Part 23

In the predicate relation the pronouns respond to a more complex regulation. When they follow any form of the simple verb of being they take the objective form, as in "it's /me/," "it ain't /him/," and "I am /him/," probably because the transitiveness of this verb exerts a greater pull than its function as a mere copula, and perhaps, too, because the passive naturally tends to put the speaker in the place of the object. "I seen /he/" or "he kissed /she/" or "he struck /I/" would seem as ridiculous to an ignorant American as to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his instinct for simplicity and regularity naturally tends to make him reduce all similar expressions, or what seem to him to be similar expressions, to coincidence with the more seemly "I seen /him/." After all, the verb of being is fundamentally transitive, and, in some ways, the most transitive of all verbs, and so it is not illogical to bring its powers over the pronoun into accord with the powers exerted by the others. I incline to think that it is some such subconscious logic, and not the analogy of "it is /he/," as Sweet argues, that has brought "it is /me/" to conversational respectability, even among rather careful speakers of English.[67]

But against this use of the objective form in the nominative [Pg223] position after the verb of being there also occurs in American a use of the nominative form in the objective position, as in "she gave it to mother and /I/" and "she took all of /we/ children." What lies at the bottom of it seems to be a feeling somewhat resembling that which causes the use of the objective form before the verb, but exactly contrary in its effects. That is to say, the nominative form is used when the pronoun is separated from its governing verb, whether by a noun, a noun-phrase or another pronoun, as in "she gave it to mother and /I/," "she took all of /we/ children" and "he paid her and /I/" respectively. But here usage is far from fixed, and one observes variations in both directions--that is, toward using the correct objective when the pronoun is detached from the verb, and toward using the nominative even when it directly follows the verb. "She gave it to mother and /me/," "she took all of /us/ children" and "he paid her and /me/" would probably sound quite as correct, to a Knight of Pythias, as the forms just given. And at the other end Charters and Lardner report such forms as "I want you to meet /he/ and /I/" and "it is going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby." I have noticed, however, that, in the overwhelming main, the use of the nominative is confined to the pronoun of the first person, and particularly to its singular. Here again we have an example of the powerful way in which /I/ asserts itself. And superimposed upon that influence is a cause mentioned by Sweet in discussing "between you and /I/."[68] It is a sort of by-product of the pedagogical war upon "it is /me/." "As such expressions," he says, "are still denounced by the grammars, many people try to avoid them in speech as well as in writing. The result of this reaction is that the /me/ in such constructions as 'between John and /me/' and 'he saw John and /me/' sounds vulgar and ungrammatical, and is consequently corrected into /I/." Here the pedagogues, seeking to impose an inelastic and illogical grammar upon a living speech, succeed only in corrupting it still more.

Following /than/ and /as/ the American uses the objective form of the pronoun, as in "he is taller than /me/" and "such as /her/." [Pg224] He also uses it following /like/, but not when, as often happens, he uses the word in place of /as/ or /as if/. Thus he says "do it like /him/," but "do it like /he/ does" and "she looks like /she/ was sick." What appears here is an instinctive feeling that these words, followed by a pronoun only, are not adverbs, but prepositions, and that they should have the same power to put the pronoun into an oblique case that other prepositions have. Just as "the taller of /we/" would sound absurd to all of us, so "taller than /he/," to the unschooled American, sounds absurd. This feeling has a good deal of respectable support. "As /her/" was used by Swift, "than /me/" by Burke, and "than /whom/" by Milton. The brothers Fowler show that, in some cases, "than /him/," is grammatically correct and logically necessary.[69] For example, compare "I love you more than /him/" and "I love you more than /he/." The first means "I love you more than (I love) /him/"; the second, "I love you more than /he/ (loves you)." In the first /him/ does not refer to /I/, which is nominative, but to /you/, which is objective, and so it is properly objective also. But the American, of course, uses /him/ even when the preceding noun is in the nominative, save only when another verb follows the pronoun. Thus, he says, "I love you better than /him/," but "I love you better than /he/ does."

In the matter of the reflexive pronouns the American vulgate exhibits forms which plainly show that it is the spirit of the language to regard /self/, not as an adjective, which it is historically, but as a noun. This confusion goes back to Anglo-Saxon days; it originated at a time when both the adjectives and the nouns were losing their old inflections. Such forms as /Petrussylf/ (=/Peter's self/), /Cristsylf/ (=/Christ's self/) and /Icsylf/ (=/I/, /self/) then came into use, and along with them came combinations of /self/ and the genitive, still surviving in /hisself/ and /theirselves/ (or /theirself/). Down to the sixteenth century these forms remained in perfectly good usage. "Each for /hisself/," for example, was written by Sir Philip Sidney, and is to be found in the dramatists of the time, though modern editors always change it to /himself/. How the dative pronoun got itself [Pg225] fastened upon /self/ in the third person masculine and neuter is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against all logic, history and grammatical regularity, /himself/, /themselves/ and /itself/ (not /its-self/) are in favor today. But the American, as usual, inclines against these illogical exceptions to the rule set by /myself/. I constantly hear /hisself/ and /theirselves/, as in "he done it /hisself/" and "they don't know /theirselves/." Sometimes /theirself/ is substituted for theirselves, as in "they all seen it /theirself/." Also, the emphatic /own/ is often inserted between the pronoun and the noun, as in "let every man save his /own/ self."

The American pronoun does not necessarily agree with its noun in number. I find "I can tell each one what /they/ make," "each fellow put /their/ foot on the line," "nobody can do what /they/ like" and "she was one of /these/ kind of people" in Charters, and "I am not the kind of man that is always thinking about /their/ record," "if he was to hit a man in the head ... /they/ would think /their/ nose tickled" in Lardner. At the bottom of this error there is a real difficulty: the lack of a pronoun of the true common gender in English, corresponding to the French /soi/ and /son/. /His/, after a noun or pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and /his-or-her/ is intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted. The brothers Fowler have discovered "anybody else who have only /themselves/ in view" in Richardson and "everybody is discontented with /their/ lot" in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote "if a customer wishes you to injure /their/ foot." In spoken American, even the most careful, /they/ and /their/ often appear; I turn to the /Congressional Record/ at random and in two minutes find "if anyone will look at the bank statements /they/ will see."[70] In the lower reaches of the language the plural seems to get into every sentence of any complexity, even when the preceding noun or pronoun is plainly singular. [Pg226]

§ 5

/The Adverb/--All the adverbial endings in English, save /-ly/, have gradually fallen into decay; it is the only one that is ever used to form new adverbs. At earlier stages of the language various other endings were used, and some of them survive in a few old words, though they are no longer employed in making new words. The Anglo-Saxon endings were /-e/ and /-lice/. The latter was, at first, merely an /-e/-ending to adjectives in /-lic/, but after a time it attained to independence and was attached to adjectives not ending in /-lic/. In early Middle English this /-lice/ changes to /-like/, and later on to /-li/ and /-ly/. Meanwhile, the /-e/-ending, following the /-e/-endings of the nouns, adjectives and verbs, ceased to be pronounced, and so it gradually fell away. Thus a good many adverbs came to be indistinguishable from their ancestral adjectives, for example, /hard/ in to /pull hard/, /loud/ in /to speak loud/, and /deep/ in /to bury deep/ (=Anglo-Saxon, /dĕop-e/). Worse, not a few adverbs actually became adjectives, for example, /wide/, which was originally the Anglo-Saxon adjective /wid/ (=/wide/) with the adverbial /-e/-ending, and /late/, which was originally the Anglo-Saxon adjective /laet/ (=/slow/) with the same ending.

The result of this movement toward identity in form was a confusion between the two classes of words, and from the time of Chaucer down to the eighteenth century one finds innumerable instances of the use of the simple adjective as an adverb. "He will answer /trewe/" is in Sir Thomas More; "and /soft/ unto himself he sayd" in Chaucer; "the singers sang /loud/" in the Revised Version of the Bible (Nehemiah xii, 42), and "/indifferent/ well" in Shakespeare. Even after the purists of the eighteenth century began their corrective work this confusion continued. Thus, one finds, "the people are /miserable/ poor" in Hume, "how /unworthy/ you treated mankind" in /The Spectator/, and "/wonderful/ silly" in Joseph Butler. To this day the grammarians battle with the barbarism, still without complete success; every new volume of rules and regulations for those who would speak by the book is full of warnings against it. Among [Pg227] the great masses of the plain people, it goes without saying, it flourishes unimpeded. The cautions of the school-marm, in a matter so subtle and so plainly lacking in logic or necessity, are forgotten as quickly as her prohibition of the double negative, and thereafter the adjective and the adverb tend more and more to coalesce in a part of speech which serves the purposes of both, and is simple and intelligible and satisfying.

Charters gives a number of characteristic examples of its use: "wounded very /bad/," "I /sure/ was stiff," "drank out of a cup /easy/," "he looked up /quick/." Many more are in Lardner: "a chance to see me work /regular/," "I am glad I was lucky enough to marry /happy/," "I beat them /easy/," and so on. And others fall upon the ear every day: "he done it /proper/," "he done himself /proud/," "she was dressed /neat/," "she was /awful/ ugly," "the horse ran /O. K./," "it /near/ finished him," "it sells /quick/," "I like it /fine/," "he et /hoggish/," "she acted /mean/," "they keep company /steady/." The bob-tailed adverb, indeed, enters into a large number of the commonest coins of vulgar speech. /Near-silk/, I daresay, is properly /nearly-silk/. The grammarians protest that "run /slow/" should be "run /slowly/." But /near-silk/ and "run /slow/" remain, and so do "to be in /bad/," "to play it up /strong/" and their brothers. What we have here is simply an incapacity to distinguish any ponderable difference between adverb and adjective, and beneath it, perhaps, is the incapacity, already noticed in dealing with "it is /me/," to distinguish between the common verb of being and any other verb. If "it /is/ bad" is correct, then why should "it /leaks/ bad" be incorrect? It is just this disdain of purely grammatical reasons that is at the bottom of most of the phenomena visible in vulgar American, and the same impulse is observable in all other languages during periods of inflectional decay. During the highly inflected stage of a language the parts of speech are sharply distinct, but when inflections fall off they tend to disappear. The adverb, being at best the step-child of grammar--as the old Latin grammarians used to say, "/Omnis pars orationis migrat in adverbium/"--is one of the chief victims of this anarchy. John Horne Tooke, despairing of bringing it to any [Pg228] order, even in the most careful English, called it, in his "Epea Ptercenta," "the common sink and repository of all heterogeneous and unknown corruptions."

Where an obvious logical or lexical distinction has grown up between an adverb and its primary adjective the unschooled American is very careful to give it its terminal /-ly/. For example, he seldom confuses /hard/ and /hardly/, /scarce/ and /scarcely/, /real/ and /really/. These words convey different ideas. /Hard/ means unyielding; /hardly/ means barely. /Scarce/ means present only in small numbers; /scarcely/ is substantially synonymous with /hardly/. /Real/ means genuine; /really/ is an assurance of veracity. So, again, with /late/ and /lately/. Thus, an American says "I don't know, /scarcely/," not "I don't know, /scarce/"; "he died /lately/," not "he died /late/." But in nearly all such cases syntax is the preservative, not grammar. These adverbs seem to keep their tails largely because they are commonly put before and not after verbs, as in, for example, "I /hardly/ (or /scarcely/) know," and "I /really/ mean it." Many other adverbs that take that position habitually are saved as well, for example, /generally/, /usually/, /surely/, /certainly/. But when they follow verbs they often succumb, as in "I'll do it /sure/" and "I seen him /recent/." And when they modify adjectives they sometimes succumb, too, as in "it was /sure/ hot." Practically all the adverbs made of adjectives in /-y/ lose the terminal /-ly/ and thus become identical with their adjectives. I have never heard /mightily/ used; it is always /mighty/, as in "he hit him /mighty/ hard." So with /filthy/, /dirty/, /nasty/, /lowly/, /naughty/ and their cognates. One hears "he acted /dirty/," "he spoke /nasty/," "the child behaved /naughty/," and so on. Here even standard English has had to make concessions to euphony. /Cleanlily/ is seldom used;, /cleanly/ nearly always takes its place. And the use of /illy/ is confined to pedants.

Vulgar American, like all the higher forms of American and all save the most precise form of written English, has abandoned the old inflections of /here/, /there/ and /where/, to wit, /hither/ and /hence/, /thither/ and /thence/, /whither/ and /whence/. These fossil remains of dead cases are fast disappearing from the language. [Pg229] In the case of /hither/ (=/to here/) even the preposition has been abandoned. One says, not "I came /to here/," but simply "I came /here/." In the case of /hence/, however, /from here/ is still used, and so with /from there/ and /from where/. Finally, it goes without saying that the common American tendency to add /-s/ to such adverbs as /towards/ is carried to full length in the vulgar language. One constantly hears, not only /somewheres/ and /forwards/, but even /noways/ and /anyways/. Here we have but one more example of the movement toward uniformity and simplicity. /Anyways/ is obviously fully supported by /sideways/ and /always/.

§ 6

/The Noun and Adjective/--The only inflections of the noun remaining in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar American occur. The rule that, in forming the plurals of compound nouns or noun-phrases, the /-s/ shall be attached to the principal noun is commonly disregarded, and it goes at the end. Thus, "I have two /sons-in-law/" is never heard; one always hears "I have two /son-in-laws/." So with the genitive. I once overheard this: "that umbrella is /the young lady I go with's/." Often a false singular is formed from a singular ending in /s/, the latter being mistaken for a plural. /Chinee/, /Portugee/ and /Japanee/ are familiar; I have also noted /trapee/, /tactic/ and /summon/ (from /trapeze/, /tactics/ and /summons/). Paradoxically, the word /incidence/ is commonly misused for /incident/, as in "he told an /incidence/." Here /incidence/ (or /incident/) seems to be regarded as a synonym, not for /happening/, but for /story/. I have never heard "he told /of/ an incidence." The /of/ is always omitted. The general disregard of number often shows itself when the noun is used as object. I have already quoted Lardner's "some of the men has brung their /wife/ along"; in a popular magazine I lately encountered "those book ethnologists ... can't see what is before their /nose/." Many similar examples might be brought forward.

The adjectives are inflected only for comparison, and the [Pg230] American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double comparative or superlative to ease his soul. /More better/ is the commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man is reported today to be /better/. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is he to be reported /better/ again, or /best/? The standard language gets around the difficulty by using /still better/. The American vulgate boldly employs /more better/. In the case of /worse/, /worser/ is used, as Charters shows. He also reports /baddest/, /more queerer/ and /beautifulest/. /Littler/, which he notes, is still outlawed from standard English, but it has, with /littlest/, a respectable place in American. The late Richard Harding Davis wrote a play called "The /Littlest/ Girl." The American freely compares adjectives that are incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports /most principal/, and I myself have heard /uniquer/ and even /more uniquer/, as in "I have never saw nothing /more uniquer/." I have also heard /more ultra/, /more worse/, /idealer/, /liver/ (that is, /more alive/), and /wellest/, as in "he was the /wellest/ man you ever seen." In general, the /-er/ and /-est/ terminations are used instead of the /more/ and /most/ prefixes, as in /beautiful/, /beautifuller/, /beautifullest/. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never heard "the /better/ of the two," but always "the /best/ of the two." Charters also reports "the /hardest/ of the two" and "my brother and I measured and he was the /tallest/." I have frequently heard "it ain't so /worse/," but here a humorous effect seems to have been intended.

Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use for that purpose is /-y/, as in /tony/, /classy/, /daffy/, /nutty/, /dinky/, /leery/, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix /super-/ is confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seem to be unaware of it.[71] This relative paucity of adjectives appears to be common to the more primitive varieties of speech. E. J. [Pg231] Hills, in his elaborate study of the vocabulary of a child of two,[72] found that it contained but 23 descriptive adjectives, of which six were the names of colors, as against 59 verbs and 173 common nouns. Moreover, most of the 23 minus six were adjectives of all work, such as /nasty/, /funny/ and /nice/. Colloquial American uses the same rubber-stamps of speech. /Funny/ connotes the whole range of the unusual; /hard/ indicates every shade of difficulty; /nice/ is everything satisfactory; /bully/ is a superlative of almost limitless scope.

The decay of /one/ to a vague /n/-sound, as in /this'n/, is matched by a decay of /than/ after comparatives. /Earlier than/ is seldom if ever heard; composition reduces the two words to /earlier'n/. So with /better'n/, /faster'n/, /hotter'n/, /deader'n/, etc. Once I overheard the following dialogue: "I like a belt /more looser'n/ what this one is." "Well, then, why don't you unloosen it /more'n/ you got it unloosened?"

§ 7

/The Double Negative/--Syntactically, perhaps the chief characteristic of vulgar American is its sturdy fidelity to the double negative. So freely is it used, indeed, that the simple negative appears to be almost abandoned. Such phrases as "I see nobody" or "I know nothing about it" are heard so seldom that they appear to be affectations when encountered; the well-nigh universal forms are "I /don't/ see nobody" and "I /don't/ know nothing about it." Charters lists some very typical examples, among them, "he ain't /never/ coming back /no/ more," "you /don't/ care for nobody but yourself," "couldn't be /no/ more happier" and "I /can't/ see nothing." In Lardner there are innumerable examples: "they was /not/ no team," "I have /not/ never thought of that," "I can't write /no/ more," "no chance to get /no/ money from /nowhere/," "we /can't/ have nothing to do," and so on. Some of his specimens show a considerable complexity, for [Pg232] example, "Matthewson was /not/ only going as far as the coast," meaning, as the context shows, that he was going as far as the coast and no further. /Only/ gets into many other examples, /e. g./, "he hadn't /only/ the one pass" and "I don't work nights no more, /only/ except Sunday nights." This latter I got from a car conductor. Many other curious specimens are in my collectanea, among them: "one swaller don't make /no/ summer," "I /never/ seen nothing I would of rather saw," and "once a child gets burnt once it /won't/ never stick its hand in /no/ fire /no/ more," and so on. The last embodies a triple negative. In "the more faster you go, the sooner you /don't/ get there" there is an elaborate muddling of negatives that is very characteristic.

Like most other examples of "bad grammar" encountered in American the compound negative is of great antiquity and was once quite respectable. The student of Anglo-Saxon encounters it constantly. In that language the negative of the verb was formed by prefixing a particle, /ne/. Thus, /singan/ (=/to sing/) became /ne singan/ (=/not to sing/). In case the verb began with a vowel the /ne/ dropped its /e/ and was combined with the verb, as in /naefre/ (never), from /ne-aefre/ (=/not ever/). In case the verb began with an /h/ or a /w/ followed by a vowel, the /h/ or /w/ of the verb and the /e/ of /ne/ were both dropped, as in /naefth/ (=/has not/), from /ne-haefth/ (=/not has/), and /nolde/ (=/would not/), from /ne-wolde/. Finally, in case the vowel following a /w/ was an /i/, it changed to /y/, as in /nyste/ (=/knew not/), from /ne-wiste/. But inasmuch as Anglo-Saxon was a fully inflected language the inflections for the negative did not stop with the verbs; the indefinite article, the indefinite pronoun and even some of the nouns were also inflected, and survivors of those forms appear to this day in such words as /none/ and /nothing/. Moreover, when an actual inflection was impossible it was the practise to insert this /ne/ before a word, in the sense of our /no/ or /not/. Still more, it came to be the practise to reinforce /ne/, before a vowel, with /nā/ (=/not/) or /naht/ (=/nothing/), which later degenerated to /nat/ and /not/. As a result, there were fearful and wonderful combinations of negatives, some of them fully matching the best efforts of Lardner's baseball player. Sweet [Pg233] gives several curious examples.[73] "Nān ne dorste nān thing āscian," translated literally, becomes "/no/ one dares /not/ ask /nothing/." "Thaet hus nā ne feoll" becomes "the house did /not/ fall /not/." As for the Middle English "he /never/ nadde /nothing/," it has too modern and familiar a ring to need translating at all. Chaucer, at the beginning of the period of transition to Modern English, used the double negative with the utmost freedom. In "The Knight's Tale" is this:

He /nevere/ yet /no/ vileynye /ne/ sayde In al his lyf unto /no/ maner wight.