Part 21

Some of the verbs of the vulgate show the end products of language movements that go back to the Anglo-Saxon period, and even beyond. There is, for example, the disappearance of the final /t/ in such words as /crep/, /slep/, /lep/, /swep/ and /wep/. Most of these, in Anglo-Saxon, were strong verbs. The preterite of /to sleep/ (/slâepan/), for example, was /slēp/, and that of /to weep/ was /weop/. But in the course of time both /to sleep/ and /to weep/ acquired weak preterite endings, the first becoming /slâepte/ and the second /wepte/. This weak conjugation was itself degenerated. Originally, the inflectional suffix had been /-de/ or /-ede/ and in some cases /-ode/, and the vowels were always pronounced. The wearing down process that set in in the twelfth century disposed [Pg201] of the final /e/, but in certain words the other vowel survived for a good while, and we still observe it in such archaisms as /belovéd/. Finally, however, it became silent in other preterites, and /loved/, for example, began to be pronounced (and often written) as a word of one syllable: /lov'd/.[43] This final /d/-sound now fell upon difficulties of its own. After certain consonants it was hard to pronounce clearly, and so the sonant was changed into the easier surd, and such words as /pushed/ and /clipped/ became, in ordinary conversation, /pusht/ and /clipt/. In other verbs the /t/-sound had come in long before, with the degenerated weak ending, and when the final /e/ was dropped their stem vowels tended to change. Thus arose such forms as /slept/. In vulgar American another step is taken, and the suffix is dropped altogether. Thus, by a circuitous route, verbs originally strong, and for many centuries hovering between the two conjugations, have eventually become strong again.

The case of /helt/ is probably an example of change by false analogy. During the thirteenth century, according to Sweet,[44] "/d/ was changed to /t/ in the weak preterites of verbs [ending] in /rd/, /ld/ and /nd/." Before that time the preterite of /sende/ (/send/) had been /sende/; now it became /sente/. It survives in our modern /sent/, and the same process is also revealed in /built/, /girt/, /lent/, /rent/ and /bent/. The popular speech, disregarding the fact that /to hold/ is a strong verb, arrives at /helt/ by imitation. In the case of /tole/, which I almost always hear in place of /told/, there is a leaping of steps. The /d/ is got rid of without any transitional use of /t/. So also, perhaps, in /swole/, which is fast displacing /swelled/. /Attackted/ and /drownded/ seem to be examples of an effort to dispose of harsh combinations by a contrary process. Both are very old in English. /Boughten/ and /dreampt/ [Pg202] present greater difficulties. Lounsbury says that /boughten/ probably originated in the Northern [/i. e./, Lowland Scotch] dialect of English, "which ... inclined to retain the full form of the past participle," and even to add its termination "to words to which it did not properly belong."[45] I record /dreampt/ without attempting to account for it. I have repeatedly heard a distinct /p/-sound in the word.

The general tendency toward regularization is well exhibited by the new verbs that come into the language constantly. Practically all of them show the weak conjugation, for example, /to phone/, /to bluff/, /to rubber-neck/, /to ante/, /to bunt/, /to wireless/, /to insurge/ and /to loop-the-loop/. Even when a compound has as its last member a verb ordinarily strong, it remains weak itself. Thus the preterite of /to joy-ride/ is not /joy-rode/, nor even /joy-ridden/, but /joy-rided/. And thus /bust/, from /burst/, is regular and its preterite is /busted/, though /burst/ is irregular and its preterite is the verb itself unchanged. The same tendency toward regularity is shown by the verbs of the /kneel/-class. They are strong in English, but tend to become weak in colloquial American. Thus the preterite of /to kneel/, despite the example of /to sleep/ and its analogues, is not /knel'/, nor even /knelt/, but /kneeled/. I have even heard /feeled/ as the preterite of /to feel/, as in "I /feeled/ my way," though here /felt/ still persists. /To spread/ also tends to become weak, as in "he /spreaded/ a piece of bread." And /to peep/ remains so, despite the example of /to leap/. The confusion between the inflections of /to lie/ and those of /to lay/ extends to the higher reaches of spoken American, and so does that between /lend/ and /loan/. The proper inflections of /to lend/ are often given to /to loan/, and so /leaned/ becomes /lent/, as in "I /lent/ on the counter." In the same way /to set/ has almost completely superseded /to sit/, and the preterite of the former, /set/, is used in place of /sat/. But the perfect participle (which is also the disused preterite) of /to sit/ has survived, as in "I have /sat/ there." /To speed/ and /to shoe/ have become regular, not only because of the general tendency toward the weak conjugation, but also for logical reasons. The prevalence of speed contests [Pg203] of various sorts, always to the intense interest of the proletariat, has brought such words as /speeder/, /speeding/, /speed-mania/, /speed-maniac/ and /speed-limit/ into daily use, and /speeded/ harmonizes with them better than the stronger /sped/. As for /shoed/, it merely reveals the virtual disappearance of the verb in its passive form. An American would never say that his wife was well /shod/; he would say that she wore good shoes. /To shoe/ suggests to him only the shoeing of animals, and so, by way of /shoeing/ and /horse-shoer/, he comes to /shoed/. His misuse of /to learn/ for /to teach/ is common to most of the English dialects. More peculiar to his speech is the use of /to leave/ for /to let/. Charters records it in "Washington /left/ them have it," and there are many examples of it in Lardner. /Spit/, in American, has become invariable; the old preterite, /spat/, has completely disappeared. But /slit/, which is now invariable in English (though it was strong in Old English and had both strong and weak preterites in Middle English), has become regular in American, as in "she /slitted/ her skirt."

In studying the American verb, of course, it is necessary to remember always that it is in a state of transition, and that in many cases the manner of using it is not yet fixed. "The history of language," says Lounsbury, "when looked at from the purely grammatical point of view, is little else than the history of corruptions." What we have before us is a series of corruptions in active process, and while some of them have gone very far, others are just beginning. Thus it is not uncommon to find corrupt forms side by side with orthodox forms, or even two corrupt forms battling with each other. Lardner, in the case of /to throw/, hears "if he had /throwed/"; my own observation is that /threw/ is more often used in that situation. Again, he uses "the rottenest I ever seen /gave/"; my own belief is that /give/ is far more commonly used. The conjugation of /to give/, however, is yet very uncertain, and so Lardner may report accurately. I have heard "I /given/" and "I would of /gave/," but "I /give/" seems to be prevailing, and "I would of /give/" with it, thus reducing /to give/ to one invariable form, like those of /to cut/, /to hit/, /to put/, /to cost/, /to hurt/ and /to spit/. My table of verbs shows [Pg204] various other uncertainties and confusions. The preterite of /to hear/ is /heerd/; the perfect may be either /heerd/ or /heern/. That of /to do/ may be either /done/ or /did/, with the latter apparently prevailing; that of /to draw/ is /drew/ if the verb indicates to attract or to abstract and /drawed/ if it indicates to draw with a pencil. Similarly, the preterite of /to blow/ may be either /blowed/ or /blew/, and that of /to drink/ oscillates between /drank/ and /drunk/, and that of /to fall/ is still usually /fell/, though /fallen/ has appeared, and that of /to shake/ may be either /shaken/ or /shuck/. The conjugation of /to win/ is yet far from fixed. The correct English preterite, /won/, is still in use, but against it are arrayed /wan/ and /winned/. /Wan/ seems to show some kinship, by ignorant analogy, with /ran/ and /began/. It is often used as the perfect participle, as in "I have /wan/ $4."

The misuse of the perfect participle for the preterite, now almost the invariable rule in vulgar American, is common to many other dialects of English, and seems to be a symptom of a general decay of the perfect tenses. That decay has been going on for a long time, and in American, the most vigorous and advanced of all the dialects of the language, it is particularly well marked. Even in the most pretentious written American it shows itself. The English, in their writing, still use the future perfect, albeit somewhat laboriously and self-consciously, but in America it has virtually disappeared: one often reads whole books without encountering a single example of it. Even the present perfect and the past perfect seem to be instinctively avoided. The Englishman says "I /have/ dined," but the American says "I /am through/ dinner"; the Englishman says "I /had/ slept," but the American often says "I /was done/ sleeping." Thus the perfect tenses are forsaken for the simple present and the past. In the vulgate a further step is taken, and "I /have been/ there" becomes "I /been/ there." Even in such phrases as "he /hasn't/ been here," /ain't/ (=/am not/) is commonly substituted for /have not/, thus giving the present perfect a flavor of the simple present. The step from "I /have taken/" to "/I taken/" was therefore neither difficult nor unnatural, and once it had been made the resulting locution was supported by the greater [Pg205] apparent regularity of its verb. Moreover, this perfect participle, thus put in place of the preterite, was further reinforced by the fact that it was the adjectival form of the verb, and hence collaterally familiar. Finally, it was also the authentic preterite in the passive voice, and although this influence, in view of the decay of the passive, may not have been of much consequence, nevertheless it is not to be dismissed as of no consequence at all.

The contrary substitution of the preterite for the perfect participle, as in "I have /went/" and "he has /did/," apparently has a double influence behind it. In the first place, there is the effect of the confused and blundering effort, by an ignorant and unanalytical speaker, to give the perfect some grammatical differentiation when he finds himself getting into it--an excursion not infrequently made necessary by logical exigencies, despite his inclination to keep out. The nearest indicator at hand is the disused preterite, and so it is put to use. Sometimes a sense of its uncouthness seems to linger, and there is a tendency to give it an /en/-suffix, thus bringing it into greater harmony with its tense. I find that /boughten/, just discussed, is used much oftener in the perfect than in the simple past tense;[46] for the latter /bought/ usually suffices. The quick ear of Lardner detects various other coinages of the same sort, among them /tooken/, as in "little Al might of /tooken/ sick."[47] /Hadden/ is also met with, as in "I would of /hadden/." But the majority of preterites remain unchanged. Lardner's baseball player never writes "I have /written/" or "I have /wroten/," but always "I have /wrote/." And in the same way he always writes, "I have /did/, /ate/, /went/, /drank/, /rode/, /ran/, /saw/, /sang/, /woke/ and /stole/." Sometimes the simple form of the verb persists through all tenses. This is usually the case, for example, with /to give/. I have noted "I /give/" both as present and as preterite, and "I have /give/," and even "I had /give/." But even here "I have /gave/" offers rivalry to "I have /give/," and usage is not settled. So, too, with /to come/. "I have /come/" and "I have /came/" seem to be almost equally [Pg206] favored, with the former supported by pedagogical admonition and the latter by the spirit of the language.

Whatever the true cause of the substitution of the preterite for the perfect participle, it seems to be a tendency inherent in English, and during the age of Elizabeth it showed itself even in the most formal speech. An examination of any play of Shakespeare's will show many such forms as "I have /wrote/," "I am /mistook/" and "he has /rode/." In several cases this transfer of the preterite has survived. "I have /stood/," for example, is now perfectly correct English, but before 1550 the form was "I have /stonden/." /To hold/ and /to sit/ belong to the same class; their original perfect participles were not /held/ and /sat/, but /holden/ and /sitten/. These survived the movement toward the formalization of the language which began with the eighteenth century, but scores of other such misplaced preterites were driven out. One of the last to go was /wrote/, which persisted until near the end of the century.[48] Paradoxically enough, the very purists who performed the purging showed a preference for /got/ (though not for /forgot/), and it survives in correct English today in the preterite-present form, as in "I have /got/," whereas in American, both vulgar and polite, the elder and more regular /gotten/ is often used. In the polite speech /gotten/ indicates a distinction between a completed action and a continuing action,--between obtaining and possessing. "I have /gotten/ what I came for" is correct, and so is "I have /got/ the measles." In the vulgar speech, much the same distinction exists, but the perfect becomes a sort of simple tense by the elision of /have/. Thus the two sentences change to "I /gotten/ what I come for" and "I /got/ the measles," the latter being understood, not as past, but as present.

In "I have /got/ the measles" /got/ is historically a sort of auxiliary of /have/, and in colloquial American, as we have seen in the examples just given, the auxiliary has obliterated the verb. /To have/, as an auxiliary, probably because of its intimate relationship with the perfect tenses, is under heavy pressure, and [Pg207] promises to disappear from the situations in which it is still used. I have heard /was/ used in place of it, as in "before the Elks /was/ come here."[49] Sometimes it is confused ignorantly with a distinct /of/, as in "she would /of/ drove," and "I would /of/ gave." More often it is shaded to a sort of particle, attached to the verb as an inflection, as in "he would '/a/ tole you," and "who could '/a/ took it?" But this is not all. Having degenerated to such forms, it is now employed as a sort of auxiliary to itself, in the subjunctive, as in "if you had /of/ went," "if it had /of/ been hard," and "if I had /of/ had."[50] I have encountered some rather astonishing examples of this doubling of the auxiliary: one appears in "I wouldn't had '/a/ went." Here, however, the /a/ may belong partly to /had/ and partly to /went/; such forms as /a-going/ are very common in American. But in the other cases, and in such forms as "I had '/a/ wanted," it clearly belongs to /had/. Sometimes for syntactical reasons, the degenerated form of /have/ is put before /had/ instead of after it, as in "I could /of/ had her if I had /of/ wanted to."[51] Meanwhile, /to have/, ceasing to be an auxiliary, becomes a general verb indicating compulsion. Here it promises to displace /must/. The American seldom says "I /must/ go"; he almost invariably says "I /have/ to go," or "I /have got/ to go," in which last case, as we have seen, /got/ is the auxiliary.

The most common inflections of the verb for mode and voice are shown in the following paradigm of /to bite/:

ACTIVE VOICE

/Indicative Mode/

/Present/ I bite /Past Perfect/ I had of bit /Present Perfect/ I have bit /Future/ I will bite /Past/ I bitten /Future Perfect/ (wanting)

/Subjunctive Mode/

/Present/ If I bite /Past Perfect/ If I had of bit /Past/ If I bitten

/Potential Mode/

/Present/ I can bite /Past/ I could bite /Present Perfect/ (wanting) /Past Perfect/ I could of bit

/Imperative/ (or /Optative/) /Mode/

/Future/ I shall (or will) bite

/Infinitive Mode/

(wanting)

PASSIVE VOICE

/Indicative Mode/

/Present/ I am bit /Past Perfect/ I had been bit /Present Perfect/ I been bit /Future/ I will be bit /Past/ I was bit /Future Perfect/ (wanting)

/Subjunctive Mode/

/Present/ If I am bit /Past Perfect/ If I had of been bit /Past/ If I was bit

/Potential Mode/

/Present/ I can be bit /Past/ I could be bit /Present Perfect/ (wanting) /Past Perfect/ I could of been bit

/Imperative Mode/

(wanting)

/Infinitive Mode/

(wanting)

A study of this paradigm reveals several plain tendencies. One has just been discussed: the addition of a degenerated form of /have/ to the preterite of the auxiliary, and its use in place of the auxiliary itself. Another is the use of /will/ instead of /shall/ in the first person future. /Shall/ is confined to a sort of optative, indicating much more than mere intention, and even here it is yielding to /will/. Yet another is the consistent use of the transferred preterite in the passive. Here the rule in correct English is followed faithfully, though the perfect participle [Pg209] employed is not the English participle. "I am /broke/" is a good example. Finally, there is the substitution of /was/ for /were/ and of /am/ for /be/ in the past and present of the subjunctive. In this last case American is in accord with the general movement of English, though somewhat more advanced. /Be/, in the Shakespearean form of "where /be/ thy brothers?" was expelled from the present indicative two hundred years ago, and survives today only in dialect. And as it thus yielded to /are/ in the indicative, it now seems destined to yield to /am/ and /is/ in the subjunctive. It remains, of course, in the future indicative: "I will /be/." In American its conjugation coalesces with that of /am/ in the following manner:

/Present/ I am /Past Perfect/ I had of ben /Present Perfect/ I bin (or ben) /Future/ I will be /Past/ I was /Future Perfect/ (wanting)

And in the subjunction:

/Present/ If I am /Past Perfect/ If I had of ben /Past/ If I was

All signs of the subjunctive, indeed, seem to be disappearing from vulgar American. One never hears "if I /were/ you," but always "if I /was/ you." In the third person the /-s/ is not dropped from the verb. One hears, not "if she /go/," but "if she /goes/." "If he /be/ the man" is never heard; it is always "if he /is/." This war upon the forms of the subjunctive, of course, extends to the most formal English. "In Old English," says Bradley,[52] "the subjunctive played as important a part as in modern German, and was used in much the same way. Its inflection differed in several respects from that of the indicative. But the only formal trace of the old subjunctive still remaining, except the use of /be/ and /were/, is the omission of the final /s/ in the third person singular. And even this is rapidly dropping out of use.... Perhaps in another generation the subjunctive forms will have ceased to exist except in the single instance of /were/, which serves a useful function, although we manage to [Pg210] dispense with a corresponding form in other verbs." Here, as elsewhere, unlettered American usage simply proceeds in advance of the general movement. /Be/ and the omitted /s/ are already dispensed with, and even /were/ has been discarded.

In the same way the distinction between /will/ and /shall/, preserved in correct English but already breaking down in the most correct American, has been lost entirely in the American common speech. /Will/ has displaced /shall/ completely, save in the imperative. This preference extends to the inflections of both. /Sha'n't/ is very seldom heard; almost always /won't/ is used instead. As for /should/, it is displaced by /ought to/ (degenerated to /oughter/ or /ought'a/), and in its negative form by /hadn't ought'a/, as in "he /hadn't oughter/ said that," reported by Charters. Lardner gives various redundant combinations of /should/ and /ought/, as in "I don't feel as if I /should ought to/ leave" and "they /should not ought to/ of had." I have encountered the same form, but I don't think it is as common as the simple /ought'a/-forms. In the main, /should/ is avoided, sometimes at considerable pains. Often its place is taken by the more positive /don't/. Thus "I /don't/ mind" is used instead of "I /shouldn't/ mind." /Don't/ has also completely displaced /doesn't/, which is very seldom heard. "He /don't/" and "they /don't/" are practically universal. In the same way /ain't/ has displaced /is not/, /am not/, /isn't/ and /aren't/, and even /have not/ and /haven't/. One recalls a famous speech in a naval melodrama of twenty years ago: "We /ain't/ got no manners, but we can fight like hell." Such forms as "he /ain't/ here," "I /ain't/ the man," "them /ain't/ what I want" and "I /ain't/ heerd of it" are common.