LX GRAMMATICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH* Poverty in grammatical forms is no drawback to a language.-JESPERSON. "The simplest of all languages in form, the most spiritual in the mode of expression." English grammar is at once the simplest and most difficult of all the grammars.-ALLEN. English enjoys the distinction of having freed itself from ancient and unnecessary inflections to a greater degree than any other language.-CARPENTER. That language ranks highest which goes farthest in the art of accomplishing much with little means, or, in other words, which is able to express the greatest amount of meaning with the simplest mechanism.—JESPERSON. An elaborate linguistic structure with a variety of endings in declensions and conjugations, has certain advantages, but it may be that the advantages of the opposite simplicity are still greater.—SCHLEICHER. Anglo-Saxon is the basis of English. All its joints, its whole articulation, sinews, ligaments, articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, and auxiliary verbsall the words that bind together the sentence, are exclusively Saxon.-W. H. Low. *Some of the facts given in this chapter are mentioned in other sections of this book. But a brief final summary of this subject seems desirable. Hardly less wonderful, perhaps, than the extraordinary development of its vocabulary is the slow process by which English has changed from a synthetic to an analytical language. It has in this way gained greatly in simplicity, though it must be granted that there has been in some degree a loss in precision and in delicacy of expression.-SOUTH WORTH. It is safe to say that the fixed word order, the freedom from inflections, the abundant use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs, which characterize modern English, are a distinct improvement upon the contrasted phenomena of the older languages.-TOLMAN. Great is the English speech-what speech is so great as the English!-WALT WHITMAN. English, however, is at the opening of the twentieth century the greatest language power in existence, and bids fair to become ultimately the universal tongue.-SOUTHWORTH. It is in its vocabulary, as inherited, acquired and adapted, that English finds its highest claim to supremacy among languages. JoYNES. Grammar it (i. e., English language) might have had, but it needes it not; being so easie of itselfe and so voyd of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moodes and tenses, which I thinke was a peece of the Tower of Babilon's curse that a man should be put to schoole to learne his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the minde which is the end of speech that hath it equally with any other tongue in the world.-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S APOLOGIE FOR POETRY. 1585. The English is plenteous enough to express our myndes in anything whereof one man hath neede to speke with another. -SIR THOMAS More. Most of our knowledge of our mother tongue comes to us by what are called Natural Methods, and the distinctive marks of the language being native to our thought are not always recognized clearly even when known correctly for use. But the student should sometimes step outside his own relation to the language in order to look at it objectively, to compare and classify, to note its variations from other general language types and so gain a more explicit knowledge of its distinctive language forms. The scholar's knowledge of a language should be broader and deeper than that of one who would simply use the language as a vehicle of thought. The reasons of English grammar must underlie a scholarly knowledge of the subject. English has inherited traits from the two kinds of languages that represent the two ruling races of Christendom, the Roman and the Germanic. Yet while many English words are of French or Latin or Greek extraction the grammar of English is mostly Teutonic in character. Its idioms are Anglo-Saxon and not Latin or French in their origin. But modern English has diverged very far from the original Saxon type of language structure. Instead of being a highly inflected language, it is now one of the simplest of all languages in its word forms. While not in a condition of absolute simplicity like the Chinese -which requires a new word for every modification of an idea-it is yet nearer to this than any other language of Europe is, being made up very largely of short indeclinable elements that can be readily combined into all needed logical arrangements. Languages are often roughly classed into two groups as showing two types of grammatical structure. Of the synthetic or inflected type Latin is one of the best examples, while of the analytic type English is a pronounced illustration. The active powers of English in making inflectional forms seem now to be reduced to the action of two or three very simple rules. The addition of s or es for plural nouns, of 's to denote possession, of er and est in the comparison of adjectives and of s, ed, ing, for verb forms, with est and eth in solemn or poetic style-these are all the present inflectional powers of English. But while the active inflections of English are few and simple, there are various remnants of old inflections still remaining that seem to us to-day not so much like real inflections, as irregular forms with which certain ideas have become associated. These give trouble not only to foreigners but to native speakers of the language, and mar the ideal simplicity of English for universal use. Yet the political and commercial growth of the English-speaking peoples, together with the highly analytical character of the language itself is giving it an increasing importance among the languages of the world. By the changes in its grammar English has acquired certain unique and high powers. The record has been one of progress, and not of decay or retrogression. The simple form allowing free interchange of grammatical functions gives peculiar vigor to style. With some loss of freedom of arrangement, there is nevertheless an economy of words, and greater idiomatic power and clearness. The power to transfer a word from one part of speech to another is remarkably developed in English. An especial prerogative seems to be the power to change almost any noun into a verb. Thus we "cable" our dispatches, and "phone" our verbal messages. We "table" a resolution and "bed" plants. Thus, also, Skakespeare's Portia uses the phrase, "Being so fathered and so husbanded." There are also large classes of words, such as the adjective pronouns, that belong equally to two parts of speech. The power of a word to perform several functions at the same time is most remarkably developed. A majority of the connective terms (including relative pronouns, relative adjectives, and conjunctive adverbs of various types) unite in the same sentence the offices of two or more parts of speech. English is very rich in its variety of verb phrases. Foreigners find it hard to learn these and Englishspeaking travelers find great difficulty in rendering all our verb phrases into the idiom of other tongues. Many irregular phrases, for instance, are in use as substitutes for the future tense. The following examples show different ways of expressing nearly the same future action. |