A Handbook of the English Language Part 26

Hence, then, in _the_ and _why_ we have instrumental ablatives, or, simply, _instrumentals_.

-- 216. _The determination of cases._--How do we determine cases? In other words, why do we call _him_ and _them_ accusatives rather than datives or genitives? By one of two means; viz., either by the _sense_ or the _form_.

Suppose that in the English language there were ten thousand dative cases and as many accusatives. Suppose, also, that all the dative cases ended in -m, and all the accusatives in some other letter. It is very evident that, whatever might be the meaning of the words _him_ and _them_ their form would be dative. In this case the meaning being accusatives, and the form dative, we should doubt which test to take.

My own opinion is, that it would be convenient to determine cases by the _form_ of the word _alone_; so that, even if a word had a dative sense only once, where it had an accusative sense ten thousand times, such a word should be said to be in the dative case. Now the words _him_ and _them_ (to which we may add _whom_) were once dative cases;[48] -m in Anglo-Saxon being the sign of the dative case. In the time of the Anglo-Saxons their sense coincided with their form. At present they are dative forms with an accusative meaning. Still, as the word _give_ takes after it a dative case, we have, even now, in the sentence, _give it him_, _give it them_, remnants of the old dative sense. To say _give it to him_, _to them_, is unnecessary and pedantic: neither do I object to the expression, _whom shall I give it?_ If ever the _formal_ test become generally recognised and consistently adhered to, _him_, _them_, and _whom_ will be called datives with a lat.i.tude of meaning; and then the only true and unequivocal accusatives in the English language will be the forms _you_, _thee_, _us_, _me_, and _twain_.

-- 217. _a.n.a.lysis of cases._--In the word _children's_ we are enabled to separate the word into three parts. 1. The root _child_. 2. The plural signs r and en. 3. The sign of the genitive case, s. In this case the word is said to be a.n.a.lysed, since we not only take it to pieces, but also give the respective powers of each of its elements; stating which denotes the case, and which the number. Although it is too much to say that the a.n.a.lysis of every case of every number can be thus effected, it ought always to be attempted.

-- 218. _The true nature of the genitive form in 's._--It is a common notion that the genitive form _father's_ is contracted from _father his_. The expression in our liturgy, _for Jesus Christ his sake_, which is merely a pleonastic one, is the only foundation for this a.s.sertion. As the idea, however, is not only one of the commonest, but also one of the greatest errors in etymology, the following three statements are given for the sake of contradiction to it.

1. The expression the _Queen's Majesty_ is not capable of being reduced to the _Queen his Majesty_.

2. In the form _his_ itself, the s has precisely the power that it has in _father's_, &c. Now _his_ cannot be said to arise out of _he_ + _his_.

3. In the Slavonic, Lithuanic, and cla.s.sical tongues, the genitive ends in s, just as it does in English; so that even if the words _father his_ would account for the English word _father's_, it would not account for the Sanskrit genitive _pad-as_, of a foot; the Zend _dughdhar-s_, of a daughter; the Lithuanic _dugter-s_; the Greek ?d??t-??; the Latin _dent-is_, &c.

CHAPTER V.

THE PERSONAL p.r.o.nOUNS.

-- 219. _I_, _we_, _us_, _me_, _thou_, _ye_.--These const.i.tute the true personal p.r.o.nouns. From _he_, _she_, and _it_, they differ in being dest.i.tute of gender.

These latter words are demonstrative rather than personal, so that there are in English true personal p.r.o.nouns for the first two persons only.

-- 220. The usual declension of the personal p.r.o.nouns is exceptionable. _I_ and _me_, _thou_ and _ye_, stand in no etymological relations to each other. The true view of the words is, that they are not irregular but defective. _I_ has no _oblique_, and _me_ no nominative case. And so it is with the rest.

-- 221. _You_.--As far as the practice of the present mode of speech is concerned, the word _you_ is a _nominative_ form; since we say _you move_, _you are moving_, _you were speaking_.

Why should it not be treated as such? There is no absolute reason why it should not. The Anglo-Saxon form for _you_ was _eow_, for _ye_, _ge_.

Neither bears any sign of case at all, so that, form for form, they are equally and indifferently nominative and accusative. Hence, it, perhaps, is more logical to say that a certain form (_you_), is used _either_ as a nominative or accusative, than to say that the accusative case is used instead of a nominative. It is clear that _you_ can be used instead of _ye_ only so far as it is nominative in power.

_Ye_.--As far as the evidence of such expressions as _get on with ye_ is concerned, the word _ye_ is an accusative form. The reasons why it should or should not be treated as such are involved in the previous paragraph.

-- 222. _Me_.--carrying out the views just laid down, and admitting _you_ to be a nominative, or _quasi_-nominative case, we may extend the reasoning to the word _me_, and call it also a secondary or equivocal nominative; inasmuch as such phrases as _it is me_ = _it is I_ are common.

Now to call such expressions incorrect English is to a.s.sume the point. No one says that _c'est moi_ is bad French, and that _c'est je_ is good.

-- 223. _Caution._--Observe, however, that the expression _it is me_ = _it is I_ will not justify the use of _it is him_, _it is her_ = _it is he_ and _it is she_. _Me_, _ye_, _you_, are what may be called _indifferent forms_, i.e., nominative as much as accusative, and accusative as much as nominative. _Him_ and _her_, on the other hand, are not indifferent. The -m and -r are respectively the signs of cases other than the nominative.

-- 224. Again: the reasons which allow the form _you_ to be considered as a nominative plural, on the strength of its being used for _ye_, will not allow it to be considered a nominative singular on the strength of its being used for _thou_.

-- 225. In phrases like _you are speaking_, &c., even when applied to a single individual, the idea is really plural; in other words, the courtesy consists in treating _one_ person as _more than one_, and addressing him as such, rather than in using a plural form in a singular sense. It is certain that, grammatically considered, _you_ = _thou_ is a plural, since the verb with which it agrees is plural:--_you are speaking_, not _you art speaking_.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE TRUE REFLECTIVE p.r.o.nOUN IN THE GOTHIC LANGUAGES, AND ON ITS ABSENCE IN ENGLISH.

-- 226. A true reflective p.r.o.noun is wanting in English. In other words, there are no equivalents to the Latin forms _sui_, _sibi_, _se_.

Nor yet are there any equivalents to the forms _suus, sua, suum_: since _his_ and _her_ are the equivalents to _ejus_ and _illius_, and are not adjectives but genitive cases.

At the first view, this last sentence seems unnecessary. It might seem superfluous to state, that, if there were no such primitive form as _se_, there could be no such secondary form as _suus_.

Such, however, is not the case. _Suus_ might exist in the language, and yet _se_ be absent; in other words, the derivative form might have continued whilst the original one had become extinct.

Such is really the case with the _Old_ Frisian. The reflective personal form, the equivalent to _se_, is lost, whilst the reflective possessive form, the equivalent to _suus_, is found. In the _Modern_ Frisian, however, both forms are lost.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DEMONSTRATIVE p.r.o.nOUNS, &c.

-- 227. The demonstrative p.r.o.nouns are, 1. _He, it_. 2. _She_. 3. _This, that_. 4. _The_.

_He_, _she_, and _it_, generally looked on as personal, are here treated as demonstrative p.r.o.nouns, for the following reasons.

1. The personal p.r.o.nouns form an extremely natural cla.s.s, if the p.r.o.nouns of the two first persons be taken by themselves. This is not the case if they be taken along with _he_, _it_, and _she_.

2. The idea expressed by _he_, _it_, and _she_ is naturally that of demonstrativeness. In the Latin language _is, ea, id_; _ille, illa, illud_; _hic, haec, hoc_, are demonstrative p.r.o.nouns in sense, as well as in declension.

3. The plural forms _they, them_, in the present English, are the plural forms of the root of _that_, a true demonstrative p.r.o.noun; so that even if _he_, _she_, and _it_ could be treated as personal p.r.o.nouns, _they_ could not.

4. The word _she_ has grown out of the Anglo-Saxon _seo_. Now _seo_ was in Anglo-Saxon the feminine form of the definite article; the definite article itself being originally a demonstrative p.r.o.noun.

-- 228. Compared with the Anglo-Saxon the present English stands as follows:--

_She_.--The Anglo-Saxon form _heo_, being lost to the language, is replaced by the feminine article _seo_.

-- 229. _Her_.--This is a case, not of the present _she_, but of the Anglo-Saxon _heo_: so that _she_ may be said to be defective in the oblique cases, and _her_ to be defective in the nominative.

_Him_.--A dative form, which has replaced the Anglo-Saxon _hine_. When used as a dative, it was neuter as well as masculine.

_His_.--Originally neuter as well as masculine. Now as a neuter, replaced by _its_--"et quidem ipsa vox _his_, ut et interrogativum _whose_, nihil aliud sunt quam _hee's_, _who's_, ubi s omnino idem praestat quod in aliis possessivis. Similiter autem _his_ pro _hee's_ eodem errore quo nonnunquam _bin_ pro _been_; item _whose_ pro _who's_ eodem errore quo _done_, _gone_, _knowne_, _growne_, &c., pro _doen_, _goen_, _knowen,_ vel _do'n_, _go'n_, _know'n_, _grow'n_; utrobique contra a.n.a.logiam linguae; sed usu defenditur."--Wallis, c.v.

_It_.--Changed from the Anglo-Saxon _hit_, by the ejection of h. The t is no part of the original word, but a sign of the neuter gender, forming it regularly from _he_. The same neuter sign is preserved in the Latin _id_ and _illud_.

_Its_.--In the course of time the nature of the neuter sign t, in _it_, the form being found in but a few words, became misunderstood. Instead of being looked on as an affix, it pa.s.sed for part of the original word. Hence was formed from _it_ the anomalous genitive _its_ superseding the Saxon _his_.

The same was the case with--