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

[454] S. R. Hall thinks it necessary to recognize "four distinctions" of "the distinction occasioned by sex." In general, the other authors here quoted, suppose that we have only "three distinctions" of "the distinction of sex." And, as no philosopher has yet discovered more than two sexes, some have thence stoutly argued, that it is absurd to speak of more than two genders. Lily makes it out, that in Latin there are seven: yet, with no great consistency, he will have a gender to be a or the distinction of sex. "GENUS est sexus discretio. Et sunt genera numero septem."—Lilii Gram., p. 10. That is, "GENDER is the distinction of sex. And the genders are seven in number." Ruddiman says, "GENUS est, discrimen nominis secundum sexum, vel ejus in structurâ grammaticâ imitatio. Genera nominum sunt tria."—Ruddimanni Gram., p. 4. That is, "GENDER is the diversity of the noun according to sex, or [it is] the imitation of it in grammatical structure. The genders of nouns are three." These old definitions are no better than the newer ones cited above. All of them are miserable failures, full of faults and absurdities. Both the nature and the cause of their defects are in some degree explained near the close of the tenth chapter of my Introduction. Their most prominent errors are these: 1. They all assume, that gender, taken as one thing, is in fact two, three, or more, genders, 2. Nearly all of them seem to say or imply, that words differ from one an other in sex, like animals. 3. Many of them expressly confine gender, or the genders, to nouns only. 4. Many of them confessedly exclude the neuter gender, though their authors afterwards admit this gender. 5. That of Dr. Webster supposes, that words differing in gender never have the same "termination." The absurdity of this may be shown by a multitude of examples: as, man and woman, male and female, father and mother, brother and sister. This is better, but still not free from some other faults which I have mentioned. For the correction of all this great batch of errors, I shall simply substitute in the Key one short definition, which appears to me to be exempt from each of these inaccuracies.

[455] Walker states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus: "But y preceded by a vowel is never changed: as coy, coyly, gay, gayly."—Walker's Rhyming Dict., p.x. "Y preceded by a vowel is never changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc."—Ib., p viii. Walker's twelve "Orthographical Aphorisms," which Murray and others republish as their "Rules for Spelling," and which in stead of amending they merely corrupt, happened through some carelessness to contain two which should have been condensed into one. For "words ending with y preceded by a consonant," he has not only the absurd rule or assertion above recited, but an other which is better, with an exception or remark under each, respecting "y preceded by a vowel." The grammarians follow him in his errors, and add to their number: hence the repetition, or similarity, in the absurdities here quoted. By the term "verbal nouns," Walker meant nouns denoting agents, as carrier from carry; but Kirkham understood him to mean "participial nouns," as the carrying. Or rather, he so mistook "that able philologist" Murray; for he probably knew nothing of Walker in the matter; and accordingly changed the word "verbal" to "participial;" thus teaching, through all his hundred editions, except a few of the first, that participial nouns from verbs ending in y preceded by a consonant, are formed by merely "changing the y into i." But he seems to have known, that this is not the way to form the participle; though he did not know, that "coyless" is not a proper English word.

[456] The idea of plurality is not "plurality of idea," any more than the idea of wickedness, or the idea of absurdity, is absurdity or wickedness of idea; yet, behold, how our grammarians copy the blunder, which Lowth (perhaps) first fell into, of putting the one phrase for the other! Even Professor Fowler, (as well as Murray, Kirkham, and others,) talks of having regard "to unity or plurality of idea!"—Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo. 1850, §513,—G. BROWN.

[457] In the Doctor's "New Edition, Revised and Corrected," the text stands thus: "The Present participle of THE ACTIVE VOICE has an active signification; as, James is building the house. In many of these, however, it has," &c. Here the first sentence is but an idle truism; and the phrase, "In many of these," for lack of an antecedent to these, is utter nonsense. What is in "the active voice," ought of course to be active in "signification;" but, in this author's present scheme of the verb, we find "the active voice," in direct violation of his own definition of it, ascribed not only to verbs and participles either neuter or intransitive, but also, as it would seem by this passage, to "many" that are passive!—G. BROWN.

[458] One objection to these passage is, that they are examples of the very construction which they describe as a fault. The first and second sentences ought to have been separated only by a semicolon. This would have made them "members" of one and the same sentence. Can it be supported that one "thought" is sufficient for two periods, or for what one chooses to point as such, but not for two members of the same period?—G. BROWN.

[459] (1.) "Accent is the tone with which one speaks. For, in speaking, the voice of every man is sometimes more grave in the sound, and at other times more acute or shrill."—Beattie's Moral Science, p. 25. "Accent is the tone of the voice with which a syllable is pronounced."—Dr. Adam's Latin and English Gram., p. 266.

(2.) "Accent in a peculiar stress of the voice on some syllable in a word to distinguish it from the others."—Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243.

(3.) "The tone by which one syllable is distinguished from another is the accent; which is a greater stress and elevation of voice on that particular syllable."—Bicknell's Eng. Gram., Part II, p. 111.

(4.) "Quantity is the Length or Shortness of Syllables; and the Proportion, generally speaking, betwixt a long and [a] short Syllable, is two to one; as in Music, two Quavers to one Crotchet.—Accent is the rising and falling of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone, but an Art of which we have little Use, and know less, in the English Tongue; nor are we like to improve our Knowledge in this Particular, unless the Art of Delivery or Utterance were a little more study'd."—Brightland's Gram., p. 156.

(5.) "ACCENT, s. m. (inflexion de la voix.) Accent, tone, pronunciation."—Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel, 4to, Tome Premier, sous le mot Accent.

"ACCENT, subst. (tone or inflection of the voice.) Accent, ton ou inflexion de voix."—Same Work, Garner's New Universal Dictionary, 4to, under the word Accent.

(6.) "The word accent is derived from the Latin language and signifies the tone of the voice."—Parker and Fox's English Gram., Part III, p. 32.

(7.) "The unity of the word consists in the tone or accent, which binds together the two parts of the composition."—Fowler's E. Gram., §360.

(8.) "The accent of the ancients is the opprobrium of modern criticism. Nothing can show more evidently the fallibility of the human faculties, than the total ignorance we are in at present of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent."—Walker's Principles, No. 486; Dict., p. 53.

(9.) "It is not surprising, that the accent and quantity of the ancients should be so obscure and mysterious, when two such learned men of our own nation as Mr. Foster and Dr. Gaily, differ about the very existence of quantity in our own language."—Walker's Observations on Accent, &c.; Key, p. 311.

(10.) "What these accents are has puzzled the learned so much that they seem neither to understand each other nor themselves."—Walker's Octavo Dict., w. Barytone.

(11.) "The ancients designated the pitch of vocal sounds by the term accent; making three kinds of accents, the acute (é), the grave (è), and the circumflex (ê), which signified severally the rise, the fall, and the turn of the voice, or union of acute and grave on the same syllable."—Sargent's Standard Speaker, p. 18.

[460] "Interrogatio, Græcè Erotema, Accentum quoque transfert; ut, Ter. Siccine ais Parmenó? Voss. Susenbr."—Prat's Latin Grammar, 8vo, Part II, p. 190.

[461] In regard to the admission of a comma before the verb, by the foregoing exception, neither the practice of authors nor the doctrine of punctuators is entirely uniform; but, where a considerable pause is, and must be, made in the reading, I judge it not only allowable, but necessary, to mark it in writing. In W. Day's "Punctuation Reduced to a System," a work of no inconsiderable merit, this principle is disallowed; and even when the adjunct of the nominative is a relative clause, which, by Rule 2d below and its first exception, requires a comma after it but none before it, this author excludes both, putting no comma before the principal verb. The following is an example: "But it frequently happens, that punctuation is not made a prominent exercise in schools; and the brief manner in which the subject is there dismissed has proved insufficient to impress upon the minds of youth a due sense of its importance."—Day's Punctuation, p. 32. A pupil of mine would here have put a comma after the word dismissed. So, in the following examples, after sake, and after dispenses: "The vanity that would accept power for its own sake is the pettiest of human passions."—Ib., p. 75. "The generous delight of beholding the happiness he dispenses is the highest enjoyment of man."—Ib., p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put the comma only where the conjunction is omitted. W. Day separates them all, one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a plural verb, he inserts no point. Example: "Imagination is one of the principal ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm, and sensibility are also included."—Day's Punctuation, p. 52. If the points are to be put where the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after sensibility; and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set one there. John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following instance: "Reputation, virtue, and happiness depend greatly on the choice of companions."—Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed. This is certainly a great error. It gives us such punctuation as comports neither with the sense of three or more words in the same construction, nor with the pauses which they require in reading. "John, James and Thomas are here," is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have any other meaning. Yet this is the way in which the rules of Cooper, Felton, Frost, Webster, and perhaps others, teach us to point it, when we mean to tell somebody else that all three are here! In his pretended "Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar," (a work abounding in small thefts from Brown's Institutes,) Cooper has the following example: "John, James or Joseph intends to accompany me."—Page 120. Here, John being addressed, the punctuation is right; but, to make this noun a nominative to the verb, a comma must be put after each of the others. In Cooper's "Plain and Practical Grammar," the passage is found in this form: "John, James, or Joseph intends to accompany us."—Page 132. This pointing is doubly wrong; because it is adapted to neither sense. If the three nouns have the same construction, the principal pause will be immediately before the verb; and surely a comma is as much required by that pause, as by the second. See the Note on Rule 3d, above.

[464] In punctuation, the grammar here cited is unaccountably defective. This is the more strange, because many of its errors are mere perversions of what was accurately pointed by an other hand. On the page above referred to, Dr. Bullions, in copying from Lennie's syntactical exercises a dozen consecutive lines, has omitted nine needful commas, which Lennie had been careful to insert!

[465] Needless abbreviations, like most that occur in this example, are in bad taste, and ought to be avoided. The great faultiness of this text as a model for learners, compels me to vary the words considerably in suggesting the correction. See the Key.—G. B.

[466] "To be, or not to be?—that's the question."—Hallock's Gram., p. 220. "To