The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

pronouns of the possessive case. As such, they agree with the antecedent nouns for which they stand, in person, number, and gender; and are governed, like all other possessives, by the nouns which follow them. The rest are not pronouns, but pronominal adjectives; and, as such, they relate to nouns expressed or understood after them. Accordingly, they have none of the above-mentioned qualities, except that the words this and that form the plurals these and those. Or, if we choose to ascribe to a pronominal adjective all the properties of the noun understood, it is merely for the sake of brevity in parsing. The difference, then, between a "pronominal adjective" and an "adjective pronoun," should seem to be this; that the one is an adjective, and the other a pronoun: it is like the difference between a horserace and a racehorse. What can be hoped from the grammarian who cannot discern it? And what can be made of rules and examples like the following? "Adjective pronouns must agree, in number, with their substantives: as, 'This book, these books; that sort, those sorts; another road, other roads.'"—Murray's Gram., Rule viii, Late Editions; Alger's Murray, p. 56; Alden's, 85; Bacon's, 48; Maltby's, 59; Miller's, 66; Merchant's, 81; S. Putnam's, 10; and others. "Pronominal adjectives must agree with their nouns in gender, number, and person; thus, 'My son, hear the instructions of thy father.' 'Call the labourers, and give them their hire.'"—Maunder's Gram., Rule xvii. Here Murray gives a rule for pronouns, and illustrates it by adjectives; and Maunder, as ingeniously blunders in reverse: he gives a rule for adjectives, and illustrates it by pronouns. But what do they mean by "their substantives," or "their nouns?" As applicable to pronouns, the phrase should mean nouns antecedent; as applicable to adjectives, it should mean nouns subsequent. Both these rules are therefore false, and fit only to bewilder; and the examples to both are totally inapplicable. Murray's was once essentially right, but he afterwards corrupted it, and a multitude of his admirers have since copied the perversion. It formerly stood thus: "The pronominal adjectives this and that, &c. and the numbers[209] one, two, &c., must agree in number with their substantives: as, 'This book, these books; that sort, those sorts; one girl, ten girls; another road, other roads.' "—Murray's Gram., Rule viii, 2d Ed., 1796.

OBS. 9.—Among our grammarians, some of considerable note have contended, that the personal pronouns have but two cases, the nominative and the objective. Of this class, may be reckoned Brightland, Dr. Johnson, Fisher, Mennye, Cardell, Cooper, Dr. Jas. P. Wilson, W. B. Fowle. and, according to his late grammars, Dr. Webster. But, in contriving what to make of my or mine, our or ours, thy or thine, your or yours, his, her or hers, its, and their or theirs, they are as far from any agreement, or even from self-consistency, as the cleverest of them could ever imagine. To the person, the number, the gender, and the case, of each of these words, they either profess themselves to be total strangers, or else prove themselves so, by the absurdities they teach. Brightland calls them "Possessive Qualities, or Qualities of Possession;" in which class he also embraces all nouns of the possessive case. Johnson calls them pronouns; and then says of them, "The possessive pronouns, like other adjectives, are without cases or change of termination."—Gram., p. 6. Fisher calls them "Personal Possessive Qualities;" admits the person of my, our, &c.; but supposes mine, ours, &c. to supply the place of the nouns which govern them! Mennye makes them one of his three classes of pronouns, "personal, possessive, and relative;" giving to both forms the rank which Murray once gave, and which Allen now gives, to the first form only. Cardell places them among his "defining adjectives." With Fowle, these, and all other possessives, are "possessive adjectives." Cooper, in his grammar of 1828. copies the last scheme of Murray: in that of 1831, he avers that the personal pronouns "want the possessive case." Now, like Webster and Wilson, he will have mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, and theirs, to be pronouns of the nominative or the objective case. Dividing the pronouns into six general classes, he makes these the fifth; calling them "Possessive Pronouns," but preferring in a note the monstrous name, "Possessive Pronouns Substitute." His sixth class are what he calls, "The Possessive Pronominal Adjectives;" namely, "my, thy, his, her, our, your, their, its, own, and sometimes mine and thine."—Cooper's Pl. and Pr. Gram., p. 43. But all these he has, unquestionably, either misplaced or misnamed; while he tells us, that, "Simplicity of arrangement should be the object of every compiler."—Ib., p. 33. Dr. Perley, (in whose scheme of grammar all the pronouns are nouns,) will have my, thy, his, her, its, our, your, and their, to be in the possessive case; but of mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, and theirs, he says, "These may be called Desiderative Personal Pronouns."—Perley's Gram., p. 15.

OBS. 10.—Kirkham, though he professes to follow Murray, declines the simple personal pronouns as I have declined them; and argues admirably, that my, thy, his, &c., are pronouns of the possessive case, because, "They always stand for nouns in the possessive case." But he afterwards contradicts both himself and the common opinion of all former grammarians, in referring mine, thine, hers, &c., to the class of "Compound Personal Pronouns." Nay, as if to outdo even himself in absurdity, he first makes mine, thine, hers, ours, &c., to be compounds, by assuming that, "These pluralizing adjuncts, ne and s, were, no doubt, formerly detached from the pronouns with which they now coalesce;" and then, because he finds in each of his supposed compounds the signification of a pronoun and its governing noun, reassumes, in parsing them, the very principle of error, on which he condemns their common classification. He says, "They should be parsed as two words." He also supposes them to represent the nouns which govern them—nouns with which they do not agree in any respect! Thus is he wrong in almost every thing he says about them. See Kirkham's Gram., p. 99, p. 101, and p. 104. Goodenow, too, a still later writer, adopts the major part of all this absurdity. He will have my, thy, his, her, its, our, your, their, for the possessive case of his personal pronouns; but mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, theirs, he calls "compound possessive pronouns, in the subjective or [the] objective case."—Text-Book of E. Gram., p. 33. Thus he introduces a new class, unknown to his primary division of the pronouns, and not included in his scheme of their declension. Fuller, too, in a grammar produced at Plymouth, Mass., in 1822, did nearly the same thing. He called I, thou, he, she, and it, with their plurals, "antecedent pronouns;" took my, thy, his, her, &c., for their only possessive forms in his declension; and, having passed from them by the space of just half his book, added: "Sometimes, to prevent the repetition of the same word, an antecedent pronoun in the possessive case, is made to represent, both the pronoun and a noun; as, 'That book is mine'—i. e. 'my book.' MINE is a compound antecedent pronoun, and is equivalent to my book. Then parse my, and book, as though they were both expressed."—Fuller's Gram., p. 71.

OBS. 11.—Amidst all this diversity of doctrine at the very centre of grammar, who shall so fix its principles that our schoolmasters and schoolmistresses may know what to believe and teach? Not he that speculates without regard to other men's views; nor yet he that makes it a merit to follow implicitly "the footsteps of" one only. The true principles of grammar are with the learned; and that man is in the wrong, with whom the most learned will not, in general, coincide. Contradiction of falsities, is necessary to the maintenance of truth; correction of errors, to the success of science. But not every man's errors can be so considerable as to deserve correction from other hands than his own. Misinstruction in grammar has for this reason generally escaped censure. I do not wish any one to coincide with me merely through ignorance of what others inculcate. If doctors of divinity and doctors of laws will contradict themselves in teaching grammar, so far as they do so, the lovers of consistency will find it necessary to deviate from their track. Respecting these pronouns, I learned in childhood, from Webster, a doctrine which he now declares to be false. This was nearly the same as Lowth's, which is quoted in the sixth observation above. But, in stead of correcting its faults, this zealous reformer has but run into others still greater. Now, with equal reproach to his etymology, his syntax, and his logic, he denies that our pronouns have any form of the possessive case at all. But grant the obvious fact, that substitution is one thing, and ellipsis an other, and his whole argument is easily overthrown; for it is only by confounding these, that he reaches his absurd conclusion.

OBS. 12.—Dr. Webster's doctrine now is, that none of the English pronouns have more than two cases. He says, "mine, thine, his, hers, yours, and theirs, are usually considered as [being of] the possessive case. But the three first are either attributes, and used with nouns, or they are substitutes. The three last are always substitutes, used in the place of names WHICH ARE UNDERSTOOD."—"That mine, thine, his, [ours,] yours, hers, and theirs, do not constitute a possessive case, is demonstrable; for they are constantly used as the nominatives to verbs and as the objectives after verbs and prepositions, as in the following passages. 'Whether it could perform its operations of thinking and memory out of a body organized as ours is.'—Locke. 'The reason is, that his subject is generally things; theirs, on the contrary, is persons.'—Camp. Rhet. 'Therefore leave your forest of beasts for ours of brutes, called men.'—Wycherley to Pope. It is needless to multiply proofs. We observe these pretended possessives uniformly used as nominatives or objectives.[210] Should it be said that a noun is understood; I reply, this cannot be true," &c.—Philosophical Gram., p. 35; Improved Gram., p. 26. Now, whether it be true or not, this very position is expressly affirmed by the Doctor himself, in the citation above; though he is, unquestionably, wrong in suggesting that the pronouns are "used in the place of [those] names WHICH ARE UNDERSTOOD." They are used in the place of other names—the names of the possessors; and are governed by those which he here both admits and denies to be "understood."

OBS. 13.—The other arguments of Dr. Webster against the possessive case of pronouns, may perhaps be more easily answered than some readers imagine. The first is drawn from the fact that conjunctions connect like cases. "Besides, in three passages just quoted, the word yours is joined by a connective to a name in the same case; 'To ensure yours and their immortality.' 'The easiest part of yours and my design.' 'My sword and yours are kin.' Will any person pretend that the connective here joins different cases?"—Improved Gram., p. 28; Philosophical Gram., p. 36. I answer, No. But it is falsely assumed that yours is here connected by and to immortality, to design, or to sword; because these words are again severally understood after yours: or, if otherwise, the two pronouns alone are connected by and, so that the proof is rather, that their and my are in the possessive case. The second argument is drawn from the use of the preposition of before the possessive. "For we say correctly, 'an acquaintance of yours, ours, or theirs'—of being the sign of the possessive; but if the words in themselves are possessives, then there must be two signs of the same case, which is absurd."—Improved Gram., p. 28; Phil. Gr., 36. I deny that of is here the sign of the possessive, and affirm that it is taken partitively, in all examples of this sort. "I know my sheep, and am known of mine," is not of this kind; because of here means by—a sense in which the word is antiquated. In recurring afterwards to this argument, the Doctor misquotes the following texts, and avers that they "are evidently meant to include the whole number: 'Sing to the Lord, all ye saints of his.'—Ps. 30, 4. 'He that heareth these sayings of mine.'—Matt. 7."—Improved Gram., p. 29; Phil. Gr., 38. If he is right about the meaning, however, the passages are mistranslated, as well as misquoted: they ought to be, "Sing unto the Lord, O ye his Saints."—"Every one that heareth these my sayings." But when a definitive particle precedes the noun, it is very common with us, to introduce the possessive elliptically after it; and what Dr. Wilson means by suggesting that it is erroneous, I know not: "When the preposition of precedes mine, ours, yours, &c. the errour lies, not in this, that there are double possessive cases, but in