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

12. But whenever we encounter difficulties of this sort, it may be worth while to seek for their cause. If we find it, the understanding is no longer puzzled. Dr. Johnson seemed to his biographer, to show, by this ready answer, the acuteness of his wit and discernment. But did not the wit consist in adroitly excusing himself, by an illusory comparison? What analogy is there between the things which he compares? Of the difficulty of defining poetry, and the difficulty of defining light, the reasons are as different as are the two things themselves, poetry and light. The former is something so various and complex that it is hard to distinguish its essence from its accidents; the latter presents an idea so perfectly simple and unique that all men conceive of it exactly in the same way, while none can show wherein it essentially consists. But is it true, that, "We all know what light is?" Is it not rather true, that we know nothing at all about it, but what it is just as easy to tell as to think? We know it is that reflexible medium which enables us to see; and this is definition enough for all but the natively blind, to whom no definition perhaps can ever convey an adequate notion of its use in respect to sight.

13. If a person cannot tell what a thing is, it is commonly considered to be a fair inference, that he does not know. Will any grammarian say, "I know well enough what the thing is, but I cannot tell?" Yet, taken upon this common principle, the authors of our English grammars, (if in framing their definitions they have not been grossly wanting to themselves in the exercise of their own art,) may be charged, I think, with great ignorance, or great indistinctness of apprehension; and that, too, in relation to many things among the very simplest elements of their science. For example: Is it not a disgrace to a man of letters, to be unable to tell accurately what a letter is? Yet to say, with Lowth, Murray, Churchill, and a hundred others of inferior name, that, "A letter is the first principle or least part of a word," is to utter what is neither good English nor true doctrine. The two articles a and the are here inconsistent with each other. "A letter" is one letter, any letter; but "the first principle of a word" is, surely, not one or any principle taken indefinitely. Equivocal as the phrase is, it must mean either some particular principle, or some particular first principle, of a word; and, taken either way, the assertion is false. For it is manifest, that in no sense can we affirm of each of the letters of a word, that it is "the first principle" of that word. Take, for instance, the word man. Is m the first principle of this word? You may answer, "Yes; for it is the first letter." Is a the first principle? "No; it is the second." But n too is a letter; and is n the first principle? "No; it is the last!" This grammatical error might have been avoided by saying, "Letters are the first principles, or least parts, of words." But still the definition would not be true, nor would it answer the question, What is a letter? The true answer to which is: "A letter is an alphabetic character, which commonly represents some elementary sound of human articulation, or speech."

14. This true definition sufficiently distinguishes letters from the marks used in punctuation, because the latter are not alphabetic, and they represent silence, rather than sound; and also from the Arabic figures used for numbers, because these are no part of any alphabet, and they represent certain entire words, no one of which consists only of one letter, or of a single element of articulation. The same may be said of all the characters used for abbreviation; as, & for and, $ for dollars, or the marks peculiar to mathematicians, to astronomers, to druggists, &c. None of these are alphabetic, and they represent significant words, and not single elementary sounds: it would be great dullness, to assume that a word and an elementary sound are one and the same thing. But the reader will observe that this definition embraces no idea contained in the faulty one to which I am objecting; neither indeed could it, without a blunder. So wide from the mark is that notion of a letter, which the popularity of Dr. Lowth and his copyists has made a hundred-fold more common than any other![67] According to an other erroneous definition given by these same gentlemen, "Words are articulate sounds, used by common consent, as signs of our ideas."—Murray's Gram., p. 22; Kirkham's, 20; Ingersoll's, 7; Alger's, 12; Russell's, 7; Merchant's, 9; Fisk's, 11; Greenleaf's, 20; and many others. See Lowth's Gram., p. 6; from which almost all authors have taken the notion, that words consist of "sounds" only. But letters are no principles or parts of sounds at all; unless you will either have visible marks to be sounds, or the sign to be a principle or part of the thing signified. Nor are they always principles or parts of words: we sometimes write what is not a word; as when, by letters, we denote pronunciation alone, or imitate brute voices. If words were formed of articulate sounds only, they could not exist in books, or be in any wise known to the deaf and dumb. These two primary definitions, then, are both false; and, taken together, they involve the absurdity of dividing things acknowledged to be indivisible. In utterance, we cannot divide consonants from their vowels; on paper, we can. Hence letters are the least parts of written language only; but the least parts of spoken words are syllables, and not letters. Every definition of a consonant implies this.

15. They who cannot define a letter or a word, may be expected to err in explaining other grammatical terms. In my opinion, nothing is well written, that can possibly be misunderstood; and if any definition be likely to suggest a wrong idea, this alone is enough to condemn it: nor does it justify the phraseology, to say, that a more reasonable construction can be put upon it. By Murray and others, the young learner is told, that, "A vowel is an articulate sound, that can be perfectly uttered by itself;" as if a vowel were nothing but a sound, and that a sort of echo, which can utter itself; and next, that, "A consonant is an articulate sound, which cannot be perfectly uttered without the help of a vowel." Now, by their own showing, every letter is either a vowel or a consonant; hence, according to these definitions, all the letters are articulate sounds. And, if so, what is a "silent letter?" It is a silent articulate sound! Again: ask a boy, "What is a triphthong?" He answers in the words of Murray, Weld, Pond, Smith, Adams, Kirkham, Merchant, Ingersoll, Bacon, Alger, Worcester, and others: "A triphthong is the union of three vowels, pronounced in like manner: as eau in beau, iew in view." He accurately cites an entire paragraph from his grammar, but does he well conceive how the three vowels in beau or view are "pronounced in like manner?" Again: "A syllable is a sound, either simple or compound, pronounced by a single impulse of the voice."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 22. This definition resolves syllables into sounds; whereas their true elements are letters. It also mistakes the participle compounded for the adjective compound; whereas the latter only is the true reverse of simple. A compound sound is a sound composed of others which may be separated; a sound compounded is properly that which is made an ingredient with others, but which may itself be simple.

16. It is observable, that in their attempts to explain these prime elements of grammar, Murray, and many others who have copied him, overlook all written language; whereas their very science itself took its origin, name, and nature, from the invention of writing; and has consequently no bearing upon any dialect which has not been written. Their definitions absurdly resolve letters, vowels, consonants, syllables, and words, all into sounds; as if none of these things had any existence on paper, or any significance to those who read in silence. Hence, their explanations of all these elements, as well as of many other things equally essential to the study, are palpably erroneous. I attribute this to the carelessness with which men have compiled or made up books of grammar; and that carelessness to those various circumstances, already described, which have left diligence in a grammarian no hope of praise or reward. Without alluding here to my own books, no one being obliged to accuse himself, I doubt whether we have any school grammar that is much less objectionable in this respect, than Murray's; and yet I am greatly mistaken, if nine tenths of all the definitions in Murray's system are not faulty. "It was this sort of definitions, which made Scaliger say, 'Nihil infelicius definitore grammatico.'"—See Johnson's Gram. Com., p. 351; also Paragraph 5th, above.

17. Nor can this objection be neutralized by saying, it is a mere matter of opinion—a mere prejudice originating in rivalry. For, though we have ample choice of terms, and may frequently assign to particular words a meaning and an explanation which are in some degree arbitrary; yet whenever we attempt to define things under the name which custom has positively fixed upon them, we are no longer left to arbitrary explications; but are bound to think and to say that only which shall commend itself to the understanding of others, as being altogether true to nature. When a word is well understood to denote a particular object or class of objects, the definition of it ought to be in strict conformity to what is known of the real being and properties of the thing or things contemplated. A definition of this kind is a proposition susceptible of proof and illustration; and therefore whatsoever is erroneously assumed to be the proper meaning of such a term, may be refuted. But those persons who take every thing upon trust, and choose both to learn and to teach mechanically, often become so slavishly habituated to the peculiar phraseology of their text-books, that, be the absurdity of a particular expression what it may, they can neither discover nor suspect any inaccuracy in it. It is also very natural even for minds more independent and acute, to regard with some reverence whatsoever was gravely impressed upon them in childhood. Hence the necessity that all school-books should proceed from skillful hands. Instruction should tell things as they are, and never falter through negligence.

18. I have admitted that definitions are not the only means by which a general knowledge of the import of language may be acquired; nor are they the only means by which the acquisition of such knowledge may be aided. To exhibit or point out things and tell their names, constitutes a large part of that instruction by which the meaning of words is conveyed to the young mind; and, in many cases, a mere change or apposition of terms may sufficiently explain our idea. But when we would guard against the possibility of misapprehension, and show precisely what is meant by a word, we must fairly define it. There are, however, in every language, many words which do not admit of a formal definition. The import of all definitive and connecting particles must be learned from usage, translation, or derivation; and nature reserves to herself the power of explaining the objects of our simple original perceptions. "All words standing for complex ideas are definable; but those by which we denote simple ideas, are not. For the perceptions of this latter class, having no other entrance into the mind, than by sensation or reflection, can be acquired only by experience."—Duncan's Logic, p. 63. "And thus we see, that as our simple ideas are the materials and foundation of knowledge, so the names of simple ideas may be considered as the elementary parts of language, beyond which we cannot trace the meaning and signification of words. When we come to them, we suppose the ideas for which they stand to be already known; or, if they are not, experience alone must be consulted, and not definitions or explications."—Ibid., p. 69.

19. But this is no apology for the defectiveness of any definition which might be made correct, or for the effectiveness of our English grammars, in the frequent omission of all explanation, and the more frequent adoption of some indirect form of expression. It is often much easier to make some loose observation upon what is meant by a given word or term in science, than to frame a faultless definition of the