CHAPTER VI.

THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF SYNTAX.

A SENTENCE must be looked upon as the first creation of language. The SENTENCE is THE SYMBOL WHEREBY THE SPEAKER DENOTES THAT TWO OR MORE CONCEPTIONS HAVE COMBINED IN HIS MIND; and is, at the same time, the means of calling up the same combination in the mind of the hearer. Any group of words which accomplishes this is a sentence, and consequently A SENTENCE NEED NOT NECESSARILY CONTAIN A FINITE VERB, as is sometimes alleged. In Latin, and in the Slavonic languages, the word answering to _is_ is very commonly suppressed; and in Latin epistolary language whole sentences appear in which no copula occurs. Such combinations as _Omnia præclara rara_; _Suum cuique_; are perfectly intelligible. In English we often employ sentences like _You here? I grateful to you! This to me! Your very good health! Long life to you! Three cheers for him! Why all this noise?_--and, again, such proverbs as _Oak, smoke_; _Boys, noise_; _Ash, splash_: and these are just as much sentences as _The man lives_.

Language possesses the following means of expressing and specialising such combinations of ideas:--

(1) The simple juxtaposition of the words corresponding to the ideas; as, _All nonsense! You coward! Away, you rogue!_

(2) The order of the words; as, _There is John_, as contrasted with _John is there_; _John beats James_, as against _James beats John_.

(3) The emphasis laid upon these words; as in ‘Charles is _not_ ill.’

(4) The modulation of the voice; as when _Charles is ill_ is stated as a mere assertion, and ‘Charles is _ill_?’ in which case the same words are turned into an interrogative sentence by the mere change of pitch during the utterance of the last word.

(5) The time, which commonly corresponds with the emphasis and the pitch; the words in the previous sentences which are emphasised or spoken in a higher pitch respectively, will be found to occupy a longer time in utterance than the words composing the rest of the sentence.

(6) Link-words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs.

(7) The modification of words by inflection, in which (_a_) the inflectional forms may, without other aid, indicate the special kind of combination which it is desired to express, as in _patri librum dat_; _his books_; _father’s hat_: or (_b_) the connection between the words may be denoted by formal agreement; as, _anima candida_, _la bonne femme_.

The method of combining ideas by means of link-words and inflections is one which could only have set in after a certain period of historical development, for inflections and link-words are themselves of comparatively recent appearance in language; the other methods, on the contrary, must have been at the disposal of speakers from the very first development of language. It should, however, be noticed that 2-5 inclusive are not always consistently employed to represent simply the natural ideas as they present themselves, but are capable of a traditional development and, consequently, conventional application. For instance, in the Scandinavian languages the method of intonation is a purely artificial one;[27] and in Chinese, homonyms are distinguished by lowering or raising the voice.

In Chinese the tones are five: a monosyllable may be uttered with (1) an even high tone; with (2) a rising tone, as when we utter a word interrogatively; with (3) a falling tone, as when we say, _Go!_--with (4) an abrupt tone, as of demand; or with (5) an even low tone. These are the tones of the Mandarin dialect, which is the language of the cultivated classes; and, in their application, they are limited by euphonic laws, so that they cannot all be used with all syllables.[28]

The idea, or the nature of the combination intended to be expressed by the speaker, need not be completely represented by words in order to render fully intelligible the thought present in the mind of the speaker. Much less than a complete expression will often suffice.

If a sentence is the means of inducing a certain combination of at least two ideas in a hearer’s mind, a complete sentence must necessarily consist of at least two parts. We shall later discuss those sentences in which only one of the two parts is expressed in words, and shall here confine our attention to the complete sentence. Grammar teaches us that a complete sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Now, these grammatical categories are undoubtedly based upon a psychological distinction; but we shall soon see that it does not necessarily follow that the grammatical and psychological subject, or the grammatical and psychological predicate are always identical. The PSYCHOLOGICAL SUBJECT expresses the _conception which the speaker wishes to bring into the mind of the hearer_; the PSYCHOLOGICAL PREDICATE indicates _that which he wishes him to think about it_. This, and no more than this, is required to impart to any collection of words the nature of a sentence.

In grammar we commonly attach a much more restricted meaning to the terms ‘subject,’ ‘predicate,’ and ‘sentence.’ For instance, when the predicate is a noun, we demand that the normal sentence should express the comprehension of the subject in a wider class; as, _John is a boy_: or that it should express some quality of the subject; as, _John is good_: or, lastly, that the subject be identical with the predicate; as, _John is King of England_. But in reality we have, in many sentences, noun-predicates which show us relations of quite another kind, expressed by the mere collocation of subject and predicate, as in many proverbs and proverbial expressions; e.g., _One man, one vote_; _Much cry and little wool_; _First come, first served_; _A word to the wise_; _Like master, like man_; _Better aught than naught_; _Small pains, small gains_. This is the way in which children make themselves intelligible; as, _Papa hat_, for _Papa has a hat on_: and this is the way in which even adults endeavour to express their meaning to foreigners when the latter have not mastered more of the language than perhaps a few nouns, viz. by mentioning the objects which they wish to bring under the notice of their companions, and trusting to the situation to enable these to understand their meaning. We say, _Window open_, and we are understood by the foreigner to mean that the window is open, or that we wish it open, as the circumstances may show.

Originally, there was only one method of marking the difference between subject and predicate, viz. stress of tone; as, _e.g._, in the instance which we just gave, of ‘Window open.’ If these words are pronounced with a great stress on ‘window,’ we at once perceive them to mean, The thing which is (or which I wish to be) open is the _window_. If, on the other hand, we exclaim, ‘Window OPEN,’ with stress on ‘open,’ we at once convey the sense, The window is (or must be) _open_, not closed. This shows that, in the case of such isolated instances, the psychological predicate has the stronger accent, as being the more important part of the sentence, and the part containing the new matter. Again, the place held in the sentence by the subject and predicate respectively, may have afforded another means of distinction between the two. Different views have been held as to the respective precedence of subject and predicate in the consciousness of the speaker. The true view seems to be that the idea of the subject is the first to arise in the consciousness of the speaker; but as soon as he begins to speak, the idea of the predicate, on which he wishes to lay stress, may present itself with such force as to gain priority of expression, the subject not being added till afterwards. Take, for example, the opening of Keats’ Hyperion--

‘Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone.’

In this case, the superior emphasis gained by the position of the predicate in the first place causes the speaker to set it there, and is indicative of the superior importance which he attaches to it.[29]

Similarly, the subject is sometimes expressed first by a pronoun, whose relation only becomes clear to the listener when expressed more definitely at a later period; as--

‘She is coming, my dove, my dear.’

(Tennyson, Maud.)

‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love.’

(Wordsworth, The Lost Love.)

‘She was a staid little woman, was Grace.’

(Dickens, Battle of Life.)

This construction is extremely common in French; as, ‘Elle approche, cette mort inexorable;’ ‘Mais ce qu’elle ne disait point, cette pauvre bergère.’

The transposition, then, of subject and predicate may be considered an anomaly; but it is an anomaly of frequent occurrence, and is based on the importance which the predicate assumes in the mind of the speaker.

We have seen that single words may possess concrete and abstract significations,[30] and it is the same with sentences. A sentence is concrete when either the psychological subject or the psychological predicate is concrete; as, _This man is good_. But as far as the mere form goes, concrete and abstract sentences need not differ; for instance, an expression like _The horse is swift_ (which, when it does not refer to any particular horse, is an ‘abstract’ sentence) is identical in form with the expression _The horse is worthless_, which obviously refers to some particular horse, and is therefore ‘concrete.’ It is the situation and circumstances alone which mark the different nature of the sentences. There are, however, sentences which, with a concrete subject, have a partially abstract meaning. If, for instance, on hearing a lady sing, one remarks, _She sings too slowly_, the sentence is entirely concrete; but the same words may be used to express that the singer is in the habit of singing too slowly, in which case the predicate becomes abstract. Such sentences may be called ‘concrete abstract.’

It was stated that at least two members are necessary to make up a sentence. It seems, at first sight, a contradiction to this statement that we find sentences composed of merely a single word, or of a group of words forming a unit. The fact is that, in this case, one member of the sentence is assumed and finds no expression in language. Commonly this member is the logical subject. This subject may, however, be completed from what precedes, or is sufficiently clearly indicated by the circumstances of the case; or, again, in conversation, it is often necessary to take it from the words of the other speaker. The answer is frequently a predicate alone; the subject may be contained in the question, or the whole question may be the logical subject. If I say, _Who struck you?_ and the answer is _John_, the subject is, in this case, contained in the question, and the answer is, ‘The striker is John.’ If I say, _Was it you?_ the whole question is the logical subject, and the answer, _Yes_, _No_, _Certainly_, _Surely_, _Of course_, etc., is the logical predicate, as if the reply had been, ‘My being so is the case.’ Many other similar words may serve as the predicate to a sentence spoken by another, such as _Admittedly_, _All right_, _Very possibly_, _Strange enough_, _No wonder_, _Nonsense_, _Stuff_, _Balderdash_, etc.

In other cases, the surrounding circumstances, or what is called ‘the situation,’ forms the logical subject. If I say, ‘Welcome!’ and at the same time stretch out my hand to a new arrival, this is equivalent to saying, _You are welcome_, and _welcome_ is the logical predicate. In exclamations of sudden astonishment and alarm, such as _Fire!_ _Thieves! Murder! Help!_ it is the situation which is the logical subject. Challenges are instances of the same kind, e.g. _Straight on or not? Right or left? Back or forward?_ When the poet sings--

‘A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast,’

_the situation_, again, is the logical subject.

It should be noticed that, in the case of sentences expressed by a single member, the word which for the speaker is the psychological predicate becomes for the hearer the subject. A man, seeing a house on fire, cries ‘_Fire!_’ for him _the situation_ is the subject, and the idea of _fire_ is the predicate. The man who hears ‘_Fire!_’ cried before he himself sees it, conceives of _fire_ as the subject, and of _the situation_ as the predicate. Sentences may, however, occur in which both speaker and hearer apprehend what is uttered as the subject, and the situation as the predicate. Supposing, for instance, that two persons have agreed that the fire shall be extinguished before they go out, and one of them, observing the chimney smoking, cries out, ‘The fire!’ in this case the fire, the logical subject, is alone denoted, and the predicate is gathered by the person addressed from the situation, which is evident from the speaker’s gestures. If, again, two friends are travelling, and one remarks that the other is without his umbrella, the mere exclamation, ‘Your umbrella!’ suffices to make the latter complete the predicate. The vocative, again, pronounced as such, and intended to warn or entreat, suggests a psychological predicate which it lacks in words. On the other hand, by the side of a verb in the second person without subject pronoun, the vocative may be apprehended as the subject to the verb. If I say, ‘Come!’ the vocative (the person addressed) may be apprehended as the subject to this verb; if it be Charles, the meaning is, _Charles should come_.

It is a question much disputed, and not yet decided, whether impersonal verbs should be regarded as lacking a subject or not. If we regard the grammatical form alone, we cannot doubt that sentences like _It snows_, _It freezes_, _It is getting late_, have a subject. But there is no reason for alleging that this subject (_it_) can be treated as a logical subject; a logical subject must admit of a definite interpretation, and it is difficult to give one in this case. Again, in the case of impersonal verbs, like the Latin _pluit_, the Greek ὕει,, the Sanscrit _varśati_, (it rains), and the Lithuanian _sninga_ (it snows), the formal subject _may_ be found in the ‘personal’ termination, which is supposed to be the remnant of a word signifying _he_, _she_, or _it_. And it seems natural to recognise a formal subject in this case, but, at the same time, to notice that this formal subject stands apart from the psychological subject. It seems probable that an older stage of language existed, in which the bare verbal stem was set down; just as in Hungarian at the present day, where the third person of the present singular has no suffix, the first and second terminating in _-ok_ and _-s_ respectively. In Anglo-Saxon we find passive and other impersonal verbs used absolutely, without any subject expressed or understood; thus, _þám ylcan dóme e þé démoð eów byð gedémed_ (= With the same judgment that ye judge, to you (it) shall be judged); _him hungrede_ (= N.H.G. es hungerte ihn).[31] The psychological subject is, then, as little expressed in the sentence _It is hot_, as in the sentence _Fire_. But although it is not expressed, it would be unsafe to assume its non-existence, for here, as well as everywhere else, we have two ideas conjoined, in the same way as when we exclaim, _Fire!_ In this case there is, on the one side, the perception of a concrete phenomenon; on the other, the abstract idea of burning or of fire: and just as that perception is brought by our exclamation under the general idea of burning, so in the statement _It rains_, the perception of what is going on is by our words ranged under the general notion of water falling in drops from the sky. Our conclusion, therefore, is this: sentences like _Fire!_ as well as those like _It rains_, have both psychological subject and predicate; but in the former case no subject is expressed, whereas in the latter _a formal_ subject is employed, which, however, does but imperfectly, if indeed at all, correspond to the psychological one. This holds good unless we conceive of the formal subject, _It_, as standing for that which we see or that which is happening now. In this case, the peculiar nature of the impersonal verbs would be restricted to the difficulty, but not the impossibility, of explaining their subject.

We have defined the sentence as the expression for the connection of two ideas. Negative sentences may seem, at first sight, to contradict this, since they denote a separation. But the ideas must have met in the consciousness of the speaker before judgment can be pronounced whether they agree or disagree. In fact, the negative sentence may be defined as the statement that the attempt to establish a connection between the ideas has failed. The negative sentence is, in any case, of later date than the positive, and though, in all known languages, negation now finds a special expression, it is possible to imagine that negative sentences might be found in some primitive stage of language, wherein the negative sense was indicated by the stress alone and the accompanying gestures. Cf. such sentences as ‘_I_ do this?’ or ‘Eine ego ut adverser?’ (Ter., And., I. v. 28.)[32] At all events sentences of assertion and sentences of demand border on each other very closely, and can be expressed by the same forms of language. The different shades of meaning attaching to the words can be recognised only by the different tones conveying the feeling meant to be indicated.

Wishes and demands, again, touch each other very closely; and it is natural to suppose that, in an early state of linguistic consciousness, a wish would have been equivalent to a demand. A sentence like ‘Heads up!’ expresses a demand or wish, but it might equally convey an assertion. We can say perfectly well, ‘_They entered, heads up_,’ or ‘_erect_;’ and we hear quite commonly, _Heads up!_ meaning, ‘Hold your heads up!’ And indeed such sentences of demand, or imperative sentences, would naturally be the first to present themselves to primitive mankind, whose utterances, like those of children nowadays, would naturally take the shape of requests that their immediate needs might be satisfied. We employ many such sentences at the present day, such as _Eyes right!_ _Attention! Hats off! This way! All aboard! Joking apart_; _An eye for an eye_; _Peace to his ashes! A health to all good lasses!_ _Away with him! Out with him!_ Then, again, there are sentences composed of a single linguistic member; such as _Hush! Quick! Slow!_ _Forward! Up! Off! To work!_

Two kinds of interrogatory sentences must be distinguished: (1) those that put in question _one only_ of the members of which they are composed, and (2) such as contain nothing affirmative, but are _purely_ interrogatory in their nature. No satisfactory names have as yet been given to these two classes, but a study of one or two examples will show that the difference is real, and will tend to illustrate it. Such a sentence as _Who has done this?_ or _Where did you get that?_ no doubt asks a question as to the name of the doer of a certain deed, or the place where a particular object was obtained, but, at the same time, certainly assumes that the interrogator takes for granted that a certain deed was done by some one, or a certain object obtained by the person addressed. In fact, the form of the interrogation is to some extent affirmative. No such affirmation, however, is present in such questions as _Can you speak French? Will you come? Have you money?_ etc.

Of these two classes of questions, the former are certainly of the more recent origin, for they demand the employment of an interrogative pronoun or adverb, with which the latter can dispense. It is noteworthy that in I.E. languages these interrogative words are at the same time indefinite; and it is hard to decide which of the two meanings should be regarded as the original. On the one hand, it is easy to conceive how a word bearing an interrogative meaning could assume an indefinite one. If we are accustomed to employ the word _who_ when we wish to know who a person is, but are uncertain, we may easily proceed to apply this word in a case where we are uncertain (or wish to appear so), though we do not ask for information. _A who-person has done this_, is not and has never been an English method of expressing, ‘Some one has done it.’[33] But it is conceivable that, at some stage of the I.E. languages, our linguistic ancestors may have adopted a similar mode of expression. On the other hand, it is as easy to imagine that a word expressive of uncertainty, or absence of knowledge or information, should be used to indicate the desire for it. In fact, we actually do employ a method akin to this when we use the indefinite _any_ to show that we desire to know; _e.g._, if, upon entering a dark room, we ask, _Any one here?_ This, of course, is not, and never has been, in English, equivalent to ‘_Who_ is here?’--but still it is quite conceivable that at some early linguistic period this transition has actually been made. Could it be demonstrated that it ever actually was made, the transition from the questions in our second category, to those falling under our first, would be explained. For suppose the question _Is any (one) here?_ (an order of words to which we now are bound, but which, as we shall see, was not always the necessary order) to be put as _Any (one) is here?_ the proximity of this sentence to _Who is here?_ is at once evident.

Questions with an interrogative pronoun stand nearer still to questions with an indefinite pronoun where a negative answer is expected, as appears when we set _What can I answer?_ by the side of _Can I answer anything?_--_Who will do this?_ by the side of _Will any one do this?_--_Where is such a man?_ by the side of _Is there such a man?_ The question to which the simple answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is expected is in many languages expressed by a special particle. Thus _ne_ in Latin serves to mark an interrogation, and the stress is laid upon the word to which the interrogative particle is affixed. At present, the Teutonic and Romance languages almost universally express interrogation by the order of the words; but this inverted order by no means necessarily involves interrogation, and in former times was very frequently employed in affirmative clauses. Thus, for instance, in A.S.--

‘Ne hýrde ic cymlîcor ceól gegyrwan:’ Not heard I comelier keel to have been prepared = I never heard ... (Beowulf, 38).

‘Saegde se ðe cûðe’ (ibid., 90): Said he that knew = He ... said.

‘Waes seó hwíl micel’ (ibid., 146): Was the time great = The time was long.

Even now we have many interrogations in which the stress or tone alone marks their nature; as, _Any one there? All right? Ready? A glass of beer, sir?_ (spoken by a waiter). We can thus conceive it possible that, for a long time, sentences may have existed without any sign except the tone to indicate their interrogative nature.

Simple interrogative sentences hold in some ways a middle position between positive and negative sentences of assertion. They may, in fact, be thrown into a positive or a negative form at choice; the positive form naturally presenting itself as the simpler, while the function of the negative form is to modify the question pure and simple. Such modifications may, indeed, cause the interrogation to take something of the character of the sentence of assertion. We may, for instance, mention a fact and expect it to be confirmed by another. In this case, we may employ a negative interrogatory sentence; as, _Were you not there? I thought I saw you!_ Or we may employ a positive interrogatory form of sentence, showing by the tone of query alone the nature of the sentence; as, _You were there, I think? You are quite happy?_ We thus see, by examples taken from both the positive and negative side, how nearly the sentences of interrogation touch the sentences of assertion.

Another way in which sentences of interrogation and assertion approach one another is in the expression of admiration or surprise. To express such feelings we may employ either (1) the interrogative or (2) the assertive form of sentence, marking the latter, however, by a tone expressive of interrogation. Thus we may say, _Is Francis dead?_ or express the same idea by saying, _Francis is really dead?_ emphasising the word _really_ and raising the voice at the last word. Thus, too, we can ask the direct question, _Are you here again?_ or employ the assertive form, _You are here again?_[34]

Sentences expressive of surprise without a verb, may be classed either with the interrogative form, or with the assertive form with the interrogatory tone. They occupy a neutral ground between the two. Thus, _You my long lost brother? What, that to me? What, here already?_ _So soon?_[35] And infinitival clauses are similarly used; as, _I to herd with savage races! etc._ (Tennyson, Locksley Hall); _Mene incepto desistere victam?_ (Vergil, Æneid, I. 37). This use is very common in French; cf. _Moi vous abandonner!_ (Andrieux); _Et dire qu’à moi seul je vins à bout de toutes ces prévisions!_ (Daudet). We find, also, expressions of surprise in which the psychological subject and predicate are connected by ‘and:’ _So young and so worn out? A maid and be so martial?_ (Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI., II. i.).[36] The expression of surprise is sometimes weakened into a mere conventional formula for opening a conversation; as, _Always in good spirits? Busy as always?_ _Busy yet?_

The primitive form of expression without any finite verb is especially common in the indignant repudiation of an assertion; as, _I a liar?_ ‘She ask _my_ pardon?’ _How! not know the friend that served you? Ego lanista? Io dir bugie?_

What is vaguely known as the rhetorical class of questions arises from a desire, on the part of the interrogator, to make the person addressed reflect upon and admit the truth of information indirectly contained in the interrogation. Such are the questions in some catechisms, and those in the ‘Guide to Knowledge;’ e.g., _Do not mulberry trees often bear two crops of leaves in a year? Must not every substance be prepared before it receives the colour?_ This use of the interrogation and interrogative form is, of course, of much more recent date than the other common usages.

The foregoing consideration of the sentence in its simplest form, as consisting of simple subject and predicate only, will have prepared us for the study of the development of all other syntactical relations from this the only primitive one. For all other extensions of the sentence--with the single exception of the copulative union of two simple ones--arise from the repetition of the relation between subject and predicate.[37] The copulative extension is now commonly indicated by means of conjunctions or other particles; _e.g._, ‘John wrote _and_ Alfred was reading:’ but even now mere co-ordination is sufficient; as, _John wrote, Alfred read_; _He came, he saw, he conquered_; _One rises, the other falls_; _Men die, books live_; etc. It is therefore easy to imagine that, at one time, this mere juxtaposition, which seems to us an exceptional usage, may have been the regular one.

Among the other extensions, two main cases are to be distinguished, as either (1) two equivalent members combine in the same clause with another (_i.e._ two subjects with one predicate, or two predicates with a single subject); or[38] (2) a combination (_a_) of subject and predicate becomes, as such, the _subject_ or predicate of some other word or combination (_b_), which latter is then the _predicate_ or subject to (_a_) the former.

It is not easy to illustrate these extensions by instances drawn from modern English: nay, it is impossible if we insist upon invariably framing sentences which the present state of our language would regard as admissible. But we must remember that we are now attempting to trace the probable development of our syntactical relations, or rather of our method of expressing the various syntactical relations, as it proceeded during a very primitive stage of the history of language. At this period the speakers were struggling to find intelligible utterance for their thoughts, which were themselves but primitive, confused, childish. All the examples which we have given heretofore should be regarded therefore merely as illustrating processes common in very remote linguistic periods, and not as instances of what is usual at the present period. We have found it necessary on previous occasions to illustrate our arguments by combining English words in a way which is not and has never been English,--the advantage of such illustration being that it aided us to understand, at least in a certain measure, the mode in which our linguistic ancestors of ages long past thought. To this artifice we shall find it necessary to revert somewhat largely, as the analytical character of modern English, with its necessarily fixed order of words, has effaced most traces of this primitive state of language.

We should have an instance of the first main case of extension mentioned if, after saying, e.g., _John reads_, we remembered that _Alfred_ too was reading, and then merely added this second subject. We have shown that we must not suppose that _originally_ the order of the words was, as is now invariably the case in modern English, (1) subject, (2) verb: so that _John read_ (without inflection, _read_ being a mere name of the action) was just as correct as _read John_, but not more so. If we clearly grasp this, we can fully understand that such a combination as _John read Alfred_ (or, indeed, _John, Alfred read_) might once have been intelligible for what we should now express by _John and Alfred are reading_.

Similarly, a little linguistic imagination will suffice to enable us to conceive of the production by those primitive language-makers of a sentence like _Sing_(ing) _John dance_(ing) to express _John sings and dances_. Such constructions of two equal parts in combination with a third might be symbolised. Thus we might put _s_ for subject, _p_ for predicate, then the symbolisation would run _sps_, _ssp_, _psp_, or _spp_, etc., or _a_ + _b_ + _a_.[39]

In the first fictitious example, the two subjects stood BOTH IN PRECISELY THE SAME RELATION to the predicate, and in the second the two predicates stood in exactly the same relation to the subject. In such cases, the facts may be described just as correctly and just as completely by a sentence consisting of two parts only, viz., a compound subject, consisting of the two joined by a copula, + the predicate (or subject + compound predicate). Of these two modes of expression, closely allied as they are, the one appears to us strange and, indeed, impossible,--the other so familiar that we can hardly imagine a state of language in which both alike may have been regular. On the other hand, we have no difficulty in seeing how the two systems have become confused.

All traces, therefore, of the construction which we have now lost are interesting and worth studying. A sentence like Cicero’s _Consules, prætores, tribuni plebis, senatus, Italia cuncta a vobis deprecata est_ (= Consuls, prætors, tribunes of the plebs, the senate, all Italy implored of you) is constructed much upon the model of the method now obsolete. In this case, however, the construction seems to us less unnatural, because the subject last named in the sentence, viz., _Italia_, may be considered to include all the others and to stand alone in their stead: hence it is that we find the verb in the singular, and hence the feminine gender of _deprecata_ (implored). In another passage Cicero says, _Speusippus et Xenocrates et Polemo et Cantor nihil ab Aristotele dissentit_. This would be a perfect instance of _ssp_ were it not for the insertion of _et_, which (due, as it is, to confusion with the compound subject in the sentence consisting of two parts only) would lead us to expect that the verb would be placed in the plural. It is, however, precisely this fact that the verb stands in the singular which demonstrates that it belongs as predicate to each subject separately, and not to the group indicated by the enumerated subjects jointly. In M.H.G. we meet with such constructions, especially those where _one_ part--as the subject, for instance--is placed _between_ the two others; as, _Dô spranc von dem gesidele her Hagene alsô sprach_ = ‘Then sprang from the seat hither Hagen thus spoke.’ In A.S., too, we find occasionally a somewhat similar construction, as in Beowulf, 90-92: _Saegde se ðe cúðe ... cwæð ðæt se Ælmihtiga_ = ‘Said he who knew ... spoke that the Almighty.’ If we change the order, and add _and_, we transform this sentence into one of two parts: SUBJECT, _he who knew_; PREDICATE (compound), _said and spoke_. Even in modern language this construction is not wholly without parallels. Cf. _Another love succeeds, another race_ (Pope, Essay on Man, iii., line 130); cf. also, _Dust thou art, to dust returnest_ (Longfellow).

Or, again, we find sentences where the two equal parts both follow or both precede. _He ðæs frófre gebád, wéox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum ðáh_ (He received consolation [compensation], grew up under the clouds [= on earth], increased in fame) (Beowulf, 7); _He weepeth, wayleth, maketh sory cheere_ (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 3618); _Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?_ (Shakespeare, Richard II., Act III., ii., 141); _Of ðære heortan cumað yfele geðancas, mannslyhtas, unriht-hæmedu, forligru, stale, léase gewitnyssa, tællíce word_ (Matt. xv. 19).

But it is also quite conceivable that (REMEMBERING THE EXTENDED MEANING WHICH, FOR THE PRIMITIVE STAGE OF LANGUAGE, WE MUST ATTACH TO THESE TERMS) two subjects should come into the consciousness as related to the same predicate, even though that RELATION is OF a very DIFFERENT NATURE in the case of the one from that in the other. To illustrate this, let us remember that the noun must once have been uninflected, or, at least, no definite system of inflection had been evolved; the verb had a much vaguer and less definite meaning than at present; the order of words had not yet begun to be significant; that _John strike_, as well as _strike John_, or words equivalent in meaning, could stand for _John strikes_, or _John has been striking_; nay, even, if only accompanied by appropriate gestures, for _John was struck_, or _John is being struck_.

Even at present, in the case of a verb like _to smell_, the relation between the subject and predicate differs essentially when we say, _I smell the flower_; or, _The flower smells_. An effort on the part of our linguistic imagination is again needed, but the effort need not be very difficult, in order to enable us to realise that in a sentence like _John smell flower_, or _John strike Alfred_, BOTH nouns may once have been felt as standing in the subject relation to the predicate; so that, again, in the latter sentence, gestures or circumstances were needed in order to make it clear who was the acting subject and who the suffering subject, whereas, in the former sentence, no such confusion could arise.

If we take a sentence like ‘Give him a book,’ we feel both the person and the thing as _objects_ of the action; and observation of this fact will enable us further to understand still more clearly that, at an older period of language, two subjects may have stood in the same sentence with the same predicate, though the relation between them and that predicate was not the same. It may further aid us to understand how, when once one of these subjects had developed into the grammatical category of OBJECT, the possible relations of such objects were so varied that the differentiation into various grammatical categories of accusative, dative, etc., becomes intelligible and natural.

The object, when once developed, may and often does become, by the nature of its relation to the predicate, a mere limitation or definition of such predicate, instead of remaining a member of the sentence equivalent in importance and weight with the subject, as it is, _e.g._, in such sentence as _John strikes Alfred_: whilst in a sentence like _John runs a mile_, the object is a mere attribute to the predicate, and the sentence can no longer be looked upon as tripartite, but must be regarded as consisting of two parts, _i.e._ (1) the subject, and (2) the predicate with its extension. These two cases, however, are not separated by any clear line of demarcation.

And just as the predicate may receive such a defining word, so may the subject and the object developed from it. These now commonly occur in the shape of attributes, whether substantival or adjectival, and genitives of substantives; as, _The cattle are the farmer’s best_; _The cattle are beautifully fat_. This could not be expressed at all in languages which have as yet developed no inflections: these could merely employ the defining word in juxtaposition to the word defined; as, in Chinese, _T’su sin heu sin t’u ye_, literally meaning ‘Origin Sin prince Sin spring _final part_,’ _i.e._ ‘Originally the prince of Sin sprang from Sin,’ _i.e._ ‘was born of a woman of the Kingdom of Sin.’ The fact that the determinant attached to the subject is not a predicate can then only be discovered by the presence of a third word which is detached from the two words that together make up the subject by a greater stress or, it may be, by a slight pause. Thus, if we say, _liber pulcher_, it is impossible to say whether _pulcher_ is a predicate or merely the attribute to _liber_, unless we add some verb like _est_ or _habetur_, or unless the custom of the language leads us to apprehend _pulcher_, from its position, as a predicate.

In truth the determinant, in this case ‘pulcher,’ is nothing but a degraded predicate, uttered not so much for _its own_ sake, _i.e._ for the information it conveys, as in order to assign to this group of subject and determinant a further predicate, which predicate then conveys the real information; as, _Liber pulcher nobis gaudio est: Hæc res agetur nobis, vobis fabula_ (Plautus, Captivi, Prologue.)

We have stated that the determinant is merely a degenerate or degraded predicate. The meaning of this statement may be most easily apprehended from cases in which the finite verb is affected by this degeneration, so that of the two predicates one might be logically replaced by a relative sentence; as, _There is a devil haunts thee_ (Henry IV., Pt. I., Act II., iv.); _I have a mind presages me_ (Merchant of Venice, I. i.); _He groneth as our bore lith in our stie_ (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 7411); _And was war of a pistel stood under a wal_ (Tale of Gamelyn); _I’ll have none shall touch what I shall eat_ (Massinger, City Madam, I. i.); _I can tell you news will comfort you_ (ibid., III. i.); _The price is high shall buy thy vengeance_ (Middleton, Spanish Gipsy, V. i. 443).

A similar construction was found in the older stages of the Romance languages; cf. O.Ital. _Non vi rimasse un sol non lacrimassi_ (‘There remained none did not cry’); O.Fr. _Or n’a baron ne li envoit son fil_ (‘There is no baron does not send him his son’). Nor must we suppose that this construction is one peculiar to the Indo-European languages, and entirely inherited from an early stage in their development. Its use in Teutonic languages becomes more general towards the end of the Middle Ages than before that time. But even in Semitic languages like Arabic, we meet with expressions such as ‘I passed by a man slept.’

In the above instances, we have seen that the finite verb could sink into the position of a mere attributival determinant. In other words, in such a sentence as ‘There is a devil haunts thee,’ the very words show that the important word, in which the chief information lies, is _devil_, while the verb _haunts_ might almost as well be expressed by an adjectival attributive, as ‘haunting.’ It is plain that if a verb could thus easily lose its predicatival character, a predicate bearing no distinguishing marks of its verbal character could, with even more facility, be similarly degraded. The border-land between _meus_ in ‘liber meus’ (= the book is mine) and _liber meus amittitur_ is a very narrow one.

It is very necessary to distinguish between the various functions of the determinant--the differences in which, however, commonly remain undenoted by us by any corresponding verbal difference, though they are, logically speaking, of the greatest importance. The determinant may leave the extent of the subject untouched; in other words, the epithet may apply to all the objects or ideas which the substantive by itself, or limited as it is by other circumstances, denotes: this is the case in _mortal man_; _the almighty God_. On the other hand, it may serve to restrict the meaning of the substantive; as when we say, _old houses_, _an old house_, _a_ (or _the_) _son of the king_, _the journey to Paris_, _Charles the Great_. Similarly, if we say, _the old house_, meaning to contrast it with _the new one_, it is obvious that we individualise the meaning of _house_: while the expression would come under the first head in a sentence like _Lo, the place where I was born! Humble as it is, I love the old house_. In the latter class of instances, the determinant must be expressed, because without it the predicate is meaningless or untrue. If we say, _A journey obliges us to cross the channel_, we ascribe by these words to all journeys what is true of some only, _e.g._, of a journey to Paris. In the first category, in considering the epithet, we may notice that it may already be known as commonly attached to the word to which it is appended, as in _This red wine_ (the speaker holding it up) _I prefer to many more expensive ones_; or it may tell us something new, as in the case of _That poor man has no children_, where the sentence without _poor_ would state the same fact, the word _poor_ conveying additional information. In this case it approaches the nature of a true predicate, and we often employ a relative sentence to express it: thus, instead of saying, _Poor Charles has had to emigrate_; if we wished to emphasise the adjective, we should say, _Charles, who was poor_, _etc._ Again, the determinant need stand in no direct relation to the predicate, as in our above example, where the fact that the man has no children is independent of his being poor; but it may also stand to the predicate in the relation of cause and effect, as in _The cruel man would not listen to his victim’s prayers_, where the determinant ‘cruel’ is applied _owing to_ the fact mentioned in the predicate.

We have now seen that attributes are degenerated predicates. There are sentences in which the determinant has, as yet, a somewhat greater independence than is the case with the ordinary attributes, and which, therefore, may be said to represent a transition stage. In a sentence like _He arrived safe and sound_, the determinant _safe and sound_ is still predicate, in the wider sense of the term, to _he_, but subordinate to the other predicate _arrived_, which alone in present grammar would bear this name. _Safe and sound_ are, IN COMPARISON WITH _arrived_, a mere attribute to _he_, and nowadays such determinants are, for the linguistic consciousness, what has been very correctly termed PREDICATIVE ATTRIBUTES. These are distinguished from ordinary attributes by a greater freedom in the place they may occupy in the sentence, and thereby manifest their greater independence.

Predicative attributes are very frequently, but not always, adjectives: we might, _e.g._, replace the one in our example by a prepositional phrase like _in safety and in good health_. In Modern High German, where the attributive adjective is declined in agreement with its noun, the near affinity of this construction to the predicate shows itself in the use of the uninflected form of the adjective as in the case of the predicate. Thus we say, _Er is gesund nach Paris gekommen_: just as we say, _Er ist gesund_.

When once all these various determinations have been developed from original subjects or predicates, the sentence may become further complicated, (1) by a combination of a determined and a determining element becoming determined by a new element,--as in _All good men_ (i.e. _good men_ + _all_); _John’s eldest daughter_ (i.e. either _eldest daughter_ + _John’s_ or _John’s daughter_ + _eldest_, according to circumstances); _He falls easily into a passion_,--to be understood, _He falls into a passion_ + _easily_: (2) this combination may itself serve as a determinant,--as in _Very good children_ (i.e. _children_ + _very good_); _An all-sacrificing love_ (i.e. _a love_ + _all sacrificing_); _He speaks very well_ (i.e. _He speaks_ + _very well_); or (3) several determining elements may be joined to one determinate,--as in _Bad gloomy weather_; _He walks well and fast_: or (4) several determinate elements may be joined to a single determinant, just as several subjects may be joined to one predicate, or several predicates to a single subject,--e.g., _John’s hat and stick_; _He hits right and left_.

These constructions are not always distinctly separable: for instance, a phrase like _big round hats_ may be understood as _hats that are big and that are also round_ (constr. No. 3,) or we may take it as _round hats that are big_ (constr. No. 1). Though the results of both constructions would be the same, the ways in which these results are obtained are logically distinct; just as the result of 3 × 5 is identical with 5 × 3, though the genesis of that result varies according as we have groups of five and take three of such groups, or as there are groups of three and we put five of them together.

We have now considered the simple sentence and its extensions according to the formula _a_ + _b_ + _a_ (see p. 110) in all their bearings and consequences. We said, however, that besides extensions on this plan, there were others in which some combination of subject and predicate became itself the predicate or subject to another member of a sentence.

This we may symbolise by (_a_ + _b_) + _a_.[40]

We here enter on the ground covered by the complex sentence; but if the reader has understood what has been already said, he will see that, if we consider this division into simple and complex sentences from a historical and psychological point of view, no clear line of demarcation is to be found. It is indeed true that, as long as we agree that no set of words shall be called a sentence unless it contains a finite verb, a definite criterion exists. If, however, we fully realise that a combination of noun and adjective, for instance, is as much subject and predicate as noun and verb (cf. _homo vivus_ with _homo vivit_), we shall likewise feel that ‘The good man lives’ is a complex sentence, one predicate of which has degenerated: it must accordingly be admitted to differ in degree, but not in kind, from ‘The man who is good lives’, where, again, the complexity is of precisely the same nature as in the phrase _round straw hats_, if we were to say, for instance, ‘Round straw hats are pretty, but round felt hats are ugly.’

Combinations on the plan (_a_ + _b_) + _a_ are common enough: _I think you are mistaken_; _The doctor saw I was not well_; _Remember you owe me sixpence_: in which cases the subject and predicate (_a_ + _b_) serve as object to another predicate.

There are, however, other constructions conceivable which would be more strictly conformable to the scheme; such as _I owe you sixpence is true_, or _You are in danger grieves me_; where we now use the so-called conjunction _that_, which is originally a pronoun standing as a repetition or a resumption of the subject--‘_That_ I owe you sixpence is true’ being originally ‘I owe you sixpence; _that_ is true.’

To find such constructions as _I owe, etc., is true_ in actual use, we must go back to older stages of language, _e.g._, to Hans Sachs, the German shoemaker--poet--dramatist (1494-1576), who framed such sentences as _A couple (man and wife) lived in peace for seventy years vexed the devil_, for _A couple lived, etc., and this vexed, etc._;[41] _The afflicted woman stabbed herself tells Boccaccio_. In the former of these the sentence is subject, in the latter, object. A sentence (_a_ + _b_) serving as actual predicate we might illustrate by remembering that in Latin _Imperator felix_ may mean ‘The emperor _is_ happy,’ and then using _Imperator qui capite est operto_ for the emperor’s answer in the well-known anecdote--‘The emperor _is_ he who has his hat on his head.’

Remembering this, and always carefully remembering the extended meaning of the terms subject and predicate, we realise that in the common construction like _You are always grumbling, a bad habit_, we have really, in the so-called apposition _a bad habit_, a predicate.

In this way we can follow up the development of the sentence from its simplest to its most complex form. After thus studying the hypotaxis in all its bearings, we need only touch briefly on the subject of parataxis.

Though, of course, it may occur that we have reason to make in immediate succession two or more statements which are absolutely independent of one another, this will be naturally rare; and, when it happens, we are not likely to combine these statements into one compound clause. Even in the nearest approach to such a case, where we enumerate different but analogous or contrasting facts, the sentences are not absolutely disconnected and independent: cf. _She is crooked, he is lame_. Here, undoubtedly, more is expressed by means of the parataxis than the mere enumeration of the two facts; an additional significance being given to each by the very analogy between the two cases. Similarly in _He is laughing, she weeps_, where the contrast is an additional fact expressed by the coupling of the sentences. Still, the approach to independence is here undoubtedly very close. We already depart a step further from mere co-ordination in the case where--in grammatically absolutely identical manner--two or more sentences are co-ordinated in a story; as, e.g., _I arrived at twelve o’clock; I went to the hotel; they told me there was not a single room to be had; I went to another hotel_, etc., where each sentence to a certain extent expresses a cause or defines the time of occurrence of the fact which is mentioned in the next. Now, though this additional meaning is clearly there, it is a meaning which at the moment of uttering each clause is not necessarily, nay not probably clearly present in the speaker’s mind: we might more fully and perhaps more correctly, though undoubtedly very clumsily, express the course of thought by: _I arrived ..., and when I had arrived, I went ..., but when I had gone to the hotel, they told ..., and because they told ... I went to another, etc._

We have, then, in our example a combination of independence with interdependence which is the first step on the road towards subordination of one member to the other.

Instead of the clumsy method of repetition which, if ever, is of course but very seldom employed, we give partial expression to this mutual relationship by demonstrative pronouns or verbs. (1) _I arrived ..., then I went ..., there they told ..., etc._ (2) _I met a boy; he told me...._ (3) _He bought a house; that was old._ (4) _He told a lie; that was a pity._ A careful study of these examples,--in the third of which the demonstrative pronoun refers (as in the second) to one part only of the preceding sentence, whilst in the fourth it relates to the whole statement made in the former part,--will show (_a_) the method of development of demonstrative into relative pronoun; (_b_) that of demonstrative pronoun into conjunction--_It was a pity that he told a lie_; (_c_) the concomitant change from parataxis to hypotaxis--from _He bought a house_, + _that (house) was old_, to _He bought a house that was old_ = ‘which was old.’

A peculiar kind of paratactical subordination occurs where an imperative or interrogative clause loses its independence and becomes an expression of condition; e.g., _Go there yourself_, (_and_ or _then_) _you will see that I am right_, or _Do you want to do it? then make haste_.