CHAPTER XVIII

PROGRESS

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

XVIII.--§ 1. Nominal Forms.

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

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

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

XVIII.--§ 2. Irregularities Original.

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

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

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

XVIII.--§ 3. Syntax.

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

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

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

XVIII.--§ 4. Objections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVIII.--§ 5. Word Order.

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

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

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

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

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

and in Longfellow’s translation from Logau:

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

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

XVIII.--§ 6. Gender.

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

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

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