APPENDIX

OF

NOTES, QUOTATIONS, AND COMMENTS.

331. Parts of Speech (5*).-It should be distinctly understood, at the very outstart of our study of the English language, that the classifying of words into "parts of speech" is for the sake of convenience in considering their functions in the unit of speech-the sentence; and that owing to the flexibility of our language, any attempt at defining these classes of words must be more or less unsatisfactory, especially to an inquiring mind.

To use the statement made by Dr. Abbott, "The fundamental principle of English grammar may be stated with little exaggeration as being this, that any word may be used as any part of speech."

(a) In one of his trenchant articles on English "grammar," so called, Mr. Richard Grant White says: "One trait of the English language is the great flexibility, not to say looseness, of its structure in regard to what are called the parts of speech. In this respect it is as in others, nearly unique among the languages of the civilized world. English may almost be said to have no distinctive parts of speech. This is a strong putting of the case, I admit; but it expresses the truth more nearly than it could be expressed without a long and carefully-elaborated statement. The principal parts of speech are the noun, the verb, the adjective, and that peculiar sort of word which by grammarians has been strangely called the pronoun. Now, the fact is that these principal parts of speech are so interchangeable in our mother tongue that they can hardly be said to be distinguished from each other.

In English, almost any simple noun may be used as a verb without change in its form; and in like manner almost any verb may be used as a noun. Nouns are used as adjectives, and adjectives as nouns. Pronouns may be used, and are used, as nouns, as adjectives, and even as verbs. We wire a message, we table a resolution, we foot our way home, a hunter trees a bear, a broker bears stock or bulls it, the merchant ships his goods, the hypocrite cloaks his sins with acted falsehood, the invalid suns himself, the east wind clouds the sky.

We thus constantly use, and for centuries have used, as verbs, words which *Figures in parenthesis refer to paragraphs.

originally were nouns. On the other hand, we speak of the run of a ship. of a great haul of fish, of a horse coming in on the jump, of a man being on the go, of a great rush of people, of the push of business, of the thrust of the rafters of a house, of the spring and fall, and so on, using verbs as nouns. We can not speak of the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, without using adjectives as nouns; for the pretense of the elder grammarians that a qualified noun is understood in these cases is unfounded, and was made only for the sake of keeping up the make-believe of grammar.

And as to using nouns as adjectives, we cannot speak of a gold watch, an iron bar, a bar-room, a carpet-bag, a carpet knight, a brick house, a stone bridge, or a windmill, without doing that. It is the commonest conversion of parts of speech. We could hardly communicate in English without it. When we say a brew-house, a wash-house, or a turn-stile, we use verbs as adjectives. As to pronouns, 'he’and‘she' are constantly used as adjectives, as, a he goat, a she animal. Shakespeare uses thou" as a verb: 'If thou thou'st him,' that is, if thou say'st “thou” to him; and we nowadays say that Friends "thee and thou" us. Indeed, this convertibility of the parts of speech is so characteristic of the English language that I found this sentence in a London magazine: 'Here are the whereons to make your fortune,'-an adverb being used as a noun."-Every-Day English, p. 295.

(b) The gist of the matter is that the genius of our language is such that there are but comparatively few of its words that we may label with grammatical names and say that they always belong to such and such a part-of-speech. Hence it is we say that a classification of words according to what they do, and an attempt to define these classes, will prove to be more or less unsatisfactory. We shall constantly find that words which according to one definition belong to one part-of-speech (as, for instance, a noun or a preposition) are doing the work which, according to another definition, belongs to some other part-ofspeech. That is to say, words seem, at times, to have a double function; examples of such are adverbial nouns, relative pronouns, etc. [See 109, 119.]

(c) Not a little of the inaccuracy of grammatical definitions has resulted from incorrect terms to begin with. For the benefit of those who are sufficiently interested in our mother-tongue to enjoy a critical study of it, some of the inaccuracies and the incorrectness of terms, above referred to, are discussed in the following notes.

332. Verbs (55).-Verbs usually assert one of three things: 1. Action (or 'doing'); as, "I walk," "God loves;" 2. Existence (or 'being'); as, "We are," ‚” “God is;” 3. Possession (or 'having'); as, “We have,” “He has.”

(a) Verbs are also used to ask questions and to express commands; as, "Will you go?" [You] "Come." Surely the coming and going are not here asserted. (56.)

(b) By changing the form of a verb and using it in a peculiar way we cause

it simply to assume the action, existence or possession, or to name these things without asserting them. Verbs used in this way have by some been classified as separate parts of speech-participles and infinitives. We do not consider such a classification essential (indeed it is not so regarded by any recent author) and have treated the participles as forms of the verb, and the infinitives as phrases, both having certain peculiar uses. (164, 190-4; also 365.)

333. Phrases (10).—A phrase is a combination of two or more words (not including a subject), having in a sentence the office or value of a single part of speech and capable of being parsed as such.-Whitney's Essentials of English Grammar.

(a) With the verb-phrases may be classed many idiomatic expressions, such as, "The fire went out," or was put out," "He will not give up.” On this point, Professor Sill says: [“Practical Lessons,” p. 149, foot-note.]

"Any group of words whose relations to each other are obscure and difficult to determine, and which, taken together, do the work of a verb, may properly and conveniently be called a verb-phrase. This definition includes several groups of words which the grammarians usually take good care to avoid, on account of the difficulties which they present. I believe it to be quite in the direction of simplicity and good sense to regard even expressions like the following as verb-phrases, and to make no attempt with beginners to analyze them, or to parse the words separately:

1. He gets excited over trifling annoyances. 2. I am going to write you a letter. 3. I get up at six every morning. 4. The matter should be attended to. 5. The poor must be taken care of." Professor Whitney says: ["Essentials of Eng. Gram.," p. 126.] "It is impossible to draw any absolute line between such verb-phrases as have been set forth and named above and those yet looser and more accidental combinations into which words enter in sentences, in order to limit and define an action in still other ways, as regards time and manner.

Thus, one might prefer to class as futures, phrases like these:

I am going to give; I am about to give; I am on the point of giving."

334. Pronouns (11).—“A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun." Professor Sill gives this definition in his "Practical Lessons in English," and then in a foot-note, adds: "Perhaps the following definition would be better. than the time-honored one given above: Apronoun is a word that represents an object without naming it."

(a) We are not to think of this part-of-speech as including only what are called personal, relative, and interrogative pronouns, for there is a large class of words, numerals, demonstratives, and indefinites, particularly the latter, that often as truly represent objects without naming them as do I, we, he, they, who, it, etc. (83, 84.)

(b) In speaking of words that have lost their individuality, Samuel Ramsey says:

"Among the most important of those words that have no individu

ality now are the Pronouns. The name means standing for or representing nouns; and there is no possible noun for which some of them may not be used. Hence, the pronoun has been termed a name for everything. Associated with them are some words which, not in signification but in grammatical use, partake of the character of adjectives. They sometimes take the place of nouns and sometimes accompany them." Again, the same author says, There are, no doubt, words now losing their individuality, and sinking into the condition of being 'names of everything.' As an example of this kind, Professor Earle instances the word thing. There is certainly no object in nature or art to which it is more appropriate than to another. Originally it signified a public assembly bearing some analogy to a town meeting." (83 a.)

(c) In a chapter on this subject, Mr. White shows that pronouns are probably the oldest and certainly the least changeable part-of-speech we have. He further shows that the idea that "a pronoun is a word that stands for a noun or an ordinary name," or as "one that points out some person or thing that has been named before" is, in part at least, erroneous. He quotes Buttman as saying, "That pronouns cannot be so precisely defined as not to admit many words which may also be regarded as adjectives," and then adds: “This is only a part of the confusion which reigns in grammar. For the very grammarians cannot agree among themselves as to the limits between nouns and adjectives, so that some of them compromise the matter by making two classes-nouns substantive and nouns adjective. The truth upon this subject is that the so-called pronoun, instead of being a make-shift, a convenience to prevent confusion and monotony, a sort of appendix and auxiliary to an already developed vocabulary, is the noun of nouns, the word of words, the most important, the most radical, the most ineradicable element of language.”—Every-Day English, pp. 326–28.

335. Adjective (15).—This is the usual explanation of the term "adjective," and the definition given (156) is, in substance, the one commonly met with. This definition includes nouns and pronouns in the possessive case. The word 'adjective' is from adject, which means (see Webster) 'to throw to,' 'to add to.' Hence, words 'thrown to,' or 'added to' other words to modify them. Since adverbs are as truly adjected (‘thrown, or added to ') the verb, etc., as our so-called adjectives, the term "adjective" is not strictly a significant one. Adnominal would have been a more significant name; that is, a word added to a noun (nominal') or pronoun.

336. Adverb (19) is not strictly a significant term, but since the principal use of this class of words is to modify a verb direct (the qualifying of adjectives and other adverbs being but a small part of their work), it may be admitted as probably the best term for the purpose.

(a) The principal objection to the usual definition of the adverb, namely, that it is "a word used to qualify or limit the meaning of a verb,” etc., lies in the fact that it includes too much. For does not the object of every transitive

verb limit, qualify, or modify the meaning of that verb? To illustrate: "That man drinks-coffee." No one will undertake to say that the noun "coffee" has not here a limiting or qualifying effect on the meaning of the verb drinks.

(b) Professor Sill gives the following definition: "An adverb is a word used to modify the meaning of any word except a name word” [nouns and pronouns ]. This is a good definition, since an adverb may qualify a preposition or a conjunction. (354.)

(c) Again, the definition includes nouns denoting time, distance, direction, measure or value. To say that a noun in such cases is the "object of a preposition understood," or that it is "in the objective case without a governing word," is a part of the "make-believe" with which our English grammars have heretofore been filled. The fault lies in the definition of adverbs, and not in calling nouns used in this way adverbial nouns, or as by Abbott and Whitney, "adverbial objectives." [See 373-]

337. Preposition (26), from pre-, 'before,' and posit, 'placed.' True, this is accepted as meaning "placed before" the principal word (a noun or some substantive) in the phrase; but the term is faulty since it is just as applicable to all other words in the sentence (except the last), each of them being 'placed before' some other word.

(a) Dr. Abbott objects to the usual definition of a preposition,-" a word that shows the relation of a noun or pronoun to some other word in the sentence." Regarding this definition, he says: "It seems to me of little use even for clever children and of great harm to dull ones. I confess further, for my part, I should have thought that in the sentence 'Thomas protects John,' Thomas stands in the relation of a protector to John, so that "protects" shows the relation between 'Thomas' and 'John' and is, therefore, according to this definition, a preposition."

338. The term prepositional phrase has long been loosely employed to denote both adjectival (aj'ek-tiv-al) and adverbial phrases beginning with a preposition; and it is not only a loose term, but an incorrect one. A "prepositional phrase" (or, properly, preposition-phrase) is a phrase of two or more words used as a single preposition. [753; also see Webster.]

339. Conjunctions (29).-A term that includes the relative pronouns as well as certain adverbs. But it is to be observed that the relatives have another office to fill (119), and this is true also to an extent of the conjunctive adverbs which have a modifying force aside from their office as connectives.

340. Interjections (31).—"The name interjection signifies something that is interjected, or 'thrown into the midst of' something else; and this something else is the sentence as made up of the other parts of speech. Calling them thus, then, implies that they are not of the sentence itself; they are not put together with other parts to make up sentences. And this is in fact the