Part 22

This extensive use of /ain't/, of course, is merely a single symptom of a general disregard of number, obvious throughout the verbs, and also among the pronouns, as we shall see. Charters gives many examples, among them, "how /is/ Uncle Wallace and Aunt Clara?" "you /was/," "there /is/ six" and the incomparable "it /ain't/ right to say, 'He /ain't/ here today.'" In Lardner there are many more, for instance, "them Giants is not such rotten hitters, /is/ they?" "the people /has/ all wanted to shake hands with Matthewson and I" and "some of the men /has/ [Pg211] brung their wife along." /Sez/ (=/says/), used as the preterite of /to say/, shows the same confusion. One observes it again in such forms as "then I /goes/ up to him." Here the decay of number helps in what threatens to become a decay of tense. Examples of it are not hard to find. The average race-track follower of the humbler sort seldom says "I /won/ $2," or even "I /wan/ $2," but almost always "I /win/ $2." And in the same way he says "I /see/ him come in," not "I /saw/ him" or "/seen/ him." Charters' materials offers other specimens, among them "we /help/ distributed the fruit," "she /recognize/, hug, and /kiss/ him" and "her father /ask/ her if she intended doing what he /ask/." Perhaps the occasional use of /eat/ as the preterite of /to eat/, as in "I /eat/ breakfast as soon as I got up," is an example of the same flattening out of distinctions. Lardner has many specimens, among them "if Weaver and them had not of /begin/ kicking" and "they would of /knock/ down the fence." I notice that /used/, in /used to be/, is almost always reduced to simple /use/, as in "it /use/ to be the rule." One seldom, if ever, hears a clear /d/ at the end. Here, of course, the elision of the /d/ is due primarily to assimilation with the /t/ of /to/--a second example of one form of decay aiding another form. But the tenses apparently tend to crumble without help. I frequently hear whole narratives in a sort of debased present: "I /says/ to him.... Then he /ups/ and /says/.... I /land/ him one on the ear.... He /goes/ down and out, ..." and so on.[53] Still under the spell of our disintegrating inflections, we are prone to regard the tense inflections of the verb as absolutely essential, but there are plenty of languages that get on without them, and even in our own language children and foreigners often reduce them to a few simple forms. Some time ago an Italian contractor said to me "I have /go/ there often." Here one of our few surviving inflections was displaced by an analytical devise, and yet the man's meaning was quite clear, and it would be absurd to say that his sentence violated the inner spirit of English. That inner spirit, in fact, has inclined steadily toward "I have /go/" for a thousand years. [Pg212]

§ 4

/The Pronoun/--The following paradigm shows the inflections of the personal pronoun in the American common speech:

FIRST PERSON

/Common Gender/

/Singular/ /Plural/ /Nominative/ I we /Possessive Conjoint/ my our /Possessive Absolute/ mine ourn /Objective/ me us

SECOND PERSON

/Common Gender/

/Singular/ /Nominative/ you yous /Possessive Conjoint/ your your /Possessive Absolute/ yourn yourn /Objective/ you yous

THIRD PERSON

/Masculine Gender/

/Nominative/ he they /Possessive Conjoint/ his their /Possessive Absolute/ hisn theirn /Objective/ him them

/Feminine Gender/

/Nominative/ she they /Possessive Conjoint/ her their /Possessive Absolute/ hern theirn /Objective/ her them

/Neuter Gender/

/Nominative/ it they /Possessive Conjoint/ its theirn /Possessive Absolute/ its their /Objective/ it them

These inflections, as we shall see, are often disregarded in use, but nevertheless it is profitable to glance at them as they [Pg213] stand. The only variations that they show from standard English are the substitution of /n/ for /s/ as the distinguishing mark of the absolute form of the possessive, and the attempt to differentiate between the logical and the merely polite plurals in the second person by adding the usual sign of the plural to the former. The use of /n/ in place of /s/ is not an American innovation. It is found in many of the dialects of English, and is, in fact, historically quite as sound as the use of /s/. In John Wiclif's translation of the Bible (/circa/ 1380) the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount (Mark v, 3) is made: "Blessed be the pore in spirit, for the kyngdam in hevenes is /heren/." And in his version of Luke xxiv, 24, is this: "And some of /ouren/ wentin to the grave." Here /heren/, (or /herun/) represents, of course, not the modern /hers/, but /theirs/. In Anglo-Saxon the word was /heora/, and down to Chaucer's day a modified form of it, /here/, was still used in the possessive plural in place of the modern /their/, though /they/ had already displaced /hie/ in the nominative.[54] But in John Purvey's revision of the Wiclif Bible, made a few years later, /hern/ actually occurs in II Kings viii, 6, thus: "Restore thou to hir alle things that ben /hern/." In Anglo-Saxon there had been no distinction between the conjoint and absolute forms of the possessive pronouns; the simple genitive sufficed for both uses. But with the decay of that language the surviving remnants of its grammar began to be put to service somewhat recklessly, and so there arose a genitive inflection of this genitive--a true double inflection. In the Northern dialects of English that inflection was made by simply adding /s/, the sign of the possessive. In the Southern dialects the old /n/-declension was applied, and so there arose such forms as /minum/ and /eowrum/ (=/mine/ and /yours/), from /min/ and /eower/ (=/my/ and /your/).[55] Meanwhile, the original simple genitive, now become /youre/, also survived, and so the literature of [Pg214] the fourteenth century shows the three forms flourishing side by side: /youre/, /youres/ and /youren/. All of them are in Chaucer.

Thus, /yourn/, /hern/, /hisn/, /ourn/ and /theirn/, whatever their present offense to grammarians, are of a genealogy quite as respectable as that of /yours/, /hers/, /his/, /ours/ and /theirs/. Both forms represent a doubling of inflections, and hence grammatical debasement. On the side of the /yours/-form is the standard usage of the past five hundred years, but on the side of the /yourn/-form there is no little force of analogy and logic, as appears on turning to /mine/ and /thine/. In Anglo-Saxon, as we have seen, /my/ was /min/; in the same way /thy/ was /thin/. During the decadence of the language the final /n/ was dropped in both cases before nouns--that is, in the conjoint form--but it was retained in the absolute form. This usage survives to our own day. One says "/my/ book," but "the book is /mine/"; "/thy/ faith," but "I am /thine/."[56] Also, one says "/no/ matter," but "I have /none/." Without question this retention of the /n/ in these pronouns had something to do with the appearance of the /n/-declension in the treatment of /your/, /her/, /his/ and /our/, and, after /their/ had displaced /here/ in the third person plural, in /their/. And equally without question it supports the vulgar American usage today. What that usage shows is simply the strong popular tendency to make language as simple and as regular as possible--to abolish subtleties and exceptions. The difference between "/his/ book" and "the book is /his'n/" is exactly that between /my/ and /mine/, /thy/ and /thine/, in the examples just given. "Perhaps it would have been better," says Bradley, "if the literary language had accepted /hisn/, but from some cause it did not do so."[57]

As for the addition of /s/ to /you/ in the nominative and objective of the second person plural, it exhibits no more than an effort to give clarity to the logical difference between the true plural and the mere polite plural. In several other dialects of [Pg215] English the same desire has given rise to cognate forms, and there are even secondary devices in American. In the South, for example, the true plural is commonly indicated by /you-all/, which, despite a Northern belief to the contrary, is never used in the singular by any save the most ignorant.[58] /You-all/, like /yous/, simply means /you-jointly/ as opposed to the /you/ that means /thou/. Again, there is the form observed in "you can /all of you/ go to hell"--another plain effort to differentiate between singular and plural. The substitution of /you/ for /thou/ goes back to the end of the thirteenth century. It appeared in late Latin and in the other continental languages as well as in English, and at about the same time. In these languages the true singular survives alongside the transplanted plural, but English has dropped it entirely, save in its poetical and liturgical forms and in a few dialects. It passed out of ordinary polite speech before Elizabeth's day. By that time, indeed, its use had acquired an air of the offensive, such as it has today, save between intimates or to children, in Germany. Thus, at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, Sir Edward Coke, then attorney-general, displayed his animosity to Raleigh by addressing him as /thou/, and finally burst into the contemptuous "I /thou/ thee, /thou/ traitor!" And in "Twelfth Night" Sir Toby Belch urges Sir Andrew Aguecheek to provoke the disguised Viola to combat by /thouing/ her. In our own time, with thou passed out entirely, even as a pronoun of contempt, the confusion between /you/ in the plural and /you/ in the singular presents plain difficulties to a man of limited linguistic resources. He gets around them by setting up a distinction that is well supported by logic and analogy. "I seen /yous/" is clearly separated from "I seen /you/.". And in the conjoint position "/yous/ guys" is separated from "/you/ liar."

So much for the personal pronouns. As we shall see, they are used in such a manner that the distinction between the nominative and the objective forms, though still existing grammatically, has begun to break down. But first it may be well to glance at the demonstrative and relative pronouns. Of the former there [Pg216] are but two in English, /this/ and /that/, with their plural forms, /these/ and /those/. To them, American adds a third, /them/, which is also the personal pronoun of the third person, objective case.[59] In addition it has adopted certain adverbial pronouns, /this-here/, /these-here/, /that-there/, /those-there/ and /them-there/, and set up inflections of the original demonstratives by analogy with /mine/, /hisn/ and /yourn/, to wit, /thisn/, /thesen/, /thatn/ and /thosen/. I present some examples of everyday use:

/Them/ are the kind I like. /Them/ men all work here. Who is /this-here/ Smith I hear about? /These-here/ are mine. /That-there/ medicine ain't no good. /Those-there/ wops has all took to the woods. I wisht I had one of /them-there/ Fords. /Thisn/ is better'n /thatn/. I like /thesen/ better'n /thosen/.

The origin of the demonstratives of the /thisn/-group is plain: they are degenerate forms of /this-one/, /that-one/, etc., just as /none/ is a degenerate composition form of /no(t)-one/. In every case of their use that I have observed the simple demonstratives might have been set free and /one/ actually substituted for the terminal /n/. But it must be equally obvious that they have been reinforced very greatly by the absolutes of the /hisn/-group, for in their relation to the original demonstratives they play the part of just such absolutes and are never used conjointly. Thus, one says, in American, "I take /thisn/" or "/thisn/ is mine," but one never says "I take /thisn/ hat" or "/thisn/ dog is mine." In this conjoint situation plain /this/ is always used, and the same rule [Pg217] applies to /these/, /those/ and /that/. /Them/, being a newcomer among the demonstratives, has not yet acquired an inflection in the absolute. I have never heard /them'n/, and it will probably never come in, for it is forbiddingly clumsy. One says, in American, both "/them/ are mine" and "/them/ collars are mine."

/This-here/, /these-here/, /that-there/, /those-there/ and /them-there/ are plainly combinations of pronouns and adverbs, and their function is to support the distinction between proximity, as embodied in /this/ and /these/, and remoteness, as embodied in /that/, /those/ and /them/. "/This-here/ coat is mine" simply means "this coat, /here/, or this /present/ coat, is mine." But the adverb promises to coalesce with the pronoun so completely as to obliterate all sense of its distinct existence, even as a false noun or adjective. As commonly pronounced, /this-here/ becomes a single word, somewhat like /thish-yur/, and /these-here/ becomes /these-yur/, and /that-there/ and /them-there/ become /that-ere/ and /them-ere/. /Those-there/, if I observed accurately, is still pronounced more distinctly, but it, too, may succumb to composition in time. The adverb will then sink to the estate of a mere inflectional particle, as /one/ has done in the absolutes of the /thisn/-group. /Them/, as a personal pronoun in the absolute, of course, is commonly pronounced /em/, as in "I seen /em/," and sometimes its vowel is almost lost, but this is also the case in all save the most exact spoken English. Sweet and Lounsbury, following the German grammarians, argue that this /em/ is not really a debased form of /them/, but the offspring of /hem/, which survived as the regular plural of the third person in the objective case down to the beginning of the fifteenth century. But in American /them/ is clearly pronounced as a demonstrative. I have never heard "/em/ men" or "/em/ are the kind I like," but always "/them/ men" and "/them/ are the kind I like."

The relative pronouns, so far as I have been able to make out, are declined as follows:

/Nominative/ who which what that /Possessive Conjoint/ whose whose /Possessive Absolute/ whosen whosen /Objective/ who which what that

[Pg218]

Two things will be noted in this paradigm. First there is the disappearance of /whom/ as the objective form of /who/, and secondly there is the appearance of an inflected form of /whose/ in the absolute, by analogy with /mine/, /hisn/ and /thesen/. /Whom/, as we have seen, is fast disappearing from standard spoken American;[60] in the vulgar language it is already virtually extinct. Not only is /who/ used in such constructions as "/who/ did you find there?" where even standard spoken English would tolerate it, but also in such constructions as "the man /who/ I saw," "them /who/ I trust in" and "to /who/?" Krapp explains this use of /who/ on the ground that there is a "general feeling," due to the normal word-order in English, that "the word which precedes the verb is the subject word, or at least the subject form."[61] But this explanation is probably fanciful. Among the plain people no such "general feeling" for case exists. Their only "general feeling" is a prejudice against case inflections in any form whatsoever. They use /who/ in place of /whom/ simply because they can discern no logical difference between the significance of the one and the significance of the other.

/Whosen/ is obviously the offspring of the other absolutes in /n/. In the conjoint relation plain /whose/ is always used, as in "/whose/ hat is that?" and "the man /whose/ dog bit me." But in the absolute /whosen/ is often substituted, as in "if it ain't /hisn/, then /whosen/ is it?" The imitation is obvious. There is an analogous form of /which/, to wit, /whichn/, resting heavily on /which one/. Thus, "/whichn/ do you like?" and "I didn't say /whichn/" are plainly variations of "/which one/ do you like?" and "I didn't say /which one/." That, as we have seen, has a like form, /thatn/, but never, of course, in the relative situation. "I like /thatn/," is familiar, but "the one /thatn/ I like" is never heard. If /that/, as a relative, could be used absolutely, I have no doubt that it would change to /thatn/, as it does as a demonstrative. So with /what/. As things stand, it is sometimes substituted for /that/, as in "them's the kind /what/ I like." Joined to /but/ it can also take the place of /that/ in other situations, as in "I don't know /but what/." [Pg219]

The substitution of /who/ for /whom/ in the objective case, just noticed, is typical of a general movement toward breaking down all case distinctions among the pronouns, where they make their last stand in English and its dialects. This movement, of course, is not peculiar to vulgar American; nor is it of recent beginning. So long ago as the fifteenth century the old clear distinction between /ye/, nominative, and /you/, objective, disappeared, and today the latter is used in both cases. Sweet says that the phonetic similarity between /ye/ and /thee/, the objective form of the true second singular, was responsible for this confusion.[62] At the start /ye/ actually went over to the objective case, and the usage thus established shows itself in such survivors of the period as /harkee/ (/hark ye/) and /look ye/. In modern spoken English, indeed, /you/ in the objective often has a sound far more like that of /ye/ than like that of /you/, as, for example, in "how do y' do?" and in American its vowel takes the neutral form of the /e/ in the definite article, and the word becomes a sort of shortened /yuh/. But whenever emphasis is laid upon it, /you/ becomes quite distinct, even in American. In "I mean /you/," for example, there is never any chance of mistaking it for /ye/.

In Shakespeare's time the other personal pronouns of the objective case threatened to follow /you/ into the nominative, and there was a compensatory movement of the nominative pronouns toward the objective. Lounsbury has collected many examples.[63] Marlowe used "is it /him/ you seek?" "'tis /her/ I esteem" and "nor /thee/ nor /them/, shall want"; Fletcher used "'tis /her/ I admire"; Shakespeare himself used "that's /me/." Contrariwise, Webster used "what difference is between the duke and /I/?" and Greene used "nor earth nor heaven shall part my love and /I/." Krapp has unearthed many similar examples from the Restoration dramatists.[64] Etheredge used "'tis /them/," "it may be /him/," "let you and /I/" and "nor is it /me/"; Matthew Prior, in a famous couplet, achieved this: [Pg220]

For thou art a girl as much brighter than /her/. As he was a poet sublimer than /me/.

The free exchange continued, in fact, until the eighteenth century was well advanced; there are examples of it in Addison. Moreover, it survived, at least in part, even the attack that was then made upon it by the professors of the new-born science of English grammar, and to this day "it is /me/" is still in more or less good colloquial use. Sweet thinks that it is supported in such use, though not, of course, grammatically, by the analogy of the correct "it is /he/" and "it is /she/." Lounsbury, following Dean Alford, says it came into English in imitation of the French /c'est moi/, and defends it as at least as good as "it is /I/."[65] The contrary form, "between you and /I/," has no defenders, and is apparently going out. But in the shape of "between my wife and /I/" it is seldom challenged, at least in spoken English.

All these liberties with the personal pronouns, however, fade to insignificance when put beside the thoroughgoing confusion of the case forms in vulgar American. "/Us/ fellers" is so far established in the language that "/we/ fellers," from the mouth of a car conductor, would seem almost an affectation. So, too, is "/me/ and /her/ are friends." So, again, are "I seen you and /her/," "/her/ and I set down together," "/him/ and his wife," and "I knowed it was /her/." Here are some other characteristic examples of the use of the objective forms in the nominative from Charters and Lardner:

/Me/ and /her/ was both late. His brother is taller than /him/. That little boy was /me/. /Us/ girls went home. They were John and /him/. /Her/ and little Al is to stay here. She says she thinks /us/ and the Allens. If Weaver and /them/ had not of begin kicking. But not /me/. /Him/ and I are friends. /Me/ and /them/ are friends.

[Pg221]

Less numerous, but still varied and plentiful, are the substitutions of nominative forms for objective forms:

She gave it to mother and /I/. She took all of /we/ children. I want you to meet /he/ and I at 29th street. He gave /he/ and I both some. It is going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby. Anything she has is O. K. for /I/ and Florrie.

Here are some grotesque confusions, indeed. Perhaps the best way to get at the principles underlying them is to examine first, not the cases of their occurrence, but the cases of their non-occurrence. Let us begin with the transfer of the objective form to the nominative in the subject relation. "/Me/ and /her/ was both late" is obviously sound American; one hears it, or something like it, on the streets every day. But one never hears "/me/ was late" or "/her/ was late" or "/us/ was late" or "/him/ was late" or "/them/ was late." Again, one hears "/us/ girls was there" but never "/us/ was there." Yet again, one hears "/her/ and John was married," but never "/her/ was married." The distinction here set up should be immediately plain. It exactly parallels that between /her/ and /hern/, /our/ and /ourn/, /their/ and /theirn/: the tendency, as Sweet says, is "to merge the distinction of nominative and objective in that of conjoint and absolute."[66] The nominative, in the subject relation, takes the usual nominative form only when it is in immediate contact with its verb. If it be separated from its verb by a conjunction or any other part of speech, even including another pronoun, it takes the objective form. Thus "/me/ went home" would strike even the most ignorant shopgirl as "bad grammar," but she would use "/me/ and my friend went," or "/me/ and /him/," or "/he/ and /her/," or "/me/ and /them/" without the slightest hesitation. What is more, if the separation be effected by a conjunction and another pronoun, the other pronoun also changes to the objective form, even though its contact with the verb may be immediate. Thus one hears "/me/ and /her/ was there," not "/me/ and /she/"; /her/ and "/him/ kissed," not "/her/ and /he/." Still more, this second pronoun [Pg222] commonly undergoes the same inflection even when the first member of the group is not another pronoun, but a noun. Thus one hears "John and /her/ were married," not "John and /she/." To this rule there is but one exception, and that is in the case of the first person pronoun, especially in the singular. "/Him/ and /me/ are friends" is heard often, but "/him/ and /I/ are friends" is also heard. /I/ seems to suggest the subject very powerfully; it is actually the subject of perhaps a majority of the sentences uttered by an ignorant man. At all events, it resists the rule, at least partially, and may even do so when actually separated from the verb by another pronoun, itself in the objective form, as for example, in "/I/ and /him/ were there."