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

[141] Prof. S. S. Greene most absurdly and erroneously teaches, that, "When the speaker wishes to represent himself, he cannot use his name, but must use some other word, as, I; [and] when he wishes to represent the hearer, he must use thou or you."—Greene's Elements of E. Gram., 1853, p. xxxiv. The examples given above sufficiently show the falsity of all this.

[142] In shoe and shoes, canoe and canoes, the o is sounded slenderly, like oo; but in doe or does, foe or foes, and the rest of the fourteen nouns above, whether singular or plural, it retains the full sound of its own name, O. Whether the plural of two should be "twoes" as Churchill writes it, or "twos," which is more common, is questionable. According to Dr. Ash and the Spectator, the plural of who, taken substantively, is "whos."—Ash's Gram., p. 131.

[143] There are some singular compounds of the plural word pence, which form their own plurals regularly; as, sixpence, sixpences. "If you do not all show like gilt twopences to me."—SHAKSPEARE. "The sweepstakes of which are to be composed of the disputed difference in the value of two doubtful sixpences."—GOODELL'S LECT.: Liberator. Vol. ix, p. 145.

[144] In the third canto of Lord Byron's Prophecy of Dante, this noun is used in the singular number:—

   "And ocean written o'er would not afford
    Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth."

[145] "They never yet had separated for their daylight beds, without a climax to their orgy, something like the present scene."—The Crock of Gold, p. 13. "And straps never called upon to diminish that long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser."—Ib., p. 24. "And he gave them victual in abundance."—2 Chron., xi, 23. "Store of victual."—Ib., verse 11.

[146] The noun physic properly signifies medicine, or the science of medicine: in which sense, it seems to have no plural. But Crombie and the others cite one or two instances in which physic and metaphysic are used, not very accurately, in the sense of the singular of physics and metaphysics. Several grammarians also quote some examples in which physics, metaphysics, politics, optics, and other similar names of sciences are used with verbs or pronouns of the singular number; but Dr. Crombie justly says the plural construction of such words, "is more common, and more agreeable to analogy."—On Etym. and Syntax, p. 27.

[147] "Benjamin Franklin, following the occupation of a compositor in a printing-office, at a limited weekly wage," &c.—Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 232. "WAGE, Wages, hire. The singular number is still frequently used, though Dr. Johnson thought it obsolete."—Glossary of Craven. 1828.

[148] Our lexicographers generally treat the word firearms as a close compound that has no singular. But some write it with a hyphen, as fire-arms. In fact the singular is sometimes used, but the way of writing it is unsettled. Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a carbine as, "a small sort of fire arm;" Webster has it, "a short gun, or fire arm;" Worcester, "a small fire-arm;" Cobb, "a sort of small firearms." Webster uses "fire-arm," in defining "stock."

[149] "But, soon afterwards, he made a glorious amend for his fault, at the battle of Platæa."—Hist. Reader, p. 48.

[150] "There not a dreg of guilt defiles."—Watts's Lyrics, p. 27.

[151] In Young's Night Thoughts, (N. vii, l. 475.) lee, the singular of lees, is found; Churchill says, (Gram., p. 211,) "Prior has used lee, as the singular of lees;" Webster and Bolles have also both forms in their dictionaries:—

   "Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
    And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss."—Young.

[152] "The 'Procrustean bed' has been a myth heretofore; it promises soon to be a shamble and a slaughterhouse in reality."—St. Louis Democrat, 1855.

[153] J. W. Wright remarks, "Some nouns admit of no plural distinctions: as, wine, wood, beer, sugar, tea, timber, fruit, meat, goodness, happiness, and perhaps all nouns ending in ness."—Philos. Gram., p. 139. If this learned author had been brought up in the woods, and had never read of Murray's "richer wines," or heard of Solomon's "dainty meats,"—never chaffered in the market about sugars and teas, or read in Isaiah that "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags," or avowed, like Timothy, "a good profession before many witnesses,"—he might still have hewed the timbers of some rude cabin, and partaken of the wild fruits which nature affords. If these nine plurals are right, his assertion is nine times wrong, or misapplied by himself seven times in the ten.

[154] "I will not suppose it possible for my dear James to fall into either the company or the language of those persons who talk, and even write, about barleys, wheats, clovers, flours, grasses, and malts."— Cobbett's E. Gram., p. 29.

[155] "It is a general rule, that all names of things measured or weighed, have no plural; for in them not number, but quantity, is regarded: as, wool, wine, oil. When we speak, however, of different kinds, we use the plural: as, the coarser wools, the richer wines, the finer oils."—Murray's Gram., p. 41.

[156] So pains is the regular plural of pain, and, by Johnson, Webster, and other lexicographers, is recognized only as plural; but Worcester inserts it among his stock words, with a comment, thus: "Pains, n. Labor; work; toil; care; trouble. [Fist] According to the best usage, the word pains, though of plural form, is used in these senses as singular, and is joined with a singular verb; as, 'The pains they had taken was very great.' Clarendon. 'No pains is taken.' Pope. 'Great pains is taken.' Priestley. 'Much pains.' Bolingbroke."—Univ. and Crit. Dict. The multiplication of anomalies of this kind is so undesirable, that nothing short of a very clear decision of Custom, against the use of the regular concord, can well justify the exception. Many such examples may be cited, but are they not examples of false syntax? I incline to think "the best usage" would still make all these verbs plural. Dr. Johnson cites the first example thus: "The pains they had taken were very great. Clarendon."—Quarto Dict., w. Pain. And the following recent example is unquestionably right: "Pains have been taken to collect the information required."—President Fillmore's Message, 1852.

[157] "And the fish that is in the river shall die."—Exod., vii, 18. "And the fish that was in the river died."—Ib., 21. Here the construction is altogether in the singular, and yet the meaning seems to be plural. This construction appears to be more objectionable, than the use of the word fish with a plural verb. The French Bible here corresponds with ours: but the Latin Vulgate, and the Greek Septuagint, have both the noun and the verb in the plural: as, "The fishes that are in the river,"—"The fishes that were," &c. In our Bible, fowl, as well fish, is sometimes plural; and yet both words, in some passages, have the plural form: as, "And fowl that may fly," &c.—Gen., i, 20. "I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea."—Zeph., i, 3.

[158] Some authors, when they give to mere words the construction of plural nouns, are in the habit of writing them in the form of possessives singular; as, "They have of late, 'tis true, reformed, in some measure, the gouty joints and darning work of whereunto's, whereby's, thereof's, therewith's, and the rest of this kind."—Shaftesbury. "Here," says Dr. Crombie, "the genitive singular is improperly used for the objective case plural. It should be, whereuntos, wherebys, thereofs, therewiths."— Treatise on Etym. and Synt., p. 338. According to our rules, these words should rather be, whereuntoes, wherebies, thereofs, therewiths. "Any word, when used as the name of itself, becomes a noun."—Goodenow's Gram., p. 26. But some grammarians say, "The plural of words, considered as words merely, is formed by the apostrophe and s; as, 'Who, that has any taste, can endure the incessant, quick returns of the also's, and the likewise's, and the moreover's, and the however's, and the notwithstanding's?'—CAMPBELL."—Wells's School Gram., p. 54. Practice is not altogether in favour of this principle, and perhaps it would be better to decide with Crombie that such a use of the apostrophe is improper.

[159] "The Supreme Being (God, [Greek: Theos], Deus, Dieu, &c.) is, in all languages, masculine; in as much as the masculine sex is the superior and more excellent; and as He is the Creator of all, the Father of gods and men."—Harris's Hermes, p. 54. This remark applies to all the direct names of the Deity, but the abstract idea of Deity itself, [Greek: To Theion], Numen, Godhead, or Divinity, is not masculine, but neuter. On this point, some notions have been published for grammar, that are too heterodox to be cited or criticised here. See O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 208.

[160] That is, we give them sex, if we mean to represent them as persons. In the following example, a character commonly esteemed feminine is represented as neuter, because the author would seem to doubt both the sex and the personality: "I don't know what a witch is, or what it was then."—N. P. Rogers's Writings, p. 154.

[161] There is the same reason for doubling the t in cittess, as for doubling the d in goddess. See Rule 3d for Spelling. Yet Johnson, Todd, Webster, Bolles, Worcester, and others, spell it citess, with one t.

"Cits and citesses raise a joyful strain."—DRYDEN: Joh. Dict.

[162] "But in the English we have no Genders, as has been seen in the foregoing Notes. The same may be said of Cases."—Brightland's Gram., Seventh Edition, Lond., 1746, p. 85.

[163] The Rev. David Blair so palpably contradicts himself in respect to this matter, that I know not which he favours most, two cases or three. In his main text, he adopts no objective, but says: "According to the sense or relation in which nouns are used, they are in the NOMINATIVE or [the] POSSESSIVE CASE, thus, nom. man; poss. man's." To this he adds the following marginal note: "In the English language, the distinction of the objective case is observable only in the pronouns. Cases being nothing but inflections, where inflections do not exist, there can be no grammatical distinction of cases, for the terms inflection and case are perfectly synonymous and convertible. As the English noun has only one change of termination, so no other case is here adopted. The objective case is noticed in the pronouns; and in parsing nouns it is easy to distinguish subjects from objects. A noun which governs the verb may be described as in the nominative case, and one governed by the verb, or following a preposition, as in the objective case."—Blair's Practical Gram., Seventh Edition, London, 1815, p. 11. The terms inflection and case are not practically synonymous, and never were so in the grammars of the language from which they are derived. The man who rejects the objective case of English nouns, because it has not a form peculiar to itself alone, must reject the accusative and the vocative of all neuter nouns in Latin, for the same reason; and the ablative, too, must in general be discarded on the same principle. In some other parts of his book, Blair speaks of the objective case of nouns as familiarly as do other authors!

[164] This author says, "We choose to use the term subjective rather than nominative, because it is shorter, and because it conveys its meaning by its sound, whereas the latter word means, indeed, little or nothing in itself."—Text-Book, p. 88. This appears to me a foolish innovation, too much in the spirit of Oliver B. Peirce, who also adopts it. The person who knows not the meaning of the word nominative, will not be very likely to find out what is meant by subjective; especially as some learned grammarians, even such men as Dr. Crombie and Professor Bullions, often erroneously call the word which is governed by the verb its subject. Besides, if we say subjective and objective, in stead of nominative and objective, we shall inevitably change the accent of both, and give them a pronunciation hitherto unknown to the words.—G. BROWN.

[165] The authorities cited by Felch, for his doctrine of "possessive adnouns," amount to nothing. They are ostensibly two. The first is a remark of Dr. Adam's: "'John's book was formerly written Johnis book. Some have thought the 's a contraction of his, but improperly. Others have imagined, with more justness, that, by the addition of the 's, the substantive is changed into a possessive adjective.'—Adam's Latin and English Grammar, p. 7."—Felch's Comp. Gram., p. 26. Here Dr. Adam by no means concurs with what these "others have imagined;" for, in the very same place, he declares the possessive case of nouns to be their only case. The second is a dogmatical and inconsistent remark of some