Their value, if they have any, lies in the method they exemplify, and there is only one way to make a method clear, namely, to show it in operation. For this reason the writer apologises neither for collo- quialisms nor for homely illustration nor for omissions. They all had their purpose, and they are left as they were used. He has sometimes been asked whether the book is intended for the teacher or the boy. The answer is, for both. The boy is addressed as the quickest way of demonstrating to the teacher the practicability or otherwise of the method. Many teachers believe grammar from first principles to be an impossible ideal. The opinion has been expressed to the writer again and again. The only way to meet the objection is to put the actual lesson on paper. On the other hand, boys do not read text book explanations ; nor do teachers adopt bodily other teachers' methods ; nor is most of the matter dealt with in this book such as can be taught otherwise than by word of mouth. The practical use of the book will rather be this ; there is a logical argument running through it, which will need grasping and conserving ; when the teacher has adapted it to his own methods and his own pupils, the book will serve the same purpose THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE VU. to the grammar lesson that the geometrical text book does to the geometry lesson. A further reason for leaving the lessons as they stand is that they have a certain natural order, which in most cases is not the writer's at all, but the direct product of the boys' difficulties. " Please, sir, what is it for ? " was the question put by a little boy of twelve, who was struggling with a Case. It was impossible to tell him what it was for without previously familiarising him with the idea of an in- flection. To define an inflection, as any experienced teacher knows, is of no use. The boy has to examine, in his own language, inflections of his own inflecting till the use of the form dawns on him. Even then he has practically no Cases in English. Yet for that very reason he has the forms that do the work Case once did — the equivalents of Case : — Order and Prepositions. They are both forms he uses in his own speech with perfect readiness and precision. How, except by examining these under careful guidance, can he form an intelligent idea of what Case is ? Such considerations as these often leave no choice either of the matter to be treated, or of the order of its presentation. There are similar questions which may be asked with equal reason. What is a Voice for ? What is a Sub- junctive Mood for ? What is an Infinitive Mood for ? What are the separate Subjunctive Tenses for ? The answer which the boy mostly gets is " They are to follow another form." It is no answer at all. After VU1. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE x comes y. What profit to know it, if they are both unknowns ? The same line of reasoning suggests other queries. Why is a Preposition enshrined among the parts of speech when a Case inflection, which is its parallel, is left out in the cold ? Why in grammar after grammar and declension after declension is the Nominative Case installed in the place of honour without a word of reference to the English tool for doing the same work, — the principle of order. Again, why is the Conjunction allowed to monopolise the whole idea of connection in the way that it does ? Ninety-nine boys out of a hundred never dream that there is any means in language of expressing a connection other than a Conjunction. The forms that are under their noses, — proximity, order, inflections, stops, prepositions, — are so familiar that they are utterly neglected. The consequence is, the neglected forms, when used, are used mechanically. A formula and not commonsense becomes the guide. It is not the boy's fault, it is the fault of the con- ventional manner in which the subject is presented to his mind. Hence the prominence given in this book to connection. It is only reasonable. Analysis is a recognised form of grammatical exercise : why not synthesis ? Connection of various kinds is the very breath of life to language. It is only in the study of the work they have to do that some of the connectives, e.g., the Subjunctive Mood, can be properly under- stood. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE IX. Teachers using this book will probably find it neces- sary to deal very slowly and thoroughly with the in- troductory part, that concerned with the recognition of the fundamental ideas. Until this foundation is properly laid, it is useless to go on. It is not sufficient, moreover, for a boy to be able to recognise the Subject, Verb and Object in such a sentence as " The carpenter made the box." He must also be able to deal thoughtfully with such a sentence as " It is not a very good light." Such sentences, as a very short experience will show, abound in his own speech. What is the Verb in this sentence ? What is the Subject ? What are the non-essentials ? There may be several answers to these questions. If so, all the better. To train the boy to judge be- tween them is the business in hand. Do it, and he will say when he comes to put it into French : Cette lumiere n'est pas bien bonne. Fail to do it and he will give you the bald trans- cription : II n'est pas une tres bonne lumi&re. On the other hand, once this part of the work is done, the latter parts are very quickly assimilated. The conditions, in the writer's experience, are exactly similar to those of geometrical teaching. Lay the foundations deep and firm, and progress in the next stage is rapid and sure. If they are not so laid, to go to the next stage at all is waste of time. Some teachers may disagree with certain terms that Xll THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The rule which one sentence suggests, the next one con- tradicts, and the boy is constantly forced back from the form to what lies behind it. The teacher systemati- cally using " live " sentences will have many questions put to him which are difficult to answer, but his pupils will not be able to help but think. Again, there may seem, towards the end of the book, overmuch abstract thinking. Abstractions no doubt, are hard for boys ; but in some cases, in that of the Subjunctive, for example, the alternative to risking a more or less abstract explanation is the mischievous and dangerous course of letting the boy use the Mood without knowing what it means. The writer's experience goes to show that the difficulty, so far as these lessons go, is by no means formidable. Theory, as always, must be administered in not too large doses, and followed by an immediate instalment of practice ; for example, the theory of the Subjunctive would be followed by the analysis of the Subjunctives in a page or two of familiar Latin. Given, however, these and such other precautions as will suggest them- selves to an experienced teacher, no confusion need be apprehended — none at least in any way comparable with what is inevitable, if theory is left untouched and practice unintelligent. Lastly. The writer desires to acknowledge his in- debtedness to Heyse's "Deutsche Grammatik," for the main part of the chapter on the developments of the cases ; and to his friends and colleagues in his own school for invaluable help and criticism. F. H. C. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. i 7 The Sentence and its essential components. Nouns. Verbs. Subjects. Objects. The Substitution of the Pronoun for the Noun - Elementary Classification of Verbs. The Servant Words of the Sentence. The Ad- jective. The Adverb. Replacing Phrases and Sentences. The Connectives of the Sentence. Prepositions. Conjunctions. CHAPTER II. 41 Inflection, and its purpose. The alternative method of expression. Elementary Case Inflections in Latin and their use. The English and French alternatives. Order and Prepositions. Elementary Tense Inflections in Latin. English and French parallel forms. The Mood Inflections. The Infinitive " and Par- ticipial forms ; their meaning and the principles which govern their use. The Active and Passive Voice. The construction of the forms they employ. CHAPTER III. 85 Adjectives and Adverbs. The Servant words. The necessity of proper attachment. The necessity of proper subordination. The means used to secure these two ends in Latin, French CHAPTER IV. 92 The principles of Classification. Their application to the various parts of speech, more especially to Pronouns. Examination of the Reflexive, the Demonstrative, the Relative Pronouns, etc. xiii. XIV. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER V. no Agreement ; in connection with the adjective ; in cases of apposition ; in the Subject Verb com- bination. The government of nouns, wrongly so called. CHAPTER VI. n8 Parsing. What it is. What it is not. Where its difficulties lie. CHAPTER VII. 124 Analysis. First approximation, i.e. the formal identification of the parts of speech, of little practical value. Second approximation ; the distinction between the essentials and the luxuries of a sentence. Recognition of the real essentials. The necessity of their predominance. Precautions against the encroachment of the subordinate elements. The mending of faulty sentences, and the application of the principles to composition generally. Suggestions for more complex analysis. Third approximation ; the relative values of different words to the central idea, as shown in English by order. CHAPTER VIII. 152 Synthesis : as important as analysis. Basis of connection between words or sentences the already existing connections between the things or ideas they represent. Examination of this connection for the case of two sentences. In- dependent and dependent relationships. The tools for their expression The Conjunctions. Other connections examined. Subject-Verb, Adjective-Noun, etc. The tools for their ex- pression. Case. Order. Prepositions. CHAPTER IX. 159 The connection of replacing sentences. The Ad- verb sentence. Various forms of Adjective sentence. The Noun sentence. The distinc- tion between the independent and the depen- CONTENTS. XV. PAGE dent connections. The expression of a depen- dent connection and the use of the Subjunctive mood involved. The expression of an indepen- dent connection. The Mood used in indepen- dent connection. The analysis of compound relative combinations and the principles of their connection. CHAPTER X. 172 The Subjunctive Mood and its definition. In what sense does it possess Tenses ? General Analysis of Tense. Grouping of the Tense Forms. The relationships of the Groups. The relations of the Subjunctive Tenses with the Future In- dicatives — and with the Infinitives. The Sequence of Tenses. CHAPTER XL 187 A further analysis of the steps of connection ; and of the exact function of the different connectives, proximity, case, order, preposi- tions, and more especially of the co-ordinate and subordinate conjunctions. (This may be deferred till the second reading of the subject, if desired). CHAPTER XII. 199 Practical applications of the foregoing principles. CHAPTER XIII. 207 A general analysis of the ideas expressed by Case. CHAPTER XIV. 215 Appendix. Some definitions. Notes on Oratio Obliqua. CHAPTER I. THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. Words are tools — tools of expression. Tools are made to be used — not to be hung up in shining rows and classified. If you want to be a carpenter you do not begin by wandering round the workshop naming every tool, you can see, large and small. On the contrary, you are given some simple tool, you watch it being used, you use it yourself, first on simple and then on more difficult work. By using it you soon discover the laws of the tool, what it is for, what it will do, what it will not do. Then you go on to a second, and so on. The name of the tool does not matter much. Of course it has a name, but it is knowledge of the thing, not of its name, that matters. Similarly with word tools, not the names but the work they do, and the way they do it are the important things. To gain this knowledge you must watch the words being used. Where ? In your own speech and in that of your friends. You start with this great advantage over the budding carpenter, that you can and do use a very large number of these tools correctly and effectively. You can express by words most things that you want to say, and you generally use the words perfectly rightly. b ; -17 Sentence l8 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE You do it, however, not because you understand the tools that you are using, or anything about them, but because of long habit. You have been expressing thoughts by words, ever since you could speak, never troubling about how it was done, but still doing it correctly. You have now to look more closely at the words, the tools you have been unconsciously using. You have to watch them at work, and use them again yourself (intelligently this time), till you discover the laws which govern them. §1 To begin with you do not talk in single words. I h A _ Anything you say with any sense in it is practically always made of two or more words. For example, if I say Kitten, it is not exactly nonsense but it is not sense. If I say The kitten furred it is sense. If you do not believe it, try for some single word conversation yourselves. Here is an example : A. Go. B. What ? A. Go. B. Go? A. Yes. B. Shan't. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 19 How long can you keep this up ? It gets a little tiring, doesn't it ? Does it make sense ? Yes. Only on one condition though — That you supply out of your own head a lot of words which are not spoken. That is wha,t makes it tiring. The sentences are not really one-word sentences at all. There are some more words there, which you mean and don't say. It does not always follow that every time two or three words are put together it is sense. I might say for example Kitten ran tail, which is not sense. A collection of sense-making words is called a sentence. You use hundreds of such sentences daily. The next thing you have to do is to examine some §2 sentences. As those you use have sometimes (though Nouns you probably do not know it) rather complicated verbs parts to them, it will be better to begin with some simple ones ; for example, say something simple about a cat. " The cat scratched the baby." Look at this sentence. It is made of words Cat Scratched. Baby. These are not all alike. Which are alike ? Cat. Baby. Draw a picture of them both. What are they ? Names, — the name of an animal— the name of a person. 20 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Scratched. Draw a picture of " scratched." You cannot. It does not describe a thing, but an action. Scratched is the word that tells you what was happening. Say something about a lion. "The lion ate the donkey." Which of these words are alike ? Lion and donkey. They are like cat and baby in the previous sentence, Names, — the names of two animals. Ate again is like scratched—it tells you what was happening. Say something about the sun. "The sun shone," Sun is like cat, baby, lion, donkey, a name, the name of a thing. Shone tells you what was happening. Say something about your brother. My brother is stupid. Brother is like cat, baby, lion, donkey, a Name, the name of a person. Is stupid tells you what is happening. In these sentences, therefore, we get two main sets of words, first Names, names of persons — like brother, or of things— like sun, or of animals— like cat, donkey, These words are called NOUNS: the names of any- thing or anybody. The other sort is the kind that tells you what is happening. Scratching, eating, shining, being stupid. Such words are called YERBS Now Verbs are very important words — kings of the sentence in fact. You must learn to recognise them. No sentence can stand up without a Verb ; it is like a boy without a backbone. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 21 Try. Willy — the lamppost. What does that mean ? Put a verb in, and another. Try again. Father — boots. What does this mean ? Put a verb in. In the same way make sense of :— The tiger — the elephant. The ship — the flag. The horse — the corn. Make a list of the words you have inserted in all these sentences. Rewrite the sentences, putting in other similar words. Again, make sense of : The tiger - The ship - - The horse - - by putting something in. Make a list of the words you put in. Now examine your lists. You will hnd the words in them are all like Scratched, ate, was stupid, the words we had above. All these words are verbs. What do they tell you ? What is happening. If you look at them closely you see two sorts of things and only two happen. Verbs i. People do things. -».,,. 1. Actions 2. People are things. 2 . States We might say, therefore, Verbs describe actions or states. There are several parts to them sometimes. The cat has been scratching the baby. My brother was stupid. describe 22 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The whole collection constitutes the Verb. We see then that the Verb is that part of the sentence which tells you what is happening. It is indispensable. There is no sense in a sentence without it. §3 Indispensable as the Verb is, however, there is another The thing in the sentence which is equally indispensable. Subject Supposing I say Shone, that tells something about the action, but it does not tell you — What ? Was it the sun that shone, — or the kettle — or your boots ? You do not really know about the action until you know who did it. Supposing I say : Drowned the cat, there is something missing besides pussy. What is it ? Information about the murderer. Again, supposing I say : Was stupid, there is something missing. What is it ? Information about who was stupid. If the sentence, therefore, is to tell us anything properly, besides having a verb to tell us about an action, we must also have a word to tell us who did it ; besides having a word to tell us about a state, we must also have a word to tell us who or what was in it. The word or words that do this work are called the Subject words, or for shortness the Subject. (The word Subject means " subject of the sentence," i.e., the person or the thing the sentence is about). THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 23 We have now had three great ideas : Nouns, which Recapitu- are a particular sort of word ; Verbs, which are another jjJJJJJJlaJf sort ; Subjects, which are a part of the sentence. It is essential before you go further that you should be able to recognise these without a mistake. Practise them therefore one at a time, thus : — Nouns. Take a page of your reading book ; note Ex. i. every noun you see. Write them in a list. Nouns Take any verb you like ; attach one or sometimes two nouns to it to make sense. Repeat this half-a- dozen times with new verbs and new nouns. You may find some doubtful words in the reading book ; you will not be quite sure if they are nouns or not. Ask yourself whether they are the names of any- thing or anybody. If you cannot settle it yourself, ask somebody who knows. You will not find Nouns on the whole at all hard to recognise. Verbs. Collect and write out a number of short sentences of three or four words. Do not invent them for the purpose — you will probably invent them all alike if you do — but catch them alive, i.e., take sen- tences that you actually say to other people, or that other people say to you. For example, " I had not got time," " My bicycle broke." Mind and take little ones. 24 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE In these sentences, first of all notice all the verbs : convince yourself that you use one in every sentence. Then write them all down in a column. What does a verb tell you ? What happens. What does happen ? Actions or states. Go to each verb separately and ask yourself whether it is describing an action or a state, i.e., is somebody doing something or is somebody being something ? Write action or state by the side of the word accordingly Next write half-a-dozen sentences about a ship. Pick out the verbs you use. Put action or state at the side of them as before. Ex. 4. Repeat this half-a-dozen times, with any other noun Terbs yon like. Do not be afraid to reckon as the verb all the words that tell you about the action or the state. For example : I am going to see him to-morrow, " am going to see " is the verb. He looked ill, " looked ill," not " looked " is the verb. You will find some words that seem to you doubtful. Ought they to be state verbs or action verbs ? If you cannot settle it for yourself, leave them and ask some- body who knows. E%. 5 Subjects. Write in a column the following sentences Subject 1. Jones lent him his bicycle. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 25 2. I have been very ill. 3. The house was burnt down. 4. My uncle gave me sixpence. 5. He will be fourteen next week. 6. That will hurt you. 7. Your exercise is nonsense. 8. I have not a penny. 9. The dentist pulled out six teeth. 10. This is not yours. Examine the verb in each of these sentences. Make up your mind whether it is an action verb or a state verb. Write " action " or " state " accordingly in a parallel column by the side of the sentence. Then go to each sentence with one or the other of the following questions : — 1. Is it an action verb ? If so, somebody did the action. Who ? 2. Is it a state verb ? If so somebody was in the state. Who ? The answer gives you the Subject. Write it in another parallel column opposite the sentence. Again, make a collection of a dozen live sentences Ex ^ 6 as before. Do the same for each sentence in the col- subject lection. Note. — You will do well to keep the various collections of live sentences you make. Flowers are best studied growing, not in a picture book ; and words are best studied in their natural place, namely, in your own speech and that of those around you. Such collections will be needed for almost every form or word you study. 26 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Never allow in them anything you do not actually hear ; also reject, at any rate at first, any sentences that are not fairly straightforward. They might cause you difficulty. Afterwards it will not matter. Questions especially are puzzling. Such collections are most useful when they are roughly classi- fied, e.g., A collection of action sentences, A collection of state sentences, A collection of double sentences, and so on. You will perhaps find among the sentences you have just treated, some in which the Subjects are not easy to see at first. For example : " Let us go home." What is the verb ? "let us go." What sort ? Action. Who was to do the going ? We. u We " therefore is the subject of " let us go." Again, Go away. What is the verb ? Go. Action verb as before. Who was to do it ? You. " You " is the Subject. §4 Again, examine the column of Subjects of all the Pronouns sentences you have treated thus. What sort of words are they ? Mostly nouns. Any others ? Probably. Collect them. " I," " he," " we," " that," " this," or other words like them. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 2J What are these words ? Words which seem to come in and occupy the noun's place. They clearly mean the same as the nouns. What does " he " mean ? " Jones." What is " Jones " ? Noun. That is to say " he " means the same as a certain noun. Such words are called Pronouns. They are words which do exactly the same work as nouns and replace them. Why do they replace them ? Why cannot nouns do their own work ? You will see the answer if you try to say this without Pronouns : He gave me sixpence, because he was so pleased with me, and told me not to spend it all at once. We have spoken of Verb and Subject. Is the sentence §5 now complete, if we know what is done and who did it ? The Objec Examine some sentences. "The sun shines." Is this complete ? Yes. "The dog barks." Is this ? Yes. " My brother is stupid." Is this ? Yes. "The boy broke ." Is this ? If not, what do we want to know ? 28 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Clearly, to whom or to what the action is done. The word that tells us this is called the Object. §6 Examine the following Verbs : Ex. 6. Struck. Shines. Fell down. Weave. Was ill. Smiled. Grew fat. Built. Overflows. Broke. Seems long. Annoy. Wrote. Brushed. Was in a hurry. Flows. Sings, — and as many more as you like to put in. Put a Subject to them and see if the sentence is complete. If not, complete it as simply as possible. Make a list of the words you completed it with. What were they ? Nouns and pronouns. Make a list of the verbs which needed completion. Split this list again into two groups, action verbs or state verbs as the case may be. Make a list of the verbs which did not need com- pletion. Label these action or state verbs as the case may be. You will find you will have three lists : i. Action verbs which need no completion. 2. State verbs which need no completion. 3. Action verbs which need completion. Transitive It is, then, a particular sort of action verb which transitive neec * s completing, and the completion which it needs ▼erbs is information about the receiver of the action. The word or words which supply that information are called the Object words of the action, or more shortly, the Object. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 20, The other action verbs, on the other hand need no receiver. The two sets of action verbs might be called action passing verbs and non-action passing verbs, according as they pass their action on to a receiver or not. They are usually called Transitive and Intransitive verbs, which are Latin names meaning " the action passes," " the action does not pass." Take twenty live sentences. Pick out the action Em. 7. sentences. Arrange the action sentences in two groups, action passing sentences, non-action passing sentences. Notice carefully : an Object is not needed in all sentences. State verbs do not describe an action at all, so of course they have no receiver of it. Some action verbs do not need a receiver, but, when the action does imply a receiver, then the Object is indispensable. It is* like the Verb and the Subject in this. Again, when actions pass, as has just been explained, §7 they pass to somebody or something. Often, however, they pass to more than one some- body or something. "I gave the lion the baby." 30 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The Two people are interested in this action — the lion Object anc * ^ e DaDv - It concerns them both. They are both Objects. It does not concern them, however, in the same way. It makes a difference whether I gave the lion the baby, or I gave the baby the lion. Draw a picture of the first incident. What have I got in my hand ? The baby. Draw a picture of the second. What have I got in my hand ? The lion, (stuffed presumably) . What gets given the first time ? What gets given the second time ? Each time the action, as it were, hits one of the Objects first, then glances off and hits the other. We can very well distinguish these Objects by calling them Object No. 1 and Object No. 2. They are often called the Direct Object and the Indirect Object. It does not follow that every time you have a pair of Objects, they are No. i and No. 2. You might have two No. i Objects. "I saw my brother and his wife," or again, No. i Objects and No. 2 Objects mixed. " I offered the lion the baby and some biscuits.' ' Summary To summarise — for the complete sense of every sen- THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 31 tence we must know about the action or the state, (the Verb tells us this) : We must know who does it or is in it, (the Subject tells us this) : Sometimes, though not always, we must know to whom actions are done (the Objects tell us this). The Subject, Verb and Objects are the kings of the §8 sentence. They contain its main meaning and do its The real work. ™ Now these kings, like other kings, have servants. A servant's business is always to do something for his master which his master does not do for himself. The Verb has such a servant — the ADVERB. It is the Adverb's business, not to describe the main The action itself, (which is the verb's business), but to Adverb describe something about the action which the verb does not — how or when or where or why it took place. Here are some at work. i. I saw him yesterday. 2. The sun shines brightly. 3. My father is coming soon. 4. Don't speak so loud. The Subjects and Objects, which are mainly Nouns, The have also such a servant— the ADJECTIVE. Adjective 32 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The Adjective's business is, not to describe the things themselves, (that is the Noun's business), but to tell us something about them which the Noun itself does not tell us. Here are some at work, i. Make up a good fire. 2. He had a white rose in his buttonhole. 3. I like a low chair. 4. He would make an excellent policeman. Note that the Adverb, which is mainly the servant of the Verb, can also do odd jobs for an Adjective or another Adverb. Here are some Adverbs at such work. 1. He is not a very nice boy. 2. You have come too soon. 3. His face is quite black. We have thus as the elements of a full sentence : 1. Subjects, Verbs, and Objects. 2. Their servants. Now it is of the utnnst importance that you should be able to recognise all these various elements with certainty and precision. Until you are able to do this you have no business to go further, for you will understand nothing. Nothing but practice will give you the requisite power. Practice will always take the same form, an examina- tion of your own speech. To recognise Objects, take your various sets of live sentences. Choose one. Is there any set will serve your purpose better than another ? There are at least two sets which cannot contain Objects. Which are they ? THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 33 i. Having found your set of action passing sentences, Ex. 8. which is the one you need, go through it, labelling the objects Objects. Distinguish No. i Object from No. 2. Make a list of the No. 1 Objects and examine it. You will find the same mixture of Nouns and Pronouns that you found among the Subjects. Do the same for Object No. 2. 2. Label the Objects in any set of live sentences Ex chosen at random. Objects It will keep you straight if you label the Verbs before you touch the Objects, otherwise you may label a word as Object in a state sentence, which is nonsense. As you improve, label the Objects without this pre- caution. Repeat this exercise till you are perfect. 3. Practise putting some Objects in. % x IO Take any Verb you please. Add a Subject, then an objects Object, if it admits one, No. 1 or No. 2, or both. Of course make sense all the time. Be careful not to confuse Objects with Adverbs. Because a word follows a verb it is not therefore an Object. Don't call brightly an Object in " The sun shines brightly." The form of question to put to yourself is always : What is the verb ? Shines. Then, to whom is the shining done ? The answer will give you the Object when there is one. C 34 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Ex. ii. To recognise Adjectives and Adverbs. Adjectives p or Adjectives search any set of live sentences for words that tell you something about a Noun. Make a list of the words when you have found them. Note that such words generally stand immediately before the Noun and are therefore very easily recognised. Ex. 12. F or Adverbs, search similarly for words which tell Adverbs y 0U something about the Verb, i.e., about the action or the state. Collect them in a list as before. The lists will be useful later. Ex. 13. Again, search your sets of sentences for words telling Adverbs vou something about Adjectives or other Adverbs. In these searches, you may come across sets of words doing the work you are concerned with, as well as single words, e.g., " I spent an hour in the garden." If you understand what the set is doing, label it accordingly. If not, let it alone till you have got to the end of the next chapter and go back and label it then. §9 We have spoken of Sentences. They are made of Subjects, Verbs and Objects, with their servants. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 35 What have Subjects and Objects mainly been ? Nouns and Pronouns. They can be, however, not only single words, but Replacing « f, i * Phrases collections of words, e.g., and What he said surprised me. Sentences I like to go out for a walk. Find in the usual way the Subjects and Objects of these sentences. You will see they are collections of words. Servants also can be collections of words. " I shall come to see you, when I am in town." These collections of words are not all alike. Compare " I shall come to see you, when I am in town." " I shall come to see you at 10 o'clock." " I shall come to see you soon." " when I am in town." J are all doing the same work, " at 10 o'clock." viz. : assisting " shall " soon." J come to see." Hence ) they are all Adverbs. " Soon " is a single word Adverb, "At 10 o'clock " is what is called an Adverb phrase, that is to say a collection of words without a Verb which does duty for an Adverb. " When I am in town " is an Adverb sentence. Similarly, a collection of words without a Verb, which does duty for an Adjective, would be an Adjective phrase. Make some. Can you have Noun phrases ? A sentence, as you saw above, can stand for an Adverb. Can it stand for an Adjective. Can it stand for a Noun ? 36 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Sentences or phrases standing for different parts of speech will naturally have just the same importance or otherwise as the words they replace. For example, a sentence standing for the Subject would be one of the kings of the full sentence. A sentence standing for an Adverb would be one of the servants of the full sentence. You must now, in exactly the same way as before, learn to recognise these replacing sentences and phrases. Your own speech, as before, will be the place to search for them. You will find plenty of replacing phrases in it. " I am going into the garden." " It looks like the beginning of winter." " I was told so by a man in the train." You will not find so many replacing sentences. You do not use these so freely. To study replacing sentences, therefore, catch some fairly long live sentences, e.g. Ex. 14. » 1 did not know what he had done, till he told me." Phrases, Label every replacing sentence or phrase as you come to it, either Noun, Adjective or Adverb according to its work. Catch and go through one set of live sentences after another till you are as much at home with replacing sentences or phrases as you are with the single words which they represent. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 37 It is further highly necessary that you should get a §10 sharp sense of the difference which exists between the Essentials work of the kings of the sentence and that of their 2 nd N ° n ~ & Essentials servants. of the The Subject, Verb and Object are indispensable. Sentence The sentence can say nothing without them. The servants add fullness to the sentence but they are luxuries. It is easy enough to see the difference between the kings and their servants when they are single words ; it is not always so easy when replacing sentences come in. It is a difference you ought to be able to tell at a glance. To gain this power of quick distinction, write a considerable number of your live sentences, especially the longer ones, with the servant parts in red ink. Do not confuse the sentences that replace Subjects Ex. 15. or Objects with those that replace Adjectives or Adverbs. Replacing Subject or Object replacing sentences are not servants, Sentence but kings. Write them in black, like the verb. 1. I am going home to-morrow. 2. I lost the knife you gave me (Adj. sentence). 3. We buried the puppy in the garden. (Adv. phrase). (Subject 4. He who takes what isn't his'n, when he's Sentence) cotched will go to prison. (Adv. sentence). 5. Come and see me next time you are here. (Adv. sentence). (Subject 6. What you say does not interest me. Sentence) at all. (Adv. phrase). junctions 38 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE You will find occurring in sentences which you examine two other sorts of words which have not yet been noticed. §11 The first sort are words you use freely — CONJUNC- Con- TIONS. Here are some at work. 1. Mr. Jones and his friends made a great noise. 2. • It is expensive but good. 3. I took my umbrella because I thought it would rain. 4. They cost two or three shillings apiece. 5. He did it, though I told him not to. 6. We thought that it would make no difference. Such words as these are used for joining things to- gether, words or sentences. There are two kinds. The first kind joins only like things together, such as two principal sentences, two Objects, two Adjectives which are helping the same Noun, and so on. Here are some at work. 1. Mr. Jones and his friends made a great noise. 2. It is expensive but good. 3. They cost two or three shillings apiece. The second kind do joining work too, but of a some- what different kind. They join some of the replacing sentences mentioned above on to the main sentences. Why some only, you will learn later on. You can always tell them ; they stand right at the beginning of the replacing sentences. See sentences 3, 5, and 6. §12 The second kind of word is called a PREPOSITION. Pre- Here are some at work. positions ^ We sat under the tree> THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 39 1 am going to London. There is no water in the well. The clock stands between the door and the fireplace. The field is full of turnips. I said nothing whatever to him. It has nothing to do with him. Search for similar words in any of your sets of live sentences. Make a list of the words you find. What are they doing ? Notice in the first place they are always before a Noun or a Pronoun ; they are, in a sense, servants of this word ; they express its connection with some other word in the sentence. You will see this more easily when you grasp the fact that, with the Noun, they always make an Adjective or Adverb phrase. To do this pick out and label the phrases in the above group of sentences, thus — " We sat under the tree." " Under the tree " is a phrase describing where sitting went on. It helps the Verb. It is therefore an Adverb, and the word " under " brings ° tree " into connection with the sitting. When you have learnt more about the Preposition a chapter or two on, come back and trace the connections in a similar way for the other sentences, also for any Prepositions you find at work in your own sets of live sentences. For the present, however, it is too soon to speak of the $xact work of either Prepositions or Conjunctions. Learn to recognise the two tools when you see them in use. 40 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE You can generally tell them both by their position. We shall discuss by and by what we do with them. Summary The main summary of the work of the parts of speech therefore is* as follows : — The VERB does the central work, describing the state or the action. The NOUNS do the other important work, describing the SUBJECTS and the OBJECTS. The PRONOUNS take their places sometimes. The SERVANT work for the Verb is done by the ADVERB, that for the Nouns by the ADJECTIVE. Collections of words — that is to say phrases or whole sentences — can do duty for Adjectives or Adverbs or Nouns. It is in these collections that the PREPOSI- TIONS are wanted. CONJUNCTIONS do not do the real business of the sentence, but help to stick together the words, or sets of words, that do. So much for the work that words have to do. The next thing will be to examine the way they do it. Note. — The Verb will often be spoken of in the future as ex- pressing action. This is for shortness only. The word "action " in this connection will mean where necessary "Action or State." CHAPTER II. INFLECTION. You yourself in your everyday speech are constantly §1 changing the form of words; e.g., you turn "pig" to Changes in "pigs," "speak" to "spoke," and so on. Find t ^ e °f r ds and twenty or thirty words which change in this way. Meaning Notice that some of them change twice. Man, men, men's. Say, said, saidst. Find some such words. Some words again do not change at all. Find some. The change is sometimes done in the middle, like man, men, but oftenest by addition, like pig, pigs. What we have now to discover is what these changes are for. The kind of answer you feel inclined to give give is " Feminine," " Plural." Avoid any such answer : it means nothing. What does " pigs " mean that " pig " does not ? That there is more than one pig. The " more than one " idea is therefore due to the — s ; that is to say — s adds on to "pig" a new idea. What is it ? Speak. Spoke. What does " spoke " mean that " speak " does not ? That the action is finished ; it has occurred in past time. The idea of past time is therefore due to the "o," that is to say " o " adds a new idea to " speak." What is it ? Hero. Heroine. What does " heroine " mean that " hero " does not ? That we are talking of a lady, i.e., — " ine " adds a new idea to " hero." What is it ? 4i 42 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Here then are three words which have been changed or added to. Dozens more might be found. What has the change done each time ? It has added a new idea. What were the three ideas added ? " More than one," " past time," and that " it is a lady." Changes are made therefore always for the same general purpose, — to add some extra thought. As you see above, the thought added may be of various kinds. Such changes are called INFLECTIONS. We may define them thus :— An INFLECTION is a change in or an addition to the stem of a word to add to the original idea of the word an additional idea. Note. — When words are altered or added to in this way there is a part of the word which changes and a part which on the whole does not. The part which on the whole does not change is called the stem. e.g., Laugh-s. Laugh-ed. Laugh-ing. §2 Examine now the different sorts of words. The Words Which of them change, and what for ? ££., N0 ™ s - and why Do these change ? Yes. How ? i. Pig. Pigs. What for ? More than one. Any more changes ? 2. Pig's tail. What for ? Possession. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 43 Any more ? 3. Actor. Actress. What for ? To show it is a lady. There are then at least three separate sorts of changes in Nouns. ADJECTIVES. Yes. Nice. Nicer. What for ? To show a comparison with something else. Any more ? No. PRONOUNS. He. Him. What for ? Investigate this for yourselves. What does " him " mean that " he " does not ? What does " he " mean that " him " does not ? Look at some sentences, e.g., He broke the window. His mother whipped him. VERBS. Speak. Spoke. What for ? To show the time of the action. Speak. Speaks. What for ? To show the person of the action. There are therefore two changes at least for Verbs. There are others besides. ADVERBS. Soon. Sooner. What for ? Like the Adjective, to show comparison. PREPOSITIONS do not change. CONJUNCTIONS do not change. 44 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Ex. 1 6. Make a list of the parts of speech. Divide it into three lists. i. Those which change most. 2. Those which change less. 3. Those which do not change at all. Compare these lists with the summary of the work of the different parts of speech at the end of Chapter I. §3 Again, it is essential for you to get firmly fixed in your mind this great principle. No word is ever altered for nothing. Every alteration means something. Examine some of the words in your own speech which you yourselves alter, thus — Take a set of live sentences. Ex. 17. Make a list of every altered word you can find. Analysis Opposite each word write all the separate meanings Inflections there are in it : thus — " Boys' boots are smaller than men's boots." Boys. How many ideas ? 1. Boy. (The original one). 2. More than one. 3. Possession. Boots. How many ideas ? 1. Boot. 2. More than one. Are. How many ideas ? 1. Being. 2. Being now. 3. That more than one person or thing is " being." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 45 Smaller. How many ideas. 1. Small. 2. Comparison. and so on. Repeat this till you can see at a glance the different meanings that have been added to the original meaning of any word. You will no doubt find some words which will puzzle you, e.g., "going." Think them out if you can. Do not worry, however, if you are unable to do this, but put them on one side, to go back to later, or to ask about. You should do this, whenever you come across any form in your own speech which you cannot understand. Remember, such forms are your own forms : you should take the same interest in finding out what they really are, that you would in a strange beast in the back garden. Lock him up to study at your leisure, or get someone to come in and identify him. We have seen that inflections are additions to or §4 alterations in words, which add to the original meaning The Al- of the word an extra meaning. ternative This is not, however, the only way of doing this work, inflection " The pig's tail." Can you say this differently ? "The tail of the pig." What is the difference ? There is no difference in meaning. The two sets of words say the same thing, but the extra idea, possession, has been added in a different way 4 6 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE How ? By a different word, not by an inflection. This is a new principle which is directly opposite to the old one. Can you find examples in your own language where this principle is used ; i.e., where the original word is not changed or added to but a new idea is added by a separate word or words ? VERBS. I shall speak. - New way. I spoke. - Old way. NOUNS. The boy's book. - Old way. The book of the boy. New way. Duke. Duchess. - Old or new ? Doctor. Lady doctor. Old or new ? He-goat. She-goat. - Old or new ? Man. Men. Is this old or new ? Old. What would be the new ? Two man. We have not got to it yet. ADJECTIVES. — Nice. Nicer. —Old. — Beautiful. More beautiful. — New. These two methods of expression represent two great lines along which language has gone. Some languages express themselves almost entirely in what we have called the old way — i.e., by alterations in or additions to the words. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 47 Greek and Latin, especially Greek, are prominent among such languages. All modern languages tend to the new way — that of separate words ; but, inasmuch as the new languages have grown out of the old ones, there is always some mixture of the two methods. Some have more of the inflections and fewer of the separate words ; others vice versa. The free use of separate words is especially char- acteristic of English. It is now possible to examine a language other than §5 our own. We will begin with Latin. Some Look at these forms :- {*£*£ i. Naut - a. 2. Naut-a-m. 3. Naut-a-e. What is all this ? A Latin noun with inflections on it, each for a purpose, like " The pig's tail." It means various things about a sailor. Naut-a is the portion which means " sailor." Each of the inflections is to add on an extra idea. What idea is the whole point ? Naut — is like a brace, the other things like a set of bits What particular work are they each for ? No. 1, which is as it were the original form, unchanged denotes this idea, — that the Naut-a (i.e., the sailor) is the doer of the action, or, if the verb happens to be a state verb, the person or thing who is in the state, i.e., the Naut-a is the Subject of the sentence. 48 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Do English nouns, when subjects, have a special termination like this ? No. g he r . Yet we constantly have to express the idea that a Alterna- certain person is the doer of an action. tives How is it done ? Examine this sentence : — Jones Brown kicked. Who kicked whom ? Rearrange the sentence to indicate that Jones did the kicking ; or again to indicate that Brown did the kicking. Can you see by what means we indicate the Subject ? Order, i.e., the work that Latin does in this case by the help of that -a we do by arranging our words in a certain order. Though we do not change Nouns to indicate the Subject, do we change them at all ? Yes. What for ? To add the idea of possession, or the idea of number, i.e., we do similar things but not this particular thing. This particular idea we express by means of order. Now No. 2. Naut-a-m. What is this for ? Something like Naut — a, but to show a different thing. Naut-a unchanged showed that the Naut- a was doing something. Naut-a-m shows that the Naut-a is having something done to him. Do you remember anything like this ? "he," " him," showed the same thing. No. 3. Naut-a-e. What does this show ? That the Naut-a possesses something. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 49 What is this like ? Pig's tail. We see therefore, so far three inflections in Nouns, each adding a special idea. Recapitulate the ideas they add. There are other similar ones to come. The general name of this kind of Noun inflection is CASE. We have special cases to denote the addition of special ideas, and of course each special case has a special name. Thus No. 1, which gave the idea of the noun being the Subject we might appropriately call the Subject Case. It is usually called the Nominative Case. No. 2, which added the idea of the Noun being the Object, we might appropriately call the Object Case. English does sometimes call it the Objective Case. In Latin it is generally called the Accusative Case. No. 3, which added the idea of the noun being the possessor of something, we might appropriately call the Possessive Case. English nouns have this case and this onlv. In Latin it is called the Genitive Case. You have now had put into your hands a tool — the Case tool — that is new and rather strange to you. It is a Greek or Roman tool rather than a modern English one. * D 50 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE It is not the slightest good owning or learning about such a tool, unless you use it. This is the next thing you have to do. You cannot use it on any ambitious work yet, but you can use it thus : — Collect a few more simple nouns like Naut - a, Ros - a, a rose, Mens - a, a table, Penn - a, a feather, Agricol - a, a farmer, are such nouns. Then practise thus : — I saw a sailor. - - Naut - What ? naut - am I broke the leg of the table, mens - What ? Ex. 1 8. Similarly, The sailor is merry. The sailor sings. He tore the sailor's trousers. The farmer loves the sailor but the sailor does not love the farmer. A hen has feathers. A rose grows in the garden. Write for yourselves some sentences about sailors and farmers and feathers, and see how far the tools yotJ have will enable you to express yourself in Latin. Never mind if you cannot always do it. It only means you want a few more tools. You will get them later on. §6 Again, we have been talking about nouns and their changes, but, as you have already learnt, you cannot say sentences without verbs. Latin Verb Let us look at a Latin one. Have is a useful one. Inflections Hab - e - o. Present TT , Time Hab - e - s. Hab - e - 1. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 51 What is this ? A verb with inflections. It is like I hav-e. Thou hav-e -st. (hast). He hav-e-s. (has). What do we put the inflections on the English verbs for ? So far, two things. To show : — 1. Time of the action. 2. The person acting. Now examine Hab - e - o. What does hab - e mean ? Having now. What does — o mean ? That I am doing it. Similarly hab-e-s equals " having now," "that you are doing it." Similarly hab - e - t equals " having now," " that he is doing it." Here is another tool put into your hands, a tense tool. It is not such a strange one to you as the case tool, for you use tense tools in your own language. Can you think of any ? Practise with it and notice that with the two tools you can now make sense. Practise thus : — Say in Latin : — The sailor has a table. E*. 19. — I have a feather. — I have a rose. — The farmer has a table. You are short of some verbs. Collect a few more like hab - e - o and say some things with them and the nouns vou collected before. 52 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Plural Inflection You will find in the course of saying things that you will want to say not only sentences like " I have a rose," but sentences like " They have some roses." You have not yet got the tools either for saying " they have," or for saying " more than one rose." There are such tools. They are just like the rest. The inflections for saying " more than one rose," or " sailor," or whatever it may be, you will find two pages on. Here are the verb tools you need. They are just like the first three. Hab - e - mus Having now. We are doing it. Hab-e-tis You „ Hab-e-nt They „ We have, then, a set of half-a-dozen forms, all alike in adding to the verb the idea of " doing it now " but adding the ideas of different persons. This " doing it now " set is called the PRESENT TENSE. Perfect Tense Inflection Again, not all actions are done now : some have been done in the past, some are going to be done in the future. Therefore to speak of them at least two more such sets will be needed. Here they are for the " have " Verb. Hab-u-i - Having in past time. I did it. Hab-u-isti - „ „ Thou didst it. Hab-u-it - „ etc. He Hab-u-imus- ,, . We Hab-u-Jtis - "1,?»$ You Hab - u - erunt They This set is called the PERFECT TENSE. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 53 Hab - eb - o - Having in future time. I shall have. Future Hab-eb-is - Te°se Inflection Hab-eb-it - etc. Hab - eb - imus Hab-eb-itis - Hab - eb - unt - This set is called the FUTURE TENSE. Now practise with these tense tools, as you did with the Present tense tool. Combine them with the nouns you collected before, to make simple sentences. If you are not going to learn any Latin, do it all the more. What you are learning is not Latin, but how a tense tool and a case tool between them can say things. You can learn this from what has gone before, even if you never learn another word of Latin. We will now return to our Latin noun. §7 We spoke of three Cases. What are they for ? The Nominative (the Subject case) is the inflection which shows the noun is doing something. The Accusative (the Object case) is the inflection which shows the noun is the receiver of an action. The Genitive (the Possessive case) is the inflection which shows the noun possesses something. Often, however, we want to show other things about 54 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE nouns as well as these, e.g., that there is more than one and that they are doing something. Plural For example : Case Inflection Tne sailors sing. We can say already : The sailor sings. How ? Naut - a. We clearly want another change to add the " more than one " idea. Here is the change. Naut-ae. Naut -a - one nauta - doing something. Naut- a- e - more than one nauta - doing something. Both these inflections are called Nominative Cases. One is called the Nominative Singular, and the other the Nominative Plural. They pair. In exactly the same way we often want to say that sailors have something done to them. Here is the pair of corresponding forms, Naut - am Naut - as. Or again that they own something. Here are the corresponding forms. Naut - ae. Naut - arum. There are therefore two sets of Cases, the first set for one only, the second for more than one. These are called — The Singular Set. —The Plural Set. We have examples of the same thing in English. Find some. Singular. Plural. Subject Case - The man fights. Men fight. Possessive Case. The man's boots. Men's boots. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 55 As was said above, the three Cases we spoke of are §8 not all the Case inflections that nouns possess. There is one very important one, which might be called the Indirect Object Case, and which in Latin is called the Dative Case. This is put on to show that the noun suffers the action indirectly. If the action were suffered directly, the Accusative case would of course be needed. You will remember learning about Object No. 2. Furt }! er What was it ? Case Just as the Accusative case is put on to show that the InHec " ons Noun has something done to it directly, i.e., is the Dative Object, so the Dative is put on to show that the noun has something done to it indirectly, i.e., is the Second or Indirect Object. In the case of the Nauta the change is Naut - ae (like the Genitive). If there is more than one, the change is Naut - is. There are two other Cases you will learn more about later, but which you need merely notice now. One is called the Vocative (the addressing Case), vocative which adds on to the noun the idea of address. O Sailor. You will not often need to use this Case. The other is called the Ablative and adds on any one of two or three ideas, those roughly represented by the words " by," " with," or " from." Thus if you want to say : The child was rescued by a sailor. Ablative I went for a walk with a sailor. I had a letter from a sailor. 56 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE the Ablative case, Naut -a expresses, (or at least helps to express) any one of these thoughts. In other words, the Ablative case has two or three tasks to fulfil. It is a tool which has several different uses. You will find it not at all uncommon in all languages, to use a word tool, whether a separate word or an in- flection to mean two or three different things. For example — the word " this " has several uses in the English. Look at the sentences : Whose is this book ? This does not please me at all. The word " this " has two different pieces of work to do in these two sentences : it is first an adjective, then a pronoun. In the same way the Ablative inflection means at one time one thing and at another, another. The second will probably be related to the first, but still some- what different. You need not, however, worry about this. What is meant in any particular sentence will generally be pretty clear. The main thing to remember is that the Case ending means something. A noun with it on is not the same as a noun without it. Just as the first three Cases had plural counterparts, so have these three. You should note, too, that though j ust now for clear- ness we spoke of the cases as adding a single idea (posses- THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 57 sion, object, etc.), yet the real account is that, except the Nominative, they add groups of ideas, of which the single idea you have had is the main one. This too is a refinement you need not worry about at present. As we have seen, Tense is that inflection of the verb §9 which adds the idea of the time of the action. Further As there are three possible times for an action, there J-ffleetions. will be three groups of tenses. If we never wanted to speak of anything but a plain Present, Past or Future action (or state) there would be three plain tenses only. We often, however, want to say more than this. We may want to say, for example, that an action started in the past may be going on still — may be in fact unfinished. We express this by a Tense which we may call the IM- Imperfect PERFECT OR UNFINISHED TENSE. Here is such a Tense : Latin. Ama-ba-m } , . ;. « lovmg — past time but unfinished. I was doing it. French. J'aim-ais Eng. I was loving Or we may want to say that it started in the past, and is over and done with now — is in fact finished. 58 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE We express this by a tense which we may call the PERFECT or FINISHED TENSE. Here is such a Tense : Latin Ama - v - i . . A . , _ , T , . . loving — past time but French. Taim-a-i * > *_ j t t, -± „ i . , finished. I did it. Eng. I have loved. / Or we may want to say that the action started in the past, and was over and done with a long time ago — is more than finished in fact. We express this by a Tense we may call the PLUPER- FECT TENSE or the MORE THAN PERFECT TENSE. Here is such a tense : Latin. Ama- vera -m. ) , . .. ~ . . , _ . , loving — past time finished French. J avais aime. \ . ■,,■,■, _ i , . . , long ago. I had done it. Eng. I had loved. J To understand the difference between these Tenses, write an Imperfect, Perfect, and Pluperfect sentence. Imperfect. I was killing the cat. How long has the cat been dead ? Perfect. I have killed the cat. How long has the cat been dead ? Pluperfect. I had killed the cat. How long has the cat been dead ? Similarly in the Future group, we have the plain THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 59 FUTURE TENSE. Latin. Ama - b - o. \ French. J'aimerai - [ loving — future time — I. Eng. I shall love. J Or again, we may want to say that the action will take place and be finished in the future. We express this by a Tense which we may call the Future FUTURE PERFECT TENSE. Per,eCt Latin. Ama - ver - o. French. J 'aurai aime - loving — a perfect action in the future. I. Eng. I shall have loved. To summarise, we have dealt so far with Nouns and Verbs. Cases are additions which, up to the present, have been put onty on to Nouns, and which carry some additional meaning. There have been six. i. The Case which gave the idea that the Noun was the Subject. We might call it the Subject Case. The usual name is the Nominative. • 2. The one which added the idea that the Noun was the Object. We might call it the Object Case. English calls it the Objective Case. The usual name is the Accusative. 3. The one that added the idea that the Noun was the Indirect Object. We might call it the In- direct Object Case. The usual name is the Dative. These three Cases are of the utmost importance, 60 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE because they deal with and describe three of the main parts of a sentence, the Subject and the two Objects. Of the other three Cases : 4. The Genitive adds the idea of possession and is called in English the Possessive Case. It is not a tool that is needed nearly so often as the Nomin- ative. It is nevertheless a useful Case and is the only one our own Nouns have got. 5. The Vocative, the addressing case. 6. The Ablative, which adds " by," " with," " or," " from " ideas. Also — the whole set of six cases is duplicated. The further set shows exactly the same ideas as the old set, with the addition of the idea of " more than one." Verbs so far have inflections which add : 1. The idea of the time of the action. 2. The idea of the persons and the number of them who do it. As there can be three sets of persons doing it, " the speaker," "■ the person spoken to," or " the person spoken of," there will be three inflections, one for each. Each set, like a Noun's set of cases, will be dupli- cated to add the plural idea. As there can be only three times in which an action takes place, Present, Past and Future, there will be three groups of Tenses corresponding to these times. Among the Past Tenses we have Tenses to distinguish between : Actions begun in the past and not yet finished. Actions begun in the past but finished now. Actions begun in the past but finished a long time ago. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 6l Among the Future Tenses we have Tenses to dis- tinguish between : Actions to be begun in the future. Actions to be begun and finished in the future. There are further distinctions still to come. Now make yourself familiar with all these Tense tools. (i) By searching for them and labelling them in your live sentences. They will be mainly done by separate words and not by inflections. (2) By using them in Latin or French to make sense with nouns. In Latin use the Subject and Object Tense and and Indirect Object Cases. Case You have now between the Tenses and the Cases quite enough tools to talk with. Always remember that it is useless to possess a tool or to learn about it unless you use it. The corresponding forms for the verb hab - e - o with which you began are : Hab - eba - m (Imperfect). Hab - uera - m (Pluperfect) . Hab-uer-o (Future Perfect). The other three tenses you have had already. We have dealt so far with Case as an inflection of a §10 noun to add an extra idea. Cases in Latin possesses half-a-dozen cases and uses them j[nd extensively. English English possesses one only for its Nouns. (Boy, Boy 's) . 62 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE French has none at all. Both French and English express themselves, when, necessary by separate words. i.e., They use the principle shown in : " The hat of the boy." " Le chapeau du gar con." rather than that shown in : " The boy's hat." It therefore comes to this, that Latin is the only one of the three languages that uses Cases as a serious means of expression. It is therefore, only in the study of Latin, among the three, that you will properly understand the use fo the Case tool. Note that Greek use's cases much as Latin does, while of modern languages German uses cases extensively, though not so extensively as Latin, English used to have them. If you would like to see some, buy Chaucer's Prologue (you can get it for fourpence) and try and read it for yourself. You will see some of these Cases on the nouns and other in- flections on the verbs, which have now disappeared. If you have not got fourpence, ask some one to read it to you. §11 Have any other words Cases besides nouns ? Cer- ses o her Words Cases of tainly. other THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 63 Pronouns do the work of Nouns. It is natural there- fore that we should need to add the same ideas to them that we do to Nouns, for example, that the Pronoun is the doer or the receiver of the action. Pronouns will therefore need Cases as much as nouns. In English pronouns have cases — the Subject Case and the Object Case. Find some. Norn. He. We. Pronoun Cases Ace. Him. Us. " Him " and similar pronouns are the only Accusa- tive or Object cases in English. In French the pronoun has the Subject Case, the Object Case, and the Indirect Object Case, i.e., Nomin- ative, Accusative and Dative, e.g. : Nom. 11. Nom. Je. Ace. Le • or again Ace. Me. Dat. Lui. Dat. Me. Latin Pronouns have all the Cases. Do Adjectives have Cases ? Adjective No Adjective has a Case in English or French. In Latin an Adjective always has a Case. The mean- ing of the Case of the Adjective, however, is not the same as the meaning of the Case of the Noun (though it is put on for the same general purpose). The Nominative Case of the Noun implies that the Noun is the Subject of the Sentence. The Adjective which belongs to the Noun has a Nom- inative Case ending too, but it is not to show that the Adjective is the subject of the . sentence. That would 64 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE be nonsense. It is to show that the Adjective belongs to a Noun which is the Subject of the sentence. In other words, the Adjective wears the livery of its master, the Noun. Summary The general idea which a Case adds to a word is this : A Case is that change in or addition to the stem of a word which adds to the original idea of the word the additional idea of the word's particular connection with some other word in the sentence. For example : The Nominative adds the idea of the Noun's particular con- nection with - - The Verb (Subj.) The Accusative adds the idea of the Noun's particular con- nection with - - The Verb (Obj.) The Dative adds the idea of the Noun's particular connection with - The Verb (Ind. Obj.) The Genitive adds the idea of the Noun's particular con- nection with - - Another Noun. The Ablative adds the idea of the Noun's particular con- nection with - - The Verb An Ablative Case is like an Adverb. It makes an Adverb phrase. An Adjective's Case adds the idea of its particular connection with the Noun it belongs to. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 65 Since some languages have Cases and some have not, §12 there must be some other way of doing the work that The Al- f av , Hn ternatives teases do. to Cases The Nominative, for example, says the Noun does an action. The Accusative says the Noun receives an action. The Dative says the Noun indirectly receives an action. How do we say these things in English, for say them we often must ? We say many of them by means of ORDER. Thus a Noun standing in a certain place before the Order Verb is equivalent to a Noun with a Nominative in- flection on it. Similarly for the Accusative Case, and often for the Dative Case. The Latin case tool, therefore (in the Nominative, Ac- cusative, and sometimes in the Dative cases) is replaced in English by the order tool. In the other cases, English, (except for the use of the possessive case) and French always replace the case tool by a separate word. Here are three parallel sets of expressions : Latin. French. English. Fratris. (Gen.) de mon frere. The son of my brother. Fratri. (Dat.) a mon frere. I gave it to my brother. (cum) Fratre. (Abl.) aveo mon frere. I went with my brother. (a) Fratre. (Abl.) par mon frere. It was built by my brother. Examine some of the separate words in the English column : of, by, with, to. Can you find any more ? in, under, on, above, from, etc. E 66 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE §13 All these words are of the same kind. Preposi- They are PREPOSITIONS : the words we noticed and postponed. What are they doing ? Clearly the same sort of work as Cases. What is that ? To show the particular connection between the word they belong to and some other word in the sentence. Here then is the work of Prepositions. It is connect- ing work, like the work of Case. Do they replace all Cases ? No. Which ? What in the nature of things must a Preposition have after it ? A Noun or a Pronoun. A Preposition without a Noun would be like a Case ending without a Noun. Remember therefore that a Preposition belongs to the Noun or Pronoun it is attached to, in precisely the same way that the Case ending does, nor can any word without a Noun or a Pronoun following (or at any rate understood) be a Preposition. Notice, too, the way in which these Prepositions come into sentences : " The tail of the bird was visible." " The turnip grows in the field" " The tree in the playground was struck by light- ning." What is in the field? Adverb phrase. What is in the playground ? Adjective phrase. What is by lightning? Adverb phrase. What is of the bird? Adjective phrase. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 67 The work of the Preposition, therefore, lies among the subordinate parts of the sentence. It makes Adjective or Adverb phrases, which do the servant work of the sentences. Now study Prepositions at work. Search your live sentences for them and collect as usual twenty or thirty examples. They will all be helping to make a phrase, sometimes an Adjective phrase, sometimes an Adverb phrase. He got under the table." Label the phrase. This one is an Adverb helping got. E What therefore is the Preposition doing ? Con- Preposi- necting table with got. * ions " The man in the train told me so." Label the phrase. It is an Adjective helping man, therefore in connects train with man. Examine : 11 The man told me so in the train," and as many more live sentences as are necessary to give you mastery over the tool and an understanding of its work. If you are learning French and Latin, extract from §14 the respective Grammars the Present Tenses of any Verb you like. Place the English Tense with them, thus : — Tense 1. Finio. Inflections T r • llltne 2. Je finis. Three 3. I finish. Languages 68 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Are there any more English Tenses showing a present action ? "1 am finishing." Put it with the rest. Finio. Je finis. I finish. I am finishing. Examine these : — How much inflection is there in the first ? in the second ? in the third ? Take any Tense you please and repeat the process. You will always find inflections strongest in Latin, and the separate word principle strongest in English. Note how the separate word principle sometimes results in three or four tense tools for the same thing, often almost indistinguishable, and undeniably clumsy. Compare : Finiam. Je finirai. I shall finish. I will finish. I am going to finish. I am about to finish. I shall be finishing. Again, do you notice anytihng about a Tense such as J'aimerai ? What difference is there between this and " amabo " ? The person work is done twice on it, one by Je, a separate word, once by " — ai," the person part of the inflection. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 69 Can you think of any example of work done twice like this in your own language ? " Thou lovedst." " He loves," or again " Two men." (*' Two man " is xhedoubl the logical form). forms It is the middle stage of transition from the old method to the new. The first stage is inflection to show everything. The main part of Latin is in this stage. The second stage is inflection and a separate word. This is present in all three languages in some degree ; in Latin least. The third stage is the separate word without the inflection : the inflection becomes needless and drops off. You can almost see the dst dropping off " lovedst. " It is seldom used. It will be gone by and by. What will the Present Tense of " love " be some day ? I love. Thou love. He love. We love. You love. They love. It has travelled a long way towards it already. Again, over the door of a Norfolk public-house hangs the sign of a gate with this legend : — " This gate hang high, but hinder none, Refresh and pay, and travel on." Is Norfolk behind the times or before them ? 70 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE We have already added two extra ideas to the Verb — Time and Person. We did it by adding two inflections to the stem. It is necessary to add still another, that of the mode or manner of the action. (Mood means mode). We should call it nowadays the kind of the action. Just as we have to have different tense forms for adding the ideas of different kinds of time, so we need different mood forms for adding the ideas of different kinds of action. i. The usual kind of- action, the one we most com- monly want to talk about, is the one which actually has happened or is happening or will happen. We might call such actions " fact actions," and the form which expresses them we might call the " fact " mood. It is usually called the Indicative Mood. 2. All actions however that we talk about do not actually happen. For example : " If I were to go I should see him." The going does not actually take place nor is there any certainty that it will : (though of course it may). The going is not expressed as an action which happens at all. It may or may not happen in the end, but we are not talking about that. It is an action which some- body has thought about, or figured in his mind. Such actions we might call " thought-of actions." The mood which expresses them we might call the " thought mood." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE JI The usual name is the Subjunctive Mood, a name given to it owing to one of the particular uses of this mood tool which you will learn more about later. 3. Actions again may need to have attached to them the idea of command. " Go." " Let him come." Such actions might be called " command " actions, imperative and the mood which expresses them we might call the Command -, „ A Actions command mood. The usual name is the Imperative Mood. It is clear that a great many ideas might be added to the Verb in this way. For example, we might express the action as a wish. " I wish to see my brother." Such actions might be called " wish " actions and the Mood the Wish Mood. Greek actually has a Wish Mood — the Optative. Or again, we might have " Question " actions and a " Question " Mood. Or again, "repeated" actions and "repeated" Mood, and so on. It is not done, because the ideas can be expressed more simply in other ways. We can find simpler tools than such forms. Infinitive 72 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 4. There are two other important forms of the verb which we generally class with the Mood forms. They are called the Infinitive Mood and the Par- ticiples. They are like Verbs, because they express action, but they are quite unlike Verbs in the work they do. The Verb describes the main action, and, as such, occupies the centre of the sentence. Because, however, there is a main action in every a Noun sentence, it does not follow that there cannot there- fore be other actions there too. For example : " To eat too fast will give you a pain." What is the Verb ? " Will give." Nevertheless, " To eat too fast " certainly describes an action. It is just as certainly not the Verb. What is it ? It is the name of an action. Actions themselves are often the Subjects or Objects of sentences, and, as such, they have to be named, and the names, like all other names, are nouns. Such Nouns might be called action nouns. The form of the action word, (i.e., of the Verb) that expresses them, might be called the noun mood of the Verb. " I should like to see you to-morrow." " To read at night will spoil your eyes." " To take exercise is a necessity." These are all action nouns, Subjects or Objects of the sentences they belong to. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 73 Again, examine the sentence : "To read at night will spoil your eyes." Can you express this in any other way ? " Reading at night will spoil your eyes," Gerund And similarly : " Eating too fast will give you a pain." Again : To walk is good for you, and Walking is good for you, clearly mean the same thing. This new form is called the Gerund — sometimes the Verb Noun. There are then two tools for expressing noun actions. First, the Noun Mood or the Infinitive Mood. Secondly, the Gerund. Investigate for youselves the difference between them. They are not quite alike in their use. Write sentences with them both till you discover. If you are learning Latin look at the forms called the Supines. Find out in what relation they stand to the Infinitive Mood and what work they do. The name " Infinitive Mood " which is the usual name for this Mood, really means the indefinite mood. The name is given because noun actions are often indefinite ones, i.e., actions which do not refer to any particular Subject or Object. Such actions may fairly be called indefinite actions and the Mood which expresses them the Indefinite Mood. All noun actions, however, are not entirely indefinite : some want a definite receiver of the action mentioned to complete the sense in the same way as ordinary Verbs. For example : " To see his suffering caused me great pain." The 74 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Again, some want a definite doer of the action mentioned. For example : " For Caesar to die unavenged would be a shame. The Noun Mood is therefore the better way to think of it, at first. 5. Again, just as action describing words may occur in a sentence as Nouns, so they may also occur as Adjectives. For example : " Our exhausting labours had their reward." Participles Exhausting is certainly not the Verb. It just as (adjectives) cer tainly refers to an action. Again : " I shall always remember this terrifying spectacle." The work of these words is clearly to act as servants to labours and spectacle, i.e., it is adjectival work. Participles therefore, like infinitive moods, are words which express actions other than the main one of the sentence. As Infinitives are action nouns, so participles are action adjectives. Participles, like any other action expressing word, may need an Object to complete their sense. What about the doer of an action expressed by the participle ? How is that indicated ? To summarise : Fact actions require a Fact Mood — Indicative. Actions which are thought of or figured require a Thought Mood — Subjunctive. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 75 Command actions require a Command Mood — Im- perative. Action nouns require a Noun Mood — the Infinitive. Action Adjectives require an Adjective Mood — the Participle. So far we have been speaking simply of the different §16 aspects of the action that need expression by Moods. We shall need tools for each. It remains to see what these tools are. These different ideas could be of course added by Mood inflection. Inflections On the other hand many Verbs, especially in Latin, have already added two ideas by inflection — person and time — an inflection for each. To add a third would make the word a very clumsy tool. Three inflections on one stem are getting too much. The word would be all inflections, the dog all tail. Mood inflection when it is added is done, not by a separate inflection, but by a changed inflection, that is, by a separate time or person inflection for each mood. Thus hab - e - o which we had before, really means not only having, " present time " and / but having t " action is really happening in present time," and i"; on the other hand hab - e - am means having, somebody has thought in present time about the action, and /. In English, however, the mood ideas are added by separate words. For the mood work, Latin, as you would expect, 76 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE makes free use of inflections ; French has some, English none at all. Note the following forms : I love. \ I loved. I have loved. I had loved. I shall love. I shall have loved. All these express fact \ actions which actually come to pass. I may love. I might love. I may have loved. I might have loved. All these express the thought of an action. " Let us love " expresses. a command action. The action must happen in the future. There is no choice of tenses. To love. To have loved. To be about to love. All these are Action Nouns. Loving. Having loved. Being about to love. All these are Action Adjectives. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 77 We have seen so far that Verbs express two great §17 ideas — Actions — and States. Analysis of Actions always imply someone to do them, and often state one or more people to receive them. Associated with the Verb there is always a Subject and often a direct or indirect Object. It is now necessary to look a little closer at the State Verbs. You made some time ago various lists of live sentences in which you marked the State Verbs. If you have them turn them up. If not, catch twenty more sentences and mark them as before. Sift out the action sentences. We are not con- Ex 22 cerned with those for the moment. Look at those that remain. The first thing that will strike you is the constant recurrence of is or was or one or other of the parts of the verb to be. " The boy is dirty." " This pudding is very nice." Nine out of ten state verbs are made out of the verb to be. The use of the verb is to give the idea of a state. That is all it does, however. If we say : The boy is, The pudding is, we get no sense. All we know is that the description of some state or other has been begun. The Verb is incomplete. It is completed by another word which follows, des- cribing the state. 78 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The other state verbs which do not use the verb to be, are nevertheless built on exactly the same principle as the above. They have a word first which gives the idea of state and carries the inflection, followed by another word which describes the state. " He seemed cheerful." " Caesar became a General." " He got too fat." The words Seemed, became, got, are the words which probably gave you difficulty when you first tried to separate action verbs from state verbs. You can generally solve such difficulties by asking " Is somebody doing something?" or "Is somebody being some- thing ? " Again, you can always tell state verbs by their always needing a describing word to follow : He seemed, Ccesar became, He got, mean nothing. They need, if they are to make sense the words which follow them, i.e., Cheerful, General, Fat. All state verbs are like this both in English and French. Since they are in two or more parts they are called Compound Verbs. The work that these second parts of the verb do is to describe the state. As it is necessarily the state of the subject, it follows that in describing it they must also describe the subject, i.e., that they do adjectival work for the Subject. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 79 The word General cannot describe became, without also describing Ccesar. It makes not the slightest difference that the words are not always Adjectives. Many of them are : some are originally nouns : some are originally adverbs : but they are one and all doing adjectival work. A steel tool which by turns puts in screws and opens packing cases may easily be called a screw-driver at one time and a lever at another. It is not necessary to quarrel about which it is. It is sensible however, if you find it opening packing- cases to call it a lever, if putting in screws, a screw- driver. Similarly if you find a word doing adjectival work, you are justified in treating it as an adjective. Standing between actions and states and the ways §18 of expressing them, is an alternative way of expressing Two certain sorts of action which is of great importance. t^S?*®** In the ordinary way we say that A does an action . t-, . i * n© ACtlVO to B, the receiver. and the We may equally well say B suffers the action at the *!*? sive hands of A. We may regard the action as done or as suffered and we can describe it equally well in either way. Since then we desire sometimes to describe the action as a done action, we have as usual an inflection, or a So THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE special form, of the verb to denote this. The particular form which does it is called the Active Voice. Similarly the form which denotes that the action is a suffered action we call the Passive Voice. Voice is thus somewhat akin to mood. Mood adds the idea of the kind of the action. Voice adds the idea that the action is presented in one of two alternative ways. It is clear that if the action is suffered, someone or something must suffer it. This someone or something, as before, becomes the subject of the sentence. It is also clear that the sufferer is no other than the person of whom we spoke as the receiver when we were speaking of the action in the active way, i.e., the person who is the Object in the active sentence will become the Subject of the Passive sentence. Moreover since the sufferer of the action is the receiver of the action, if there is no receiver there can be no sufferer, i.e., only verbs which describe actions that pass to a receiver can be put into this passive form, i.e., only transitive verbs have a passive voice. To choose a passive form for describing an action brings the receiver rather than the doer into the position of the Subject and so into prominence. This is the great value of the passive form. For example, The Emperor of the French after 1870, might have said : — " My country has been devastated, my armies have been vanquished, my provinces taken from me." If he had had no passive voice he would have to have THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 8l said : — " The Germans have devastated my country, they hckve vanquished my armies, they have taken from me my provinces." The Germans in such circum- stances were the very last people he would have desired to talk about. In the same way, search your live sentences for half-a- dozen instances in which nothing but the passive form will say what you want to say, e.g., " That window was broken last term." Such a language as Latin will add the idea of the active §19 or passive aspect of the action through inflection, having one set of moods, tenses, persons, etc., all de- noting done actions, another different set all denoting suffered actions. French and English make no attempt at inflection for Passive this purpose. They both do it by the method described In *l ections above for state verbs, i.e., by a word expressing state, (the verb to be) which carries the inflections, (mood, tense, and so on) followed by a word describing the state. This describing word is one of the participles, and, as before, will be doing adjectival work for the subject of the passive sentence. A Verb in the passive voice is thus a sort of state verb. Compare : Amor, a typical Latin Passive Tense. . . , f The French and English Je suis aime , _ . ° T . , 1 forms — both on the state I am loved . . . , * verb principle. 82 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE §20 We saw when investigating state verbs that they Compound consisted of two parts, of which the first denoted that the Verbs; 11 description of some state had been begun : the second described the state and incidentally the person in it. Something similar happens sometimes among action verbs. The description of an action is begun, but the verb is not complete in itself, and requires another word. e.g., Find the verb in the following sentences : — " They pulled the house down." " He called his dog Nebuchadnezzar." " He shot the beast dead." " I offered the shares for sale." " Pulled down," " called Nebuchadnezzar," " shot dead," " offered for sale," — are the verbs. The main work that these second parts of the verb do is unquestionably to complete the verb. Incidentally they are adjectival to the Object when one is present ; exactly as the second parts of the state verb were to the Subject. There is this general difference between such verbs and the ordinary state verb — the first part of them means more and carries more of the central idea than the first part of the state verb. Compare : "He hung the picture up," and : " The picture is charming." As to the adjectival character of the second parts consider : " Caesar me certiorem fecit, se Gallos vicisse." The main work of certiorem is adverbial — to amplify fecit — the two between them constitute the full verb — but it also describes me. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 83 " He knocked the policeman down " Down amplifies knocked, but it also describes the police- man. " He called his dog Nebuchadnezzar." Nebuchadnezzar is a necessary complement of called, but it also describes the dog. A development of this is to be seen in some of the compound tenses of the Active Voice. " I have seen my friend/' Seen completes the verb, but it is also incidentally adjectival to friend. This adjectival function often gets overshadowed by the adverbial one, but it is there all the same. " I have done my work " is only a variation of " I have my work done." " I have my work ready." " I have my work complete." Such participles are always adjectival to the object, when one is present. This principle is a complete guide to the use of the §21 French Past Participle in combination with avoir. The verb in such cases is an Action Verb ; and the participle is adjectival to the object. It is accordingly attached to it by the usual agree- ment. In the case, however, in which the object follows the participle, a conflict of duties arises : " J'ai ecrites mes lettres," is logically correct : 84 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE '* Ecrites " as a part of the verb has to stand in close combination with " ai." As an adjective it has no business in front of " lettres." Hence the least important side of its work (the ad- jectival side) gives way — the agreement drops, and the sentence becomes " J'ai ecrit mes lettres." Compare : " I have cornered the enemy." (The verb character of the participle is prominent, as shown by position.) " I have the enemy cornered." (The adjective character is prominent, shown the same way. CHAPTER III. ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS. We have seen that the sentence consists of Subjects, Verbs, Objects, and their servants. We have dealt so far with the kings. We are now coming to the servants. Two principles emerge : (i) It is necessary for the sense that it should be §1 quite plain to which masters the respective servants belong. Consider : " The baron killed the soldier, brave, bold, bad." Attach- ment Did it serve him right ? What does it mean ? That there was butchery of some sort : — very little else till the adjectives have been properly placed. Servants have to be attached to their masters ; these Adjectives are not so attached ; that is the trouble. Make the sentence into sense and watch what you do. You put the adjective next door to the noun it be- longs to. What for ? To show that it belongs to that noun. What principle do we use ? That of ORDER. When did you use it before ? To mark the Subjects and Objects. Latin following the inflection principle, makes case endings do this work. Not only does a Latin adjective wear the same case as its master, but also the same gender. 85 86 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Each adjective, therefore, has three inflections in each case, one for use with the masculine noun, one with the feminine, one with the neuter. Similarly it wears the number of the noun. Look at its declension in your Grammar. This imitation of the noun is called AGREEMENT. Bon - us dominus, means bon - (attached to) domin - (who is doing something). In French we find a similar correspondence but less of it : nouns in French have no cases, hence the ad- jectives which follow them have no cases. Nouns in French have genders however, hence the adjectives which belong to them have genders inflec- tions to match. The nouns have numbers, and the adjectives which belong to them have accordingly number inflections to match. In English, though nouns have gender inflections and number inflections, adjectives do not follow the noun by wearing corresponding inflections, but are attached to the noun solely by their position. In all the languages the necessary thing for the sense is to connect the adjective with its master. In the same way the Adverb has to be connected with the word it works for, generally a verb. This connection is a great deal more easily made than the last. There are often two or three words in a sentence that may be a loose adjective's masters. There is doubt. It has to be guarded against. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 8j There is only one verb in a sentence, however, and it is generally plain from the meaning that the Adverb is working for that, and not for some stray adjective or adverb. No agreement is necessary because there is practically no doubt. No amount of alteration of the position of the Adverb can spoil the sense of : " He will arrive soon," although it may alter the sentence in other ways ; on the other hand alter the place of the adjectives in : " The brave baron killed the bold, bad soldier," and see what happens. Similarly neither Latin nor French adverbs need any agreement. While, however, adverbs do not need such rigorous attachment to their masters as adjectives, they naturally need some, and the attachment is done in all languages by their place. Adverbs working for a verb are generally in close proximity to it in a sentence. Adverbs working for an adjective or other adverb are always next door to it. 2. The second principle is that adjectives and adverbs §2 are servants. Subordina- tion 88 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE As such they are required to take a back seat in the sentence. Their business is to introduce their masters, to assist their masters, not to draw attention off their masters, nor to usurp the place of honour in the sentence, nor to claim from the listener or reader the attention that belongs to kings of the sentence. What is the matter with the German Emperor's remark ? " My late, never-to-be-forgotten, always wise and far-seeing grandfather used to say. ....;." Poor old grandfather, staggering under the weight of his adjectives. Or again : 14 I yesterday in the mud down fell." The adverbs have got the middle of the stage, which properly belongs to the verb. This principle appears in various ways, (i). Nouns in any language may not be overloaded with adjectives. My dear old, fat, white-haired, benevolent friend came to see me this morning." If for any reason it is necessary to attach so many adjectives, some of them must be taken away from the front. " My dear old friend, who is both fat, white-haired and benevolent, came to see me this morning." Or better still : " My dear old friend came to see me this morning ; he is as fat, white-haired, and benevolent as ever." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 89 Note how only the smallest and most unobtrusive adjectives are left, dear, old. The field must be left clear for the noun. (2). French dislikes adjectives before the noun at all. It allows a few short ones, such as bon, mauvais, jeune, vieux, petit, grand. It is partly, because they, as it were, coalesce with the noun. Compare I often see him, in English, where often see is really the verb. French also allows, if they are not long, a few intro- ductory ones, i.e., adjectives which suggest the Noun and do not distract attention by carrying a meaning foreign to that suggested by the noun, e.g., Sur le penchant de quelque agreable colline faurai une petite maison. Why can you say : une verte prairie, but not : un vert pre ? or again : une flatteuse esperance, but not : un flatteur espoir ? (3). There are certain parts of the sentence which are practically forbidden ground for the adverb. They are those parts where the Subject, Verb and Object are at work. The stage must be left clear when these three words come on it. They do the work of expressing the main idea of the sentence. When once that work is begun, subordinate words of any kind are better out of the way until it is finished. 90 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Adverbs have no business, for example, at the critical point of the whole sentence, between the Subject and the Verb. " I yesterday saw him." " He at 10 o'clock arrived." A few odd ones are allowed in. " I often see him." 14 He never came." The real reason is they are not doing the usual sub- ordinate adverb work, but form essential parts of the verbs. Often see, — Never came, are the real assertions. French never allows an adverb of any sort in this position. Note this and take care. The few English exceptions there are will mislead you. Adverbs can go in front of everything if you desire to emphasise the idea they express, or they can go in various places after the verb, according to circumstances. These placing principles are naturally more impor- tant in English and French, which depend so largely on the placing of the words to give intelligibility to the sentence, than in Latin, which depends on inflections. To disturb the place of a subject in English, strikes at the sense of the whole sentence. Nothing can do that in Latin, except to omit inflections or to put on wrong ones, as people have been known to do. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 91 Care has especially to be taken with both adjective and adverb sentences. If it is dangerous to let adjectives and adverbs get out of hand, it is far more so to let adjective or adverb sentences do so, because they are so much bigger and heavier then single words, and, misplaced, will do so much more mischief to the clearness of the sentence. The main difficulty with them is that they suspend the action of the sentence. The long adjective sentence, for example, will get between the Subject and the Verb, where adverbs are forbidden to go. The subject is mentioned and then the key of the sentence withheld. You will learn more about these dangers and the way they are met, later on. CHAPTER TV. CLASSIFICATION. In the course of an examination of the tools of ex- pression that we have in daily use, we have seen that there are certain great sets of words — Verbs, Nouns, Pronouns, — each of which does a certain well-defined part of the work of expression. The first necessity was to distinguish these sets one from the other. The words in each set, however, are not always pre- cisely alike among themselves. Some verbs, for example, express action, others state ; that is to say, we have two sorts of verb tools, just as a carpenter may have two kinds of saw, a tenort saw and a panel saw. Each kind is for a separate purpose. We want names for these different kinds. The names you give do not matter much, so long as they indicate, as they ought to do, the special work the tools are for. We have appropriately called such verbs " state verbs " and " action verbs." Again, among the " action verbs " we have " action done " verbs and " action suffered " verbs. These are appropriately named active verbs and passive verbs. Again, among the active verbs, with some the action passes to one or more receivers ; with others the action does not pass. 92 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 93 We needed names for these verbs. We called them " action passing " verbs, and " non-action passing " verbs, or again, Transitive and Intransitive Verbs. Classification of this sort has to go on in nearly every set of our word tools, and you must learn to do it for yourself. The principle is the same everywhere, We have Method of to watch what work a particular kind of word is doing Ciassiflea- and to label it accordingly. For example : NOUNS. Here are twenty Nouns : Warmth, Hydrogen, Book, Courage, Smith, Elephant, Cloak, Impulse, Sound, Man, Growth, Length, Blackness, Speed, Wing, Trifle, Postcard, Wheat, John, Africa. Arrange them in classes : form as many classes as Ex. 23 seem desirable. Class No. 1, are names of . . . ? Class No. 2, are the names of ... ? Class No. 3, are the names of ... ? Find names accordingly for the classes. Compare with the usual names of such classes. Again, ADVERBS. Here are a score of Adverbs, Ex. 2 4 When, to-morrow, nicely, here, fast, how, shortly, well, soon, by heart, why, at ten, fitly, strenuously, for a week, at home, out of wantonness, very, too, somewhat, greatly, quite. Arrange them as before in classes. Class No. 1 adds to the verb the idea of ... ? Class No. 2 adds to the verb the idea of ... ? and so on. 94 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Find names for the classes accordingly. Find other members of each class. Find adverbs which come in none of the above classes. Classify these. Verify your work by comparison with the usual divisions of adverbs. If any of these adverbs puzzle you, write them in a sentence and think about them there. Study them alive. Collect adverbs from your live sentences and classify them in the same way. §2 Again, PRONOUNS. Pronouns need careful classification. In dealing with them, especially in a foreign language, the beginner always has this difficulty ; the same words at one time are pronouns, at another adjectives ; at one time they are one sort of tool and at another, another. Tne For example : distinction " He lives in this house." between „., . . ,. . Pronouns This is an adjective. and " He has done this." Adjectives ~ 7 . • This is a pronoun. Again, the word that does at least four different sorts of work in the following sentences : i. " Where is that house you spoke of ? " 2. " Why have you done that ? " 3. "I lost the pencil that I bought." 4. "He told me that he could not come." This use of a word tool for three or four different purposes is by no means uncommon. It is not to be THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 95 wondered at. Does the owner of a hammer never use it for anything but knocking in nails ? It is essential, therefore, that before attempting to classify pronouns, you understand adjective and pronoun work. An adjective's business is to help the noun : the pronoun's to replace it. When the adjective is there, the noun is present. When the pronoun is there, the noun is not. It is true that when an adjective is at work the noun is sometimes left out. (a) " Good people are happy," may be expressed as : (b) " The good are happy." It is only, however, because the word people is under- stood without being said. If it were not so, it would have to be said. " Good salmon are scarce." Leave out salmon and see what happens. Adjectives, therefore, with obvious nouns following, tend to lose them. The obvious noun gets omitted, and the adjective has to do the whole work of both words. Such a word as good therefore in (b) can be des- cribed perfectly rightly in two ways. First, as an adjective serving the word people, which is understood with it. Second, as a noun. An adjectival noun would be a good name for it. You can see from such an example how the same words may come to do the work of different parts of speech. 96 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The word good, by a perfectly natural process, here does, first the work of an adjective, then that of a noun. It is our old friend the screwdriver acting as a lever. It would be absurd to dispute about its name. Remember, however, that any tool which acts as a lever follows the laws of the lever. Similarly any word which acts as an adjective or as a pronoun follows the laws of the adjective or of the pronoun. §3 We next have to classify pronouns. The first step in classification is always to make a collection. Make a list containing every pronoun you can find. Personal Split it up into separate classes as before. Pronouns £ Your first set will probably be the set you have seen attached to the verb. "I," "he," "we," and similar words. We call them personal pronouns. You are familiar with the idea of the different persons or things who may do the action of the verb. These pronouns replace the nouns which are the names of these persons ; the name is therefore a perfectly natural one. Ex. 25 1. Write in a column the English Personal Pro- nouns I. 1. I. 2. Thou. 3. He, she, it. 4. We. 5. You. 6. They. Write in a parallel column their French equivalents, and in a third parallel column their Latin equivalents. Ex. 26 2 . Write in parallel columns the English, French and Latin declensions of " I." Do the same for the other pronouns, especially for the third person, which is in common use. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 97 Do not however, attempt this form of exercise till you are thoroughly familiar with the declensions them- selves and can use them to express yourself with. The simple comparison in No. i you can do at an early stage. 3. Make from your French grammar a list of the EXt 2 ~ French conjunctive personal pronouns. Catch some sentences from your French reading book which contain them. Examine these sentences and discover for your- selves the use of this particular set of pronoun tools. Do the same for the disjunctive pronouns. Do not attempt this exercise too soon. What is the use of having two sets ? 2. Connected with the personal pronoun is another §4 set which you should also have discovered — Himself, Myself, Ourselves, etc. In the course of using the personal pronouns, it may happen that one of them, besides being the Subject, may occur again in some other capacity in the sentence, generally as the direct or indirect Object. If we had nothing but personal pronouns available we should have to express such forms as follows : " I hurt me," " We said to us." " You said to you." G 98 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Is there any reason why such forms should not be used ? Not the least. They are quite plain. French, which never wastes energy in needless forms, employs them exactly as they stand. Among them, however, there are some which are not clear. " He hurt him." The Who is " him " ? The original " he " or someone else? Prtots » is obscure. " She said to her," The sentence is obscure again. Examine as many such forms as you can think of. The obscurity always occurs in the third person and only there. It is remedied in Latin and French by the use of a special pronoun for the third personal pronoun the second time it occurs. This pronoun is " Se " in both languages and of course always refers to the Subject. Find out for yourself why " Se " has no nominative in Latin or in French : why the Dative and Accusative cases are the only cases of " Se " in French and the main cases of " Se " in Latin. As the same obscurity exists in English, how is it prevented ? We, too, have a special group of pronouns, himself, herself, etc. In English, however, we not only insert these pronouns in the third person, where obscurity exists, but in the first and second, where it does not. We have thus the set yourself, thyself, myself. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 99 We need a name for these. They are pronouns that are used to denote the Subject on its second appearance in the sentence. As far as the third person is concerned and the original use of the pronouns—" Doubt stopping Pronouns " would be a good name. They do stop doubt in the third person, and are used •uselessly in the first and second. The general name is Reflexive Pronouns, i.e., pronouns which denote that the action is reflected back again on to the Subject instead of proceeding to a separate Object. An action is not always reflected back, however, e.g. : " He gave me a seat near himself." There is, as a matter of fact, no name which com- pletely describes all they do. Second-time-subject Pronouns would describe them in English, but would not be appropriate for the other languages. Note again : " He will come himself " " He hurt himself." The himself in the first sentence is a totally different pronoun from the one in the second. Number 2 is one of these of which we have just been speaking, reflexive or doubt stopping. The first himself neither denotes that an action is reflected nor stops doubt. It is doing totally different work: it emphasises. It is properly therefore called an emphatic pronoun. Something might be said for calling it an emphatic adjective. 100 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Whether regarded as a pronoun or as an adjective, it is doing adjectival work for he. §5 Related again to the Personal Pronouns are the two sets of Possessive Pronouns and Possessive Adjectives. All that is necessary with regard to these words is to know the adjectives from the pronouns. Possessive is an excellent name for them. §,6 Another kind of pronoun tool we use in the Demon- strative or Pointing Pronoun. We use it naturally when we want to point. Akin to these are the Demonstrative or Pointing Adjectives. The words this and that are the words most generally used in both classes. Can you think of any more ? " The." The points. It points less vigorously than this or that, but it points. " The bird is a crow/' is not so forcible as : " That bird is a crow," but all the same it directs your attention to a particular bird, exactly as "that bird " does. The is therefore a demonstrative or pointing adjective. It is used so freely however, that it is almost a part of the noun it belongs to, i.e., the bird may be regarded as one noun, rather than as a noun served by an adjective. Again, examine : " I cannot go, but he can." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 10 1 What is he ? Personal pronoun ? No. Pointing pronoun. Don't you see the speaker's finger go out ? Compare : " He can't come." Emphasis on can't. He personal pronoun. " He can't come." Emphasis on he. He demonstrative pronoun. As a further illustration of suitable methods study §7 the following. Classify as Pronouns or Adjectives the French pointing words. They are all founded on the word " ce." i. What does " ce " do ? Pointing Adjective work. It denotes " this" or "that." Donnez moi ce livre Give me "this " or "that" book. (according to the circum- stances). 2. Does it do any pronoun work ? Its neuter does — " that thing " or " this thing." C'est dommage. Qu'estc*? que c'est, etc. Tout ce que je vous ai dit est vrai. All " that thing " which I have told you is true. These two uses are all the Pronoun uses of " ce." The other words now fall into their classes. Ce - la That thing there. What is ce ? A pronoun. What is the whole word ? A pure pointing pronoun. Don't use it as an adjective. 102 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Ce - ci Similarly. Ce - lui That - lui. What is ce ? A pointing adjective. What is lui ? Disjunctive Personal Pronoun. What is the whole word ? A pure pointing pronoun. Similarly Celle Cetteelle- —that lady. Ceux Ces eux — those persons. Ce - lui - la That gentleman there. Ce-lui-ci This gentleman here, i.e., the nearest, i.e., in some cases the nearest to my mind, i.e., the last spoken of, the latter. The words seem mostly pronouns. Are there ad- jectives enough ? We use ci and la with the adjective ce when we want them. Cet homme - ci. Ce livre - la. 28 Classify the Latin pointing words. Make up your mind clearly. (1) What Pronoun tools are available for pointing. (2) What adjective tools there are ; and more especially which are pure adjectives and which are pure pronouns. §8 In precisely the same way that there are in every language sets of adjectives and pronouns whose business it is to point, so there are sets of adjectives and pronouns whose business it is to ask questions. Write down twenty questions. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 103 Pick out the sentences with question asking pronouns. Pick out the sentences with question asking adjectives. Incidentally study the tools that are used for question asking. They will be found to be : Questions 1. Order. 2. Special question asking words, the ad- jectives and pronouns above, with certain adverbs. The main question asking pronouns will be found to be : who, which, what : " Who is there ? " " Which have you chosen ? " " What did you see ? " The main question asking adjectives are which, what, " Which chair did you buy ? " " To what country do you refer ? " Take the English question asking pronouns. Ex. 29 1st. Decline them where possible, i.e., make a list of their cases. 2nd. Place by the side of them the French pronouns which do the same work. Take care that the words are really pronouns. We are not talking about the question asking adjectives. Set by the side of the scanty English declension the fuller French declension. Do the same for the Latin question asking pronouns. Make a similar table for the three sets of question asking adjectives. This exercise, like all other comparative ones, except 104 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE the simplest, is to be done after you have become familiar with the matter you are comparing : not while you are learning it for the first time. §9 What sort of pronouns have we had ? The Personal — Possessive — Reflexive — Question asking. Relatives Any more ? Yes Wordg Jike << who „ „ whkh „ " that." Look at this sentence : " The soldiers who saw the enemy took cover." " The book that you gave me was extremely in- teresting." " The horse on which I was riding fell down." Do you notice anything about the italicised sentences ? They are all replacing sentences. You would suspect, therefore, that the first character- istic of this kind of pronoun is that it works in a re- placing sentence. What kind ol a replacing sentence ? Do you remember any other word that works only in a replacing phrase ? Make a dozen sentences with who, which, and that as pronouns. Examine them. Label who, which, and that wherever they occur, according to the work they are doing. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 105 Are there any sentences in which the words are neither question asking nor pointing pronouns ? What are such sentences ? You will find they are always replacing sentences. Such a replacing sentence always implies a main sentence before it, and the pronoun clearly refers to some person or thing mentioned in the main sentence. There is more than that, however. Consider the sentence : " The soldiers, who had seen the enemy, took cover.' * The point is, what work is who doing ? To investigate, try to say the sentence without it. " The soldiers took cover, for they had seen the enemy." We have had to take two tools — for and they — to do the work, a Conjunction and a Personal Pronoun. " The book that you gave me was useless." Say this without the pronoun that. " The book was useless and you gave it me." We have had again to take two tools and and it, a Conjunction and a Personal Pronoun. The conclusion clearly reached is that who does two words' work, (i) that of a Conjunction, (2) that of a Personal Pronoun referring to a word in the previous sentence. The proper account therefore of who and of other words like it is this ; they are pronouns which are used only in replacing sentences ; they refer to some person or thing spoken of in the principal sentence and at the same time join the replacing sentence to the principal sentence. 106 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE The name usually given is that of Relative Pronouns, because they relate, i.e., carry the mind back to the person or thing which has gone before — the antecedent. The name does not express their conjunction character at all. Such words are wanted in all languages. Here are a few examples : " My brother, who sailed for India yesterday, will not be back for ten years." " The story that he tells is extraordinary." " The elephant accepted the bun which I offered him." §10 The Relative pronoun clearly has work to do in its own sentence. It will be Subject or Object or anything else it is wanted for. It is obviously necessary for the sense of its own sentence that its case should correspond with its work ; that is to say the ease of a relative pronoun is a matter which has to do entirely with its own sentence. Relative It is equally necessary for the sake of the sense of the Construe- whole that ^ snould be quite clear to wnat tne re lative refers. It is attached, therefore, to its antecedent in an in- flected language by a gender and number agreement, just as an adjective is attached to the noun it belongs to. It is interesting to observe what happens in English. The sense of the relative sentence has to be made clear, also that of the whole just as before. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 107 In the relative sentence when who is the Subject, it can at the same time mark the Subject by standing first, and at the same time be near enough to its antecedent to be properly attached to it by proximity, our English method of attachment. " / saw the villain, who slew his grand- mother." When the relative is the Object, however, to place it after the verb, in the usual way, means tearing it from its antecedent. To mark the Object by order is therefore impractic- able ; hence the survival of the case ending whom and the occurrence of the Object, fortified by the case ending, in a highly unusual position at the beginning of the sentence. " I saw the villain whom the policeman had just arrested." It is exactly the same in French. Work out the application of the principle for your- self. The relative's attachment to its antecedent will also repay study In Latin the connection is marked by a number and gender agreement and also by proximity. The two between them suffice, In English the number and gender inflection is gone ; proximity alone has to suffice ; but there is a certain endeavour to get an agreement (always for the same purpose, viz. : that of making it plain to which noun 108 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE the relative refers) by the use of three relatives : who for persons, which for animals, that for things. It is true that the three words, except who and which are somewhat interchangeable, but the above principle underlies their use. In French the same thing happens, except that there are only two words, qui and lequel, and that lequel carries number and gender inflections, which make it a certain tool for making the connection when other means fail. Ex. 30 Tabulate the Relatives and their declensions in the three languages. §11 What. — The word what has a great many characters. Those of question asking adjective and question ask- ing pronoun have already been noticed. Compound Examine : Relatives " Tell me what will happen." It is clearly equivalent to : " Tell me that which will happen." It is in this case equivalent to a relative and the neuter demonstrative pronoun, its antecedent. French uses ce qui for it, showing them both. It is a double word. The proper name for it is a compound relative. Do you know another ? Whoever, in certain senses equals he who. When, in certain senses is a double word. " Tell me when you are coming." i.e., " Tell me the time at which you are coming." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 109 Similarly where and how. In other uses these are not double words. Collect examples of each of these words from your live sentences. Classify the uses of when, where, how. CHAPTER V. AGREEMENT AND GOVERNMENT. §1 Certain words are said to agree with certain other Agreement words, that is to say they carry corresponding inflections. We have s'een that an adjective's inflections are made to correspond with the noun's in order to attach the adjective to that particular noun. This is necessary for the sense, and the same work is done in English by order. It is clearly a misuse of terms to speak of agreement when inflections are not present. English adjectives, for example, do not agree with their nouns. They belong to them, and the attachment is shewn by order, not agreement. In many sentences nouns do adjective work, i.e., they extend the meaning of another noun, by saying some- thing for it that it does not say for itself. " My brother the soldier returned yesterday." The soldier is doing adjective work. Compare : " My soldier brother returned yesterday." As an adjective the inflections of soldier are made to agree with those of brother : in Latin two nominative cases. Again : " I saw my brother, the soldier." Two accusative cases. no THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE III Again : " Caesar was a great General." As was made plain earlier, a great General describes the state, and in doing so perforce describes the man who was in it. It is adjectival to Caesar, therefore takes the same inflections. Similarly : " Artaxerxes became king" " My friend was called John" " He seemed ill." This agreement of one noun with another to which it is giving adjectival help is called " Apposition " and might be called common-sense. Verbs are sometimes said to agree with their Sub- jects. They agree in this way. The inflections of the verb shew the number and person of the Subject. So do those of the word expressing the Subject itself. Number and Person are shown twice, and as long as both words are inflected it is impossible that their inflections should be different. Any difference would confuse the sense. To mark them on the Subject and also on the Verb is, however, unnecessary, at least in most cases. They are accordingly dropping off the verb. This agreement or correspondence when it exists is an 112 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE accident, due to the inflection of the verb and the in- flection of the subject doing the same work. It is not an instrument of expression like the agree- ment of the adjective with the noun it serves. Again : there are certain words which in practice are always associated with other words bearing particular inflections. For example, a Latin transitive verb will always be associated with some Object in the Accusative case. The particular action implies a receiver and the receiver is marked by the accusative inflection. This association is often described as a government of the Object by the Verb. No more pernicious description was ever invented by grammarians. Nothing can govern, that is to say dictate, the choice of any inflection tool except the work that it is wanted for. The term govern suggests that the presence of the accusative inflection is due, not to the fact that it is the appropriate tool for its particular work, but to some mysterious action of one of its fellow tools — the verb. A transitive verb implies an accusative case and a hammer implies a nail. It is about as sensible to say that the verb governs the accusative as that the hammer governs the nail. The verb and the case are fellow tools both chosen for their fitness and for nothing else. The proper account of " Gallos " in " Caesar Gallos vicit," is not " accusative case " governed by the verb THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 113 " vicit," but that is the Object of the action and has the inflection which says so. When, therefore, it is said that one word governs another, what is really meant, and all that is meant is, that, in practice, when the first word has been used a particular inflection of the second will be found at its heels. The two forms occur together. The first does not appear without the second, but the first is in no way the reason of the second. You will find in most Latin grammars lists of verbs which govern the dative, or the genitive, or two accusa- tives. This means that after those verbs the dative, or the genitive, or two accusatives occur. If you have a spark of intelligent curiosity you will not be content with this information, but -will proceed to enquire what those datives or genitives are doing there. It is the same thing with French constructions. For example : " Je lui pardonnai." What case is " lui " ? Dative. Why? Because pardonner takes a after it, which is the same thing as saying it takes a dative. That is no reason. Look again. What does the dative generally show ? Indirect object. H 114 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Make an English sentence with pardon. " I pardoned him his offence." What are the words doing ? Offence — direct object. Him — indirect object. What is the proper account of lui ? Indirect object. Where is the direct ? Understood. Learn to understand about the word pardonner and then get rid of all rules about it. If a following word requires a " dative " choose it yourself, intelligently. You, not pardonner, are the master of the tool. The general account of all so-called governing con- structions is this : a word — the verb is a typical one — has a meaning which is not complete in itself and re- quires, before the whole work of expression is done, certain other ideas to complete it. Some verbs, for example, require one Object, others a direct and an indirect Object, others two direct Ob- jects; others again will need additional adverbial ideas. " I broke the window." " I gave him sixpence." " I taught the boy Latin." " I am afraid of lions." These ideas involve nouns and pronouns in various cases to express them. In what cases depends entirely upon the ideas to be expressed. Hence the train of thought started by a particular word always ends in the employment of a particular case. The word implies would be a better word than governs. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 1 15 To say the word implies the Dative case is not only a more correct way of stating the facts, but starts some very pertinent questions as to how it implies that case. You will no doubt find certain cases in which it is not clear how a particular word comes to be followed by another in a particular case. " Taedet me vitae." Why " Vitae ? " You may suspect a causal genitive. " I am weary because of life." or give some similar explanation. It is theory only, and may be good or bad. (See p. 211.) What is true, however, is that there is a reason for the inflection somewhere. No one ever yet used meaningless speech or meaningless inflections habitually. An expression, like a building, may be changed and altered in the course of centuries till its original form is almost lost ; nevertheless there was a plan once ; that it is hard to see now is not a reason against looking for it. There is another form of so-called government to §3 which the term is even more inappropriate, namely, the cases that follow prepositions. Examine : The Gov " The boy's hat," ernment of " The hat of the boy." tiolf 81 " Il6 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE It is clear from such forms and from many others that might be quoted, that the prepositions replace the case inflections ; that they represent man's tendency to express himself, not synthetically, as it is called, but analytically, i.e., not by one word added to and in- flected, but by separate words. We have therefore in such forms as "In hortum " simply a stage in the transition. " Hortum " was the first stage when the idea of " motion into " was represented simply by a case ending. " In hortum," was the second, when the case tools proved insufficient to do the work of expressing the dozens of ideas we now represent by prepositions, and special words for the purpose were fashioned. " In hort," would be the third and final stage. It is at this stage that English practice has arrived. Our only examples of prepositions followed by a case are among the pronouns. We still use " to him " "of them," but even here the case endings, though usual, are quite unnecessary. Note too that the only noun case ending we have — the possessive — is not used with a preposition, but is alternative to it. We say, " The man's hat," " The hat of the man." We do not say, "The hat of the man's." The correspondence between a certain group of pre- positions and a certain case is in no way due to any mysterious action of the preposition. It is accidental. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 117 It tends to disappear. It has practically disappeared in both French and English. It is because the group of prepositions and the case are doing the same work twice over. The case is needless, but as long as it is there it is impossible for it to be other than one which originally added the same general idea as the group of prepositions. Any difference between the case meaning and the pre- position meaning would confuse the sense. It is an exactly similar correspondence to the one we have in " Je parle " ; the separate word has begun to supplant the inflection, but the inflection has not yet gone. Hence the key to the prepositions and the cases which occur after them is to be found in the study of the cases. Given, for example, the main ideas expressed by the Ablative case, the prepositions which express those ideas in various forms, will be the ones which, when the Abla- tive Case broke down, were brought into service, first with the case and ultimately instead of it : so too for the other cases. The proper account of " urbe " in " Evadit ex urbe," is not Ablative Case governed by " ex " but Ablative Case associated with " ex/' a preposition of the same general signification as the case. CHAPTER VI. PARSING. To parse a word is to give account of the work it is doing in the sentence, as shown either by inflection, or by the substitutes of inflection, or by its position, adding any appropriate information as to its classification and main inflections. For example. Parse the words in the sentence, " He broke the window by throwing stones." He broke the window by throw- ing stones." Pronoun, personal, showing by position and inflection that it is the Subject of the sentence. It is the third person and de- notes one only. A verb. Inflection and meaning show a perfect action which happened. It is a verb of action and passes its action on. Its principal parts are break, broke, broken. A pointing adjective serving " window," at- tached to it by position. A noun. Position shows it to be the Object of the action. A combination of preposition and a verbal noun. The phrase includes an object " stones " and is equivalent to an adverb ; it serves the word broke. A noun. Its position shows it to be the Object of the action expressed by "throwing." Its inflection shows more than one. 118 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Iig The word " parsing " is sometimes applied, especially §2 in connection with the more inflected languages, to the much more mechanical process of cataloguing a word's inflections. For example, to parse " militibus " in the sentence " Rex dedit pecuniam militibus." we may proceed as follows : Militibus : Noun, Common, Third Dec, Miles. Militis — Plural, Masculine, Dative — following " dedit." Such an exercise will give you familiarity with the forms and their names (which is desirable enough some- times), but it will do no more. It has further this great danger ; that you may learn the name of the form and stop short of the only thing that really matters, viz. : the meaning of the form. To know a name is not necessarily to know the thing. You have not accounted for " militibus " when you have said " Dative Case following dedit or governed by dedit " : you have only named the inflection. You only really account for " militibus " when you say it expresses the fact that the " milites " were the in- direct recipients of the action of " dedit." In other words it is futile to name a form if you know nothing of its force ; and still more so to use it. You can no more talk sense with inflection forms that are meaningless to you than you can with words that are meaningless. You may succeed, with the help of a multitude of rules (inflection A always follows inflection B, and so on), in imitating correctly the speech of the original users of the forms. They, however, used them in- 120 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE telligently. Your success will be simply that of a highly developed parrot. It follows that parsing on anything but the catalogue principle must be restricted at first to the simpler forms which will be the only ones you really possess. You cannot, for example, parse a Subjunctive Tense form properly till you have learnt both what the Mood is for and what the Tense is for. Many of the Cases which you will meet with you will not be able to account for till you have studied Case carefully. Don't be misled into thinking your work begins and ends with names. To understand the uselessness of mere names, consider the following conversation : Passenger. Can you tell me what that curious arrangement of ropes and pulleys is for ? Boatman. That, Sir ! That's the purchase of the peak halyard. Passenger. Ah ! of course. How stupid of me I And what's the peak halyard ? Boatman. Peak halyard, Sir ! Why that's what we always bend on the gaff, Sir. Passenger has a vague feeling that he ought to know all about it but somehow doesn't. The following sentence will give you some idea of what parts of the work are within your reach, and what parts require further knowledge : Helvetii - Noun, Proper, Masc, 2nd Dec. Its in- flection shows a number of persons who are the doers of the action ex- pressed by "dixere." THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 121 Ccesari - Noun, Proper, Masc, 3rd Dec. Singular by nature. Its Dative inflection shows that Caesar is the indirect receiver of the action expressed by " dixere." dixere - Verb, Trans., 3rd Conj. Dico Dixi Dictum Dicere. Its inflections show a complete action which actually happened in past time ; and that there were more doers than one, viz. : the Helvetii. Sibi esse in animo) iter 'per provinciam [ Object of "dixere." facere. J For further parsing in this sentence, the Object must be subdivided and after that again the parts of the Object. Esse in animo. A verb : expressing a state. Sum Fui Esse — in animo : or better, Est Fuit Esse in animo. Infinitive or Noun Mood denotes a present state (strictly the thought of a present state). As a Noun it forms with its complement " sibi " and its subject " iter per provinciam facere " the object of the action expressed by " dixere." in animo. An indispensable adverbial comple- ment of esse. Both the preposition and the ablative case express the idea " where." (See oh. xiii.) 122 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Sibi. A reflexive pronoun referring to the same persons as " Helvetii," already described. Its Dative inflection ex- presses the fact that these persons are indirectly interested in the " esse in animo." Iter per provinciam facet e. Subject of " esse in animo." Facere. A verb : expressing an action, which passes, 3rd Conj. Facio Feci Factum Facere. Noun Mood denoting an action (strictly the thought of an action) in Present time ; with its com- plements " iter " and " per provinciam V it is the subject of " esse in animo." Per provinciam. An adverbial complement of " iter facere"; the preposition and the accusa- tive case both express the idea of the " where to " of the action. Compare : " He drove the bradawl through the board," " He pushed his stick into the sand." (See ch. xiii.) Iter. Object of " facere " — etc. These examples are not given you for exact imitation. You are not meant to imitate but to think. Scrutinise each word or phrase or replacing sentence : make up your mind what each is doing ; in the case of inflected words, what each inflection is saying. When you have found this out, put it down plainly. Any form, or any grouping of words is justifiable which makes for this plainness. Use as few inflection names as possible. You will see where the difficulties come above. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 123 " Sibi " "In animo " " Per provinciam " were all difficult to account for : so will all such forms be till you have studied the different meanings that the various forms of Case convey. Do not in any case slur over the difficulty by such a description as " Accusative governed by per." All that this means is that when the Romans said " per " they said an Accusative directly after it. So no doubt they did — and so no doubt may you do ; but if Providence had intended you for a parrot you would have been furnished with claws and a tail. In the same way the full account of the Infinitives " esse in animo " and " facere " needs a further study of the Infinitive. CHAPTER VII. ANALYSIS. §1 Every sentence of whatever apparent length has a single framework consisting of Subject, Verb, and in certain cases Objects. This part of the sentence is indispensable. The rest of the sentence consists simply of elements subordinate to these, either of an adjective nature assisting the Subjects and Objects, or of an adverb nature assisting the verb. This second part of the sentence adds fulness, but is not indispensable. In other words, there are in the sentence, at most, three kings and their servants : nothing more except the connections needed to link the whole together. i. Now, if the sentence consisted, as it might, of the bare framework, and had no luxuries in the shape of adjectives or adverbs, it would be as simple and clear as possible, but bare. " I broke the window." 2. Assuming again that appropriate assisting words are added in the shape of single word adjectives or adverbs, fulness is gained but simplicity is sacrificed a little. " I broke the classroom window to-day." It has already been explained how even single word servants in the wrong places can do mischief to the main object of the sentence, which is to express something clearly. For example, in the sentence : 124 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 125 u I to-day broke the classroom window.*' To-day is out of place. 3. A further stage in the process is to add any or all of the servant elements by means of phrases instead of by single words. Prepositions are used solely in the manufacture of such phrases. Completeness grows, but the non-essential part be- comes larger and needs more care in handling. Up to now the sentences are such as you use yourself for everyday purposes. " I broke the window in the classroom this afternoon.' ' Note how the long adjective in the classroom has been removed from the front of " window." 4. The next stage of complexity is that in which auxiliary or replacing sentences are introduced. Not only the servant elements but parts of the frame- work may be replaced by such sentences. The possibilities of obscurity are increased enormously at this stage, in two ways : — (a) We have said that parts of the framework (the Object for example) may consist of a sentence. This in itself slows, as it were, the main action. The presentation of the essential part, instead being quick and crisp, becomes fuller, but at the same time heavier and more cumbrous. What it gains in fulness it loses in clearness and vigour. (b) There may also be three or four replacing servant sentences. The full sentence may then consist of the original framework with 126 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE replacing sentences as integral parts, and various servants, also expressed by replacing sentences. The clearness of the sentence, and so its value as a tool of expression, suffers both ways. The impression left on the mind by the central and essential part is blurred ; on the other hand, the presence of such a mass of servant sentences impairs its chance of getting the attention and prominence that are its due. The penalty of all this is confusion. No one knows what the sentence is about. . The remedy is simple. When you write or speak at such length (which, by the way, it is to be hoped is not often) : — i. Take the utmost care of the essential part of your sentence, i.e., the part embodied in the Subject, Verb and Objects. Be cautious how you use replacing sentences for any of these elements. It is often necessary to do so. Such a tool as a re- placing sentence would not be there, unless it were wanted ; nevertheless bear in mind that every replacing sentence you use here, takes the point off the main thing you want to say. 2. ' Watch the arrangement also. The main assertion, whether embodied in single words, or in single words and replacing sentences, must get a clear field. Keep servants, especially servant replacing sen- tences, as far as possible out of the middle of it. Put them at the end (as is chiefly done), or at the beginning. Do not place some at the beginning and some at the end THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 127 If you do this, you begin the impression on the mind with a servant idea and end with a servant idea. The main idea will never get properly impressed. 3. Further— Minimise in every possible way the length, the number, and the weight of your replacing servant sentences. They are servants only. If you do not take care, they will obliterate from your hearer or your reader's mind the very idea you are striving to implant in it — that of the main sentence. You will have killed it with ex- planations. To minimise the servant elements in length and number, use phrases rather than sentences, and words rather than phrases ; when in doubt cut them out altogether. To minimise them in weight, keep out from among them weighty or important ideas. Nothing but servant ideas ought to go in servant sentences. Put anything other than this into a separate main sentence of its own. Before we proceed to examine the application of these principles, note the presence in some sentences of a refinement of a replacing sentence, namely, sentences dependent on a replacing sentence. We spoke of the kings and the servants in a sentence. A king may have a duke to represent him abroad. A duke may have a secretary to write his letters : the secretary may have a boy to run his errands. In precisely the same way, am' sentence, which itself depends on the main sentence, may have a sentence de- pending on it ; and there may be again another depend- ing on that, and so on. 128 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE As the poet says : — " And even fleas have little fleas, Upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, And so ad infinitum." It is clear that as far as the above principles are con- cerned, a servant sentence with a dependent can do as much mischief as two servant sentences ; or, again, that a replacing object sentence with a dependent would take the point off the main assertion even more than a simple replacing sentence. It appears, therefore, that such sentences are rather dangerous tools to use, and that great skill is needed to avoid obscurity. " The House that Jack built," you will remember, was constructed with them. §2 The next thing that you have to do, is to learn to recognise with certainty these different parts of the sentence. To assist you, analyse first your own speech. You will find it much simpler than anything we have been talking about. You have already begun the process when you learnt about replacing sentences, and it should not take you long. To analyse means to sort out, in every sentence you say, the different elements, the kings and the servants. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 129 Do not invent sentences for this work — if you do, you will probably write stuff quite unlike your ordinary speech — bat take matter you actually use. " There is no mustard in this pot," and so on. Begin now to take a keen interest in your own speech, and in what it is made of. The form in which the necessary distinctions will best be shown, will depend on the sentences you are analysing. Whatever the form you adopt, in no case destroy the order of a sentence. Order means something. To destroy it is as bad as omitting words. It will be well to denote some attention, in the first instance, to comparatively simple sentences and a study of the framework. In ordinary short sentences the Subjects, Verbs and Objects will be quite apparent, and will not need separate labels. In such sentences the analysis will generally be perfectly clear, if you write the words composing the framework in black, and the non-essential parts in red. Write suitable labels above when there is any doubt. For example : Adj. Sent. " Have you done that exercise he set us yesterday." Adv. Ph. " No, I did not have time last night." " Well, perhaps he won't say anything. He is in a good temper this morning." " How do you know ? " Adv. Ph. i( You can tell by his eye." On the other hand, you will sometimes meet with sentences in which the recognition of the Subject, Verb I 130 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE and Object demand considerable thought. For example : " Whose is the next study ? " "It is not a good light." " It will soon be time to get up." " There is a cow in that field." " What time is it ? " Such sentences will need re-writing if the distinctions are to be properly shown. " Whose is the next study ? " —The next study (Sub- ject) is whose (Verb), u It is not a good light ": —The light (Subject) is not good (Verb), " It will soon be time to get up " — Getting up time (Subject), will be soon (Verb) or alternatively : — Soon (Subject) will be getting up time, and so on. §3 A further question which will constantly arise is — Essential what words ought to be included in the Verb ? For SSfct exam pl e > h° w are we to treat not in the sentence : " It the Verb is not a good light ? " The word taken alone is an Adverb, and therefore in one sense a servant. As far as its work is concerned, it is an essential part of the Verb. The central idea is not is good, but is not good. In other words, not is tied to the verb so tightly that it cannot be taken off at all. Similarly, " I praised him because he did it well." Did well is the verb : not did. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 131 Find for yourselves other examples of this : almost any set of live sentences will show them. It is quite a natural development of the relations between the Adverb and the Verb, and need present no real difficulty. Usually the Verb contains the main thought, and the Adverb adds something extra, and so completes it. The Verb does the main work : the Adverb is secondary and is rightly called a servant. It can at a pinch be spared. There are cases, however, when the thought added by the Adverb is of great importance to the sense, and when it can not be spared. There are cases too when it even overshadows the thought conveyed by the Verb. In all such cases it has become an integral part of the Verb : it has ceased to be a servant. The combination ought to be regarded as a whole and never taken apart. «, Exactly the same thing happens with the Adjective The Noun, in the ordinary way, contains the main thought and the Adjective the secondary one. It some times happens, however, that the thought added by the Adjective is indispensable ; sometimes it is actually the main thought, and that conveyed by the Noun the secondary one. For example : M Industrious boys get prizes." It is perfectly impossible to dispense with the word industrious. " The cold winds made my face numb." The word cold is at least as important as the word winds, if not more so. In such cases the Adjective has become an integral part of the Noun. The combination ought to be re- garded as a whole and ought never to be taken apart. 132 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE Industrious boys and cold winds are simply composite nouns. Such combinations want black ink — not red. The exact point at which any word or set of words ceases to be subordinate and non-essential, and becomes essential, is a matter for you to judge : there is no hard and fast line. §4 Again, difficulties will sometimes arise about the analysis of questions. For example, what are the Subjects and the Verbs in : " Is it time to get up ? " " Whose is the next study ? " ions Such difficulties are best solved by separating alto- gether the idea of interrogation from the statement. A question is simply a statement with the idea of in- terrogation added. This idea is added by various means. One of the commonest methods is an interroga- tive word or words in a suitable position. " You like pudding," is a statement. " You like pudding, eh ? " is a question. Again, compare : " You love your master, eh ? " Amas ne dominum ? or again : " You love your master, don't you ? " Nonne dominum amas ? Vous aimez votre maitre, nest ce pas. Adding the question idea to a statement is exactly like adding a second idea to a word by inflection. A THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 133 question might be called an inflected form of a statement. The interrogative idea can be added, not only by the use of special words, but by means of the principle of order. It is shown by inverting the Verb and the Subject. " He is gone." " Has he gone ? " " Said he aught of me?" " No, he said nothing." It is this disturbance of the position of the Verb and the Subject which sometimes makes their recognition difficult in questions. The sentence, however, cannot have a different Subject and Verb after the question idea is added from those it had before. Hence reduce the question boldly to a statement, and apply the ordinary principles. e.g., Whose is the next study ? Consider instead : The next study is mine. Subject : The next study. Verb : Is mine. Hence in the question : Subject : The next study. Verb : Is whose. Another form of sentence which will be frequently §5 encountered, is that involving the postponement of the Postpone- Subject. For example, how are we to analyse " It gJjjSjJl** is a pity you are not more intelligent " ? Here the Verb is " is a pity" the Subject is " that you are not more intelligent." The peculiarity of the sentence is that the Subject, instead of standing in its normal place before the Verb, 134 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE has been postponed, and in its place we have the word it, as a kind of temporary stop-gap. No such departure from ordinary practice ever happens without a reason ; it is not hard to find in this case. Consider the alternative, " That you are not more intelligent is a pity." It appears instantly that the Verb is overweighted by the size of the Subject. The central idea " it is a pity " which ought to be dominant, is driven into comparative obscurity. It is in the interests of the Verb that the Subject is postponed. Generally speaking, as often as a stop-gap Subject is put in and the position of the real Subject changed, it is done to ensure the attention being where the real sense lies. For example : " There is a cow in that field." The alternative is "A cow is in that field." The Subject is " a cow," the Verb is " is in that field." The central idea, however, is the presence of the cow. An introductory Subject is therefore put in and cow is transferred to the centre of the sentence. The post- ponement, in this case, is to heighten the value of the Subject, which, in its normal place, would not receive the necessary attention. You have already seen that in writing English it is necessary to ensure that the servant parts do not obscure the essential parts. It is equally necessary to maintain proper relations between the central word — the Verb — and the closely allied ideas of the Subject and Object. Variations in the position of the Subject, such THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 135 as are rendered possible by the use of the introductory Subject, make it possible to adjust these relations with nicety. In an analysis, therefore, " it ." is to be regarded as the introductory Subject merely and in no case must the study of the real Subject be omitted. The point of interest is not only what is the real Subject, but where it is and why. Note that it is not an introductory Subject in such expressions as " It rains," " It thunders." " It " in such cases is the real Subject, and means the unknown power to whom primitive language-makers ascribed natural phenomena. As long as your sentences are short, deal with them §6 by one or other of the foregoing methods. When they The Man- get long, however, it will not be the relations of the R g e e ^ae{ n g Subject,. Verb and Object of the main sentence which Sentencei will need attention, so much as the relations of the servant sentences to the main sentence ; the first step then necessary will be to separate the essentials of the full sentence from the non-essentials. You will find as a rule such sentences fall two ways, either : I. A servant part. 2. The main sentence, or 1. The main sentence. 2. A servant part. They do not as a rule go : 1. Servant. 2. Main sentence. 3. Servant. If they do, they ought not to. I36 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE For a time write the servant parts in red ink and put a line between them and the essential part. Here are some sentences so separated : " What did he tell you | when you saw him this afternoon ? " " I shall never believe that he did it, | whatever people say" " Three of them | who were badly hurt | succumbed to their injuries." " Can you tell me the reason why little children always say " me " instead of " I " (No non- essentials). ** I have known that | ever since I was a boy." " Though he was old | his sight was perfect." Always in analysis keep the original order as intact as possible. If you destroy this, you will lose the sense of the sentence as a whole and will never see where to mend it, or to improve it, or to point it, as the case may be. This is the value of red ink. It distinguishes with- out spoiling the order. You do not as a rule need for this work to take the framework apart, (the Subject, Verb, and Object, or, when a state is described, the Subject and the set of words describing the state ; your work is rather to make yourself familiar with the different sorts of ornaments which you habitually hang on this framework. Identify them ; label them ; as far as possible collect them together. Leave the frame-work clear ; where you can see it, with the non-essentials on one side or the other. When you have done this to fifty or sixty of your own THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 137 sentences, you will probably make various discoveries. 1. That your ornaments are not very often sentences (once in how many times ? ). 2. That you use phrases freely. How many times in a dozen sentences ? 3. That you prefer to use a couple of principal sentences connected by some such conjunction as and, rather than a single sentence carrying a servant sen- tence. You don't say, " Jones, who was late for school, had to stay behind " ; you say " Jones was late for school and had to stay behind." In a word, you talk with the simpler tools and with the simpler forms. Now all these things you do perfectly rightly, not be- cause you mean to, but because the moment you do anything else you cease to be intelligible. You have been taught unconsciously by experience. There was once a bright and shining saw that Willy desired to play with. Every time he meddled with it he cut his fingers. He soon learnt to let it alone. Willy has now gone back to his own little box of tools. You are like Willy. Every time you meddled with that long sentence you cut your fingers ; in other words you ceased to be understood. You have learnt to take only tools you can handle. There is a further moral to this parable. There are some tools you can use and others you cannot. The ones you can and do use, when you mean business, are sentences with not more than one servant sentence ; up to there you are masters of your tools, beyond there, as a rule, you are not. I38 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE See to it therefore, that in writing letters, or essays, or answers to questions of any sort, you use the tools you know. For some time limit yourself deliberately and patiently to one servant sentence. Only thus will you attain clearness. Analyse next one of your old exercises ; for example, a written historical answer. How many sentences in that answer contain more than one servant sentence ? If there is more than an accidental one here and there, your habits of writing are almost certainly wrong. You are endeavouring to use tools that are beyond you. Mend your habits. It can soon be done with care. Re-write first every offending sentence in the above exercise. Turn the superfluous sentences into separate principal sentences if necessary. Leave no sentence with more than one servant sentence. It will be found that the effort to mend generally means reducing the servant part. It can be done in many ways. You will see them best by some examples. Caesar returned to Rome after he had conquered the Gauls. Essentials. Non-essentials. 1. Caesar returned - - to Rome after he had conquered the Gauls. Cut the sentence down to a phrase. THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 139 2. Caesar returned - - to Rome after his victories in Gaul. Cut the phrase down to a word. 3. Caesar returned - - to Rome victorious ; or, if the worst comes to the worst : 4. Caesar returned - - to Rome. He had conquered the Gauls. " I shall never forgive him because of what he did when he was Lord-Lieutenant. Essentials. Non-essentials. 1. I shall never forgive him - because of what he did when he was Lord-Lieu- tenant The non-essentials here are an adverbial servant sentence with a sentence dependent on it. To reduce it, first clear off the dependent part. 2. I shall never forgive him - for what he did as Lord- Lieutenant. To reduce further : 3. I shall never forgive him - for his conduct as Lord- Lieutenant ; or better again : 4. I shall never forgive him - his conduct as Lord- Lieutenant. " What he says, were it not for the fact that he has held an official position ever since the present Government came into office, would not be of importance." The first change that is clearly needed is to put the essentials together . 140 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE i. What he says would not be of importance - '- were it not for the fact that he has held an official position ever since the present Government came into office. The essential part of this sentence contains a replacing sentence. To point this essential part is the next stage. 2. His words would be unim- portant - - - were it not for the fact, etc. Note the removal of the replacing sentence. Note also the change from the negative not be to the positive be : both alterations point the essential part. Essentials. Non-essentials. 3. His words would be unim- portant - but for the fact that he has held an official position, etc. 4. His words would be unim- 5. His portant - - - had he not held an official position ever since the present Government came into office. words would be unim L- portant - had he not held official position so long. an for THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE I4I 6. His words would be unim- portant - - - but for his official position. If this process of reduction means sacrificing too much, and losing elements you really want to say, they must be taken right out and made into a separate sentence. For example : " He has held an official position since the present Government came into office ; otherwise his words would be unimportant. Tt does not, of course, follow that all sentences need sucli reduction. The above examples are to show you how to do it when necessary. A good writer will so order his sentences, that the servant element never interferes jwith the other ; and you will find in many examples of English you examine, that neither by pointing the essential part, nor by re- ducing the non-essential part, can you effect the least improvement ; the sentences are balanced as they are ; they have the right combination of fulness and clearness. On the other hand, your own long sentences will probably need ruthless reduction. As was explained above, they are not the forms you naturally use. If you have ventured on handling them you have probably done so unskilfully. It will sometimes be necessary to analyse passages of §7 greater intricacy than those you have noticed. A sen- Forms tence, as you have seen, can be made highly complex j™ by stringing sentences on to sentences ; moreover, Complex Analysis 142 THE ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE when this happens, obscurity is never very far off. It is a method, however, which is sometimes employed justifiably. Poets use it ; so do certain prose writers whose aim approximates to that of the poet. They are able to do so, because their main object is not so much clearness of impression, as harmony of impression. To apply to a poem the analytical methods which are natural to prose, is rather like dissecting a butterfly ; it is putting the creature to a use it was never intended for. If, in the interests of science, it has to be done, choose an arrangement which will do as little dismemberment as possible. You ought, always, at every stage, to be able to see your sentence as a whole. Especially keep order intact. To do otherwise is like taking a complicated machine to pieces, and mixing up the parts. You can study and examine any particular part, it is true ; but you have lost the most valuable element of all, the sense of its relation to the whole. Any form of analysis which destroys the life of the sentence it is applied to, is inadequate ; for it destroys the connections, (e.g., the order connection), which are as much a part of the sentence as the words they connect. 93 co 43 x; .STo 11 £^ 55 2 la £ co >— i > 43 Ol cti +» £ 'a o £2 ^3 CD C in A ^ 3 ?*\ * «5 9 j.Jf 0> 1 d o « -d "> Oh o 45 co cd -d 42 CO CD 43 Is a> CD CD T3 I H3 43 43 43 a o C H P P < fc < I} CO |a. 5 g 13 g "1 3^CD •§£ ! §£ : -H bO •5 &43 ° § p ~ .bo d «a 'cd »R 43 T? ^ Ph a 'co O -a „ o o a^ ^ S CD -J ^ ill!** a CD O gL a o 3 1 u % o d T3 13 1 a 4 o H A o o o ■< "** a cu ■** 1 3 d T3 1 *> a d "3 AA K\r\ r\r\t. 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