[1] Valuable information will also be found in Bulletin No. 38
(1905), "Crop Export Movement and Port Facilities on the Atlantic and
Gulf Coasts"; in Bulletin No. 49 (1907), "Cost of Hauling Crops from
Farms to Shipping Points"; and in Bulletin No. 69 (1908), "European
Grain Trade."
GRAM, or CHICK-PEA, called also Egyptian pea, or Bengal gram (from Port.
_grao_, formerly _gram_, Lat. _granum_, Hindi _Chana_, Bengali _Chhola_,
Ital. _cece_, Span. _garbanzo_), the _Cicer arietinum_ of Linnaeus, so
named from the resemblance of its seed to a ram's head. It is a member
of the natural order Leguminosae, largely cultivated as a pulse-food in
the south of Europe, Egypt and western Asia as far as India, but is not
known undoubtedly wild. The plant is an annual herb with flexuose
branches, and alternately arranged pinnately compound leaves, with
small, oval, serrated leaflets and small eared stipules. The flowers are
borne singly in the leaf-axils on a stalk about half the length of the
leaf and jointed and bent in the middle; the corolla is blue-purple. The
inflated pod, 1 to 1-1/2 in. long, contains two roundish seeds. It was
cultivated by the Greeks in Homer's time under the name _erebinthos_,
and is also referred to by Dioscorides as _krios_ from the resemblance
of the pea to the head of a ram. The Romans called it _cicer_, from
which is derived the modern names given to it in the south of Europe.
Names, more or less allied to one another, are in vogue among the
peoples of the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, Armenia and Persia, and there
is a Sanskrit name and several others analogous or different in modern
Indian languages. The plant has been cultivated in Egypt from the
beginning of the Christian era, but there is no proof that it was known
to the ancient Egyptians. Alphonse de Candolle (_Origin of Cultivated
Plants_, p. 325) suggests that the plant originally grew wild in the
countries to the south of the Caucasus and to the north of Persia. "The
western Aryans (Pelasgians, Hellenes) perhaps introduced the plant into
southern Europe, where, however, there is some probability that it was
also indigenous. The western Aryans carried it to India." Gram is
largely cultivated in the East, where the seeds are eaten raw or cooked
in various ways, both in their ripe and unripe condition, and when
roasted and ground subserve the same purposes as ordinary flour. In
Europe the seeds are used as an ingredient in soups. They contain, in
100 parts without husks, nitrogenous substances 22.7, fat 3.76, starch
63.18, mineral matters 2.6 parts, with water (Forbes Watson, quoted in
Parkes's _Hygiene_). The liquid which exudes from the glandular hairs
clothing the leaves and stems of the plant, more especially during the
cold season when the seeds ripen, contains a notable proportion of
oxalic acid. In Mysore the dew containing it is collected by means of
cloths spread on the plant over night, and is used in domestic medicine.
The steam of water in which the fresh plant is immersed is in the Deccan
resorted to by the Portuguese for the treatment of dysmenorrhoea. The
seed of _Phaseolus Mungo_, or green gram (Hind. and Beng. _moong_), a
form of which plant with black seeds (_P. Max_ of Roxburgh) is termed
black gram, is an important article of diet among the labouring classes
in India. The meal is an excellent substitute for soap, and is stated by
Elliot to be an invariable concomitant of the Hindu bath. A variety,
var. _radiatus_ (_P. Roxburghii_, W. and Arn., or _P. radiatus_, Roxb.)
(vern. _urid_, _mashkalai_), also known as green gram, is perhaps the
most esteemed of the leguminous plants of India, where the meal of its
seed enters into the composition of the more delicate cakes and dishes.
Horse gram, _Dolichos biflorus_ (vern. _kulthi_), which supplies in
Madras the place of the chick-pea, affords seed which, when boiled, is
extensively employed as a food for horses and cattle in South India,
where also it is eaten in curries.
See W. Elliot, "On the Farinaceous Grains and the various kinds of
Pulses used in Southern India," _Edin. New Phil. Journ._ xvi. (1862)
16 sq.; H. Drury, _The Useful Plants of India_ (1873); U. C. Dutt,
_Materia Medica of the Hindus_ (Calcutta, 1877); G. Watt, _Dictionary
of the Economic Products of India_ (1890).
GRAMMAR (from Lat. _grammatica_, sc. _ars_; Gr. [Greek: gramma], letter,
from [Greek: graphein], to write). By the grammar of a language is meant
either the relations borne by the words of a sentence and by sentences
themselves one to another, or the systematized exposition of these. The
exposition may be, and frequently is, incorrect; but it always
presupposes the existence of certain customary uses of words when in
combination. In what follows, therefore, grammar will be generally
employed in its primary sense, as denoting the mode in which words are
connected in order to express a complete thought, or, as it is termed in
logic, a proposition.
Scope of grammar.
The object of language is to convey thought, and so long as this object
is attained the machinery for attaining it is of comparatively slight
importance. The way in which we combine our words and sentences matters
little, provided that our meaning is clear to others. The expressions
"horseflesh" and "flesh of a horse" are equally intelligible to an
Englishman and therefore are equally recognized by English grammar. The
Chinese manner of denoting a genitive is by placing the defining word
before that which it defines, as in _koue jin_, "man of the kingdom,"
literally "kingdom man," and the only reason why it would be incorrect
in French or Italian is that such a combination would be unintelligible
to a Frenchman or an Italian. Hence it is evident that the grammatical
correctness or incorrectness of an expression depends upon its
intelligibility, that is to say, upon the ordinary use and custom of a
particular language. Whatever is so unfamiliar as not to be generally
understood is also ungrammatical. In other words, it is contrary to the
habit of a language, as determined by common usage and consent.
In this way we can explain how it happens that the grammar of a
cultivated dialect and that of a local dialect in the same country so
frequently disagree. Thus, in the dialect of West Somerset, _thee_ is
the nominative of the second personal pronoun, while in cultivated
English the plural accusative _you_ (A.-S. _eow_) has come to represent
a nominative singular. Both are grammatically correct within the sphere
of their respective dialects, but no further. _You_ would be as
ungrammatical in West Somerset as _thee_ is in classical English; and
both _you_ and _thee_, as nominatives singular, would have been equally
ungrammatical in Early English. Grammatical propriety is nothing more
than the established usage of a particular body of speakers at a
particular time in their history.
It follows from this that the grammar of a people changes, like its
pronunciation, from age to age. Anglo-Saxon or Early English grammar is
not the grammar of Modern English, any more than Latin grammar is the
grammar of modern Italian; and to defend an unusual construction or
inflexion on the ground that it once existed in literary Anglo-Saxon is
as wrong as to import a peculiarity of some local dialect into the
grammar of the cultivated speech. It further follows that different
languages will have different grammars, and that the differences will be
more or less according to the nearer or remoter relationship of the
languages themselves and the modes of thought of those who speak them.
Consequently, to force the grammatical framework of one language upon
another is to misconceive the whole nature of the latter and seriously
to mislead the learner. Chinese grammar, for instance, can never be
understood until we discard, not only the terminology of European
grammar, but the very conceptions which underlie it, while the
polysynthetic idioms of America defy all attempts to discover in them
"the parts of speech" and the various grammatical ideas which occupy so
large a place in our school-grammars. The endeavour to find the
distinctions of Latin grammar in that of English has only resulted in
grotesque errors, and a total misapprehension of the usage of the
English language.
Subdivision of grammar.
It is to the Latin grammarians--or, more correctly, to the Greek
grammarians, upon whose labours those of the Latin writers were
based--that we owe the classification of the subjects with which grammar
is commonly supposed to deal. The grammar of Dionysius Thrax, which he
wrote for Roman schoolboys in the time of Pompey, has formed the
starting-point for the innumerable school-grammars which have since seen
the light, and suggested that division of the matter treated of which
they have followed. He defines grammar as a practical acquaintance with
the language of literary men, and as divided into six parts--accentuation
and phonology, explanation of figurative expressions, definition,
etymology, general rules of flexion and critical canons. Of these,
phonology and accentuation, or prosody, can properly be included in
grammar only in so far as the construction of a sentence and the
grammatical meaning of a word are determined by accent or letter-change;
the accentual difference in English, for example, between _incense_ and
_incense_ belongs to the province of grammar, since it indicates a
difference between noun and verb; and the changes of vowel in the Semitic
languages, by which various nominal and verbal forms are distinguished
from one another, constitute a very important part of their grammatical
machinery. But where accent and pronunciation do not serve to express the
relations of words in a sentence, they fall into the domain of phonology,
not of grammar. The explanation of figurative expressions, again, must be
left to the rhetorician, and definition to the lexicographer; the
grammarian has no more to do with them than he has with the canons of
criticism.
In fact, the old subdivision of grammar, inherited from the grammarians
of Rome and Alexandria, must be given up and a new one put in its place.
What grammar really deals with are all those contrivances whereby the
relations of words and sentences are pointed out. Sometimes it is
position, sometimes phonetic symbolization, sometimes composition,
sometimes flexion, sometimes the use of auxiliaries, which enables the
speaker to combine his words in such a way that they shall be
intelligible to another. Grammar may accordingly be divided into the
three departments of composition or "word-building," syntax and
accidence, by which is meant an exposition of the means adopted by
language for expressing the relations of grammar when recourse is not
had to composition or simple position.
Modes of treatment.
A systematized exposition of grammar may be intended for the purely
practical purpose of teaching the mechanism of a foreign language. In
this case all that is necessary is a correct and complete statement of
the facts. But a correct and complete statement of the facts is by no
means so easy a matter as might appear at first sight. The facts will be
distorted by a false theory in regard to them, while they will certainly
not be presented in a complete form if the grammarian is ignorant of the
true theory they presuppose. The Semitic verb, for example, remains
unintelligible so long as the explanation of its forms is sought in the
conjugation of the Aryan verb, since it has no tenses in the Aryan sense
of the word, but denotes relation and not time.
A good practical grammar of a language, therefore, should be based on a
correct appreciation of the facts which it expounds, and a correct
appreciation of the facts is only possible where they are examined and
co-ordinated in accordance with the scientific method. A practical
grammar ought, wherever it is possible, to be preceded by a scientific
grammar.
Comparison is the instrument with which science works, and a scientific
grammar, accordingly, is one in which the comparative method has been
applied to the relations of speech. If we would understand the origin
and real nature of grammatical forms, and of the relations which they
represent, we must compare them with similar forms in kindred dialects
and languages, as well as with the forms under which they appeared
themselves at an earlier period of their history. We shall thus have a
comparative grammar and an historical grammar, the latter being devoted
to tracing the history of grammatical forms and usages in the same
language. Of course, an historical grammar is only possible where a
succession of written records exists; where a language possesses no
older literature we must be content with a comparative grammar only, and
look to cognate idioms to throw light upon its grammatical
peculiarities. In this case we have frequently to leave whole forms
unexplained, or at most conjecturally interpreted, since the machinery
by means of which the relations of grammar are symbolized is often
changed so completely during the growth of a language as to cause its
earlier shape and character to be unrecognizable. Moreover, our area of
comparison must be as wide as possible; where we have but two or three
languages to compare, we are in danger of building up conclusions on
insufficient evidence. The grammatical errors of the classical
philologists of the 18th century were in great measure due to the fact
that their area of comparison was confined to Latin and Greek.
The historical grammar of a single language or dialect, which traces the
grammatical forms and usages of the language as far back as documentary
evidence allows, affords material to the comparative grammarian, whose
task it is to compare the grammatical forms and usages of an allied
group of tongues and thereby reduce them to their earliest forms and
senses. The work thus carried out by the comparative grammarian within a
particular family of languages is made use of by universal grammar, the
object of which is to determine the ideas that underlie all grammar
whatsoever, as distinct from those that are peculiar to special families
of speech. Universal grammar is sometimes known as "the metaphysics of
language," and it has to decide such questions as the nature of gender
or of the verb, the true purport of the genitive relation, or the origin
of grammar itself. Such questions, it is clear, can only be answered by
comparing the results gained by the comparative treatment of the
grammars of various groups of language. What historical grammar is to
comparative grammar, comparative grammar is to universal grammar.
Universal grammar.
Universal grammar, as founded on the results of the scientific study of
speech, is thus essentially different from that "universal grammar" so
much in vogue at the beginning of the 19th century, which consisted of a
series of a priori assumptions based on the peculiarities of European
grammar and illustrated from the same source. But universal grammar, as
conceived by modern science, is as yet in its infancy; its materials are
still in the process of being collected. The comparative grammar of the
Indo-European languages is alone in an advanced state, those of the
Semitic idioms, of the Finno-Ugrian tongues and of the Bantu dialects of
southern Africa are still in a backward condition; and the other
families of speech existing in the world, with the exception of the
Malayo-Polynesian and the Sonorian of North America, have not as yet
been treated scientifically. Chinese, it is true, possesses an
historical grammar, and Van Eys, in his comparative grammar of Basque,
endeavoured to solve the problems of that interesting language by a
comparison of its various dialects; but in both cases the area of
comparison is too small for more than a limited success to be
attainable. Instead of attempting the questions of universal grammar,
therefore, it will be better to confine our attention to three
points--the fundamental differences in the grammatical conceptions of
different groups of languages, the main results of a scientific
investigation of Indo-European grammar, and the light thrown by
comparative philology upon the grammar of our own tongue.
Differences in grammar of unallied languages.
The proposition or sentence is the unit and starting-point of speech,
and grammar, as we have seen, consists in the relations of its several
parts one to another, together with the expression of them. These
relations may be regarded from various points of view. In the
polysynthetic languages of America the sentence is conceived as a whole,
not composed of independent words, but, like the thought which it
expresses, one and indivisible. What we should denote by a series of
words is consequently denoted by a single long compound--_kuligatchis_
in Delaware, for instance, signifying "give me your pretty little paw,"
and _aglekkigiartorasuarnipok_ in Eskimo, "he goes away hastily and
exerts himself to write." Individual words can be, and often are,
extracted from the sentence; but in this case they stand, as it were,
outside it, being represented by a pronoun within the sentence itself.
Thus, in Mexican, we can say not only _ni-sotsi-temoa_, "I look for
flowers," but also _ni-k-temoa sotsitl_, where the interpolated guttural
is the objective pronoun. As a necessary result of this conception of
the sentence the American languages possess no true verb, each act being
expressed as a whole by a single word. In Cherokee, for example, while
there is no verb signifying "to wash" in the abstract, no less than
thirteen words are used to signify every conceivable mode and object of
washing. In the incorporating languages, again, of which Basque may be
taken as a type, the object cannot be conceived except as contained in
the verbal action. Hence every verbal form embodies an objective
pronoun, even though the object may be separately expressed. If we pass
to an isolating language like Chinese, we find the exact converse of
that which meets us in the polysynthetic tongues. Here each proposition
or thought is analysed into its several elements, and these are set over
against one another as so many independent words. The relations of
grammar are consequently denoted by position, the particular position of
two or more words determining the relation they bear to each other. The
analysis of the sentence has not been carried so far in agglutinative
languages like Turkish. In these the relations of grammar are
represented by individual words, which, however, are subordinated to the
words expressing the main ideas intended to be in relation to one
another. The defining words, or indices of grammatical relations, are,
in a large number of instances, placed after the words which they
define; in some cases, however, as, for example, in the Bantu languages
of southern Africa, the relation is conceived from the opposite point of
view, the defining words being prefixed. The inflexional languages call
in the aid of a new principle. The relations of grammar are denoted
symbolically either by a change of vowel or by a change of termination,
more rarely by a change at the beginning of a word. Each idea, together
with the relation which it bears to the other ideas of a proposition, is
thus represented by a single word; that is to say, the ideas which make
up the elements of a sentence are not conceived severally and
independently, as in Chinese, but as always having a certain connexion
with one another. Inflexional languages, however, tend to become
analytical by the logical separation of the flexion from the idea to
which it is attached, though the primitive point of view is never
altogether discarded, and traces of flexion remain even in English and
Persian. In fact, there is no example of a language which has wholly
forsaken the conception of the sentence and the relation of its elements
with which it started, although each class of languages occasionally
trespasses on the grammatical usages of the others. In language, as
elsewhere in nature, there are no sharp lines of division, no sudden
leaps; species passes insensibly into species, class into class. At the
same time the several types of speech--polysynthetic, isolating,
agglutinative and inflexional--remain clear and fixed; and even where
two languages belong to the same general type, as, for instance, an
Indo-European and a Semitic language in the inflexional group, or a
Bantu and a Turkish language in the agglutinative group, we find no
certain example of grammatical interchange. A mixed grammar, in which
the grammatical procedure of two distinct families of speech is
intermingled, is almost, if not altogether, unknown.
It is obvious, therefore, that grammar constitutes the surest and most
important basis for a classification of languages. Words may be borrowed
freely by one dialect from another, or, though originally unrelated,
may, by the action of phonetic decay, come to assume the same forms,
while the limited number of articulate sounds and conceptions out of
which language was first developed, and the similarity of the
circumstances by which the first speakers were everywhere surrounded,
naturally produce a resemblance between the roots of many unconnected
tongues. Where, however, the fundamental conceptions of grammar and the
machinery by which they are expressed are the same, we may have no
hesitation in inferring a common origin.
Forms of Indo-European grammar.
The main results of scientific inquiry into the origin and primitive
meaning of the forms of Indo-European grammar may be summed up as
follows. We start with stems or themes, by which are meant words of two
or more syllables which terminate in a limited number of sounds. These
stems can be classed in groups of two kinds, one in which the groups
consist of stems of similar meanings and similar initial syllables, and
another in which the final syllables alone coincide. In the first case
we have what are termed roots, the simplest elements into which words
can be decomposed; in the second case stems proper, which may be
described as consisting of suffixes attached to roots. Roots, therefore,
are merely the materials out of which speech can be made, the
embodiments of isolated conceptions with which the lexicographer alone
has to deal, whereas stems present us with words already combined in a
sentence and embodying the relations of grammar. If we would rightly
understand primitive Indo-European grammar, we must conceive it as
having been expressed or implied in the suffixes of the stems, and in
the order according to which the stems were arranged in a sentence. In
other words, the relations of grammar were denoted partly by
juxtaposition or syntax, partly by the suffixes of stems.
These suffixes were probably at first unmeaning, or rather clothed with
vague significations, which changed according to the place occupied in
the sentence by the stem to which they were joined. Gradually this
vagueness of signification disappeared, and particular suffixes came to
be set apart to represent particular relations of grammar. What had
hitherto been expressed by mere position now attached itself to the
terminations or suffixes of stems, which accordingly became full-grown
words. Some of the suffixes denoted purely grammatical ideas, that is to
say, were flexions; others were classificatory, serving to distinguish
nouns from verbs, presents from aorists, objects from agents and the
like; while others, again, remained unmeaning adjuncts of the root. This
origin of the flexions explains the otherwise strange fact that the same
suffix may symbolize wholly different grammatical relations. In Latin,
for instance, the context and dictionary will alone tell us that
_mus-as_ is the accusative plural of a noun, and _am-as_ the second
person singular of a verb, or that _mus-a_ is the nominative singular of
a feminine substantive, _bon-a_ the accusative plural of a neuter
adjective. In short, the flexions were originally merely the
terminations of stems which were adapted to express the various
relations of words to each other in a sentence, as these gradually
presented themselves to the consciousness and were extracted from what
had been previously implied by position. Necessarily, the same suffix
might be used sometimes in a classificatory, sometimes in a flexional
sense, and sometimes without any definite sense at all. In the Greek
dative-locative [Greek: pod-es-si], for example, the suffix [Greek: -es]
is classificatory; in the nominative [Greek: pod-es] it is flexional.
When a particular termination or suffix once acquired a special sense,
it would be separated in thought from the stem to which it belonged, and
attached in the same sense to other stems and other terminations. Thus
in modern English we can attach the suffix -ize to almost any word
whatsoever, in order to give the latter a transitive meaning, and the
Gr. [Greek: podessi], quoted above, really contains no less than three
suffixes, [Greek: -es], [Greek: -su] and [Greek: -i], the last two both
denoting the locative, and coalescing, through [Greek: swi], into a
single syllable [Greek: -si]. The latter instance shows us how two or
more suffixes denoting exactly the same idea may be tacked on one to
another, if the original force and signification of the first of them
comes to be forgotten. Thus, in O. Eng. _sang-estre_ was the feminine of
_sang-ere_, "singer," but the meaning of the termination has so entirely
died out of the memory that we have to add the Romanic _-ess_ to it if
we would still distinguish it from the masculine _singer_. A familiar
example of the way in which the full sense of the exponent of a
grammatical idea fades from the mind and has to be supplied by a new
exponent is afforded by the use of expletives in conversational English
to denote the superlative. "Very warm" expresses little more than the
positive, and to represent the intensity of his feelings the Englishman
has recourse to such expressions as "awfully warm" like the Ger.
"schrecklich warm."
Such words as "very," "awfully," "schrecklich," illustrate a second mode
in which Indo-European grammar has found means of expression. Words may
lose their true signification and become the mere exponents of
grammatical ideas. Professor Earle divides all words into _presentive_
and _symbolic_, the former denoting objects and conceptions, the latter
the relations which exist between these. Symbolic words, therefore, are
what the Chinese grammarians call "empty words"--words, that is, which
have been divested of their proper signification and serve a grammatical
purpose only. Many of the classificatory and some of the flexional
suffixes of Indo-European speech can be shown to have had this origin.
Thus the suffix _tar_, which denotes names of kinship and agency, seems
to come from the same root as the Lat. _terminus_ and _trans_, our
_through_, the Sans. _tar-ami_, "I pass over," and to have primarily
signified "one that goes through" a thing. Thus, too, the Eng. _head_ or
_hood_, in words like _godhead_ and _brotherhood_, is the A.-S. _had_,
"character" or "rank"; _dom_, in kingdom, the A.-S. _dom_, "judgment";
and _lock_ or _ledge_, in _wedlock_ and _knowledge_, the A.-S. _lac_,
"sport" or "gift." In all these cases the "empty words," after first
losing every trace of their original significance, have followed the
general analogy of the language and assumed the form and functions of
the suffixes with which they had been confused.
A third mode of representing the relations of grammar is by the symbolic
use of vowels and diphthongs. In Greek, for instance, the distinction
between the reduplicated present [Greek: didomi] and the reduplicated
perfect [Greek: dedoka] is indicated by a distinction of vowel, and in
primitive Aryan grammar the vowel _a_ seems to have been set apart to
denote the subjunctive mood just as _ya_ or _i_ was set apart to denote
the potential. So, too, according to M. Hovelacque, the change of _a_
into _i_ or _u_ in the parent Indo-European symbolized a change of
meaning from passive to active. This symbolic use of the vowels, which
is the purest application of the principle of flexion, is far less
extensively carried out in the Indo-European than in the Semitic
languages. The Semitic family of speech is therefore a much more
characteristic type of the inflexional languages than is the
Indo-European.
The primitive Indo-European noun possessed at least eight
cases--nominative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, dative, genitive,
ablative and locative. M. Bergaigne has attempted to show that the first
three of these, the "strong cases" as they are termed, are really
abstracts formed by the suffixes _-as_ (_-s_), _-an, -m, -t, -i, -a_ and
_-ya_ (_-i_), the plural being nothing more than an abstract singular,
as may be readily seen by comparing words like the Gr. [Greek: epo-s],
and [Greek: ope-s], which mean precisely the same. The remaining "weak"
cases, formed by the suffixes _-sma, -sya, -sya, -ya, -i, -an, -t, -bhi,
-su, -i, -a_ and _-a_, are really adjectives and adverbs. No
distinction, for example, can be drawn between "a cup of gold" and "a
golden cup," and the instrumental, the dative, the ablative and the
locative are, when closely examined, merely adverbs attached to a verb.
The terminations of the strong cases do not displace the accent of the
stem to which they are suffixed; the suffixes of the weak cases, on the
other hand, generally draw the accent upon themselves.
According to Hubschmann, the nominative, accusative and genitive cases
are purely grammatical, distinguished from one another through the
exigencies of the sentence only, whereas the locative, ablative and
instrumental have a logical origin and determine the logical relation
which the three other cases bear to each other and the verb. The nature
of the dative is left undecided. The locative primarily denotes rest in
a place, the ablative motion from a place, and the instrumental the
means or concomitance of an action. The dative Hubschmann regards as
"the case of the participant object." Like Hubschmann, Holzweissig
divides the cases into two classes--the one grammatical and the other
logical; and his analysis of their primitive meaning is the same as that
of Hubschmann, except as regards the dative, the primary sense of which
he thinks to have been motion towards a place. This is also the view of
Delbruck, who makes it denote tendency towards an object. Delbruck,
however, holds that the primary sense of the ablative was that of
separation, the instrumental originally indicating concomitance, while
there was a double locative, one used like the ablative absolute in
Latin, the other being a locative of the object.
The dual was older than the plural, and after the development of the
latter survived as a merely useless encumbrance, of which most of the
Indo-European languages contrived in time to get rid. There are still
many savage idioms in which the conception of plurality has not advanced
beyond that of duality. In the Bushman dialects, for instance, the
plural, or rather that which is more than one, is expressed by repeating
the word; thus _tu_ is "mouth," _tutu_ "mouths." It may be shown that
most of the suffixes of the Indo-European dual are the longer and more
primitive forms of those of the plural which have grown out of them by
the help of phonetic decay. The plural of the weak cases, on the other
hand (the accusative alone excepted), was identical with the singular of
abstract nouns; so far as both form and meaning are concerned, no
distinction can be drawn between [Greek: opes] and [Greek: epos].
Similarly, _humanity_ and _men_ signify one and the same thing, and the
use of English words like _sheep_ or _fish_ for both singular and plural
shows to what an extent our appreciation of number is determined by the
context rather than by the form of the noun. The so-called "broken
plurals" of Arabic and Ethiopic are really singular collectives employed
to denote the plural.
Gender is the product partly of analogy, partly of phonetic decay. In
many languages, such as Eskimo and Choctaw, its place is taken by a
division of objects into animate and inanimate, while in other languages
they are separated into rational and irrational. There are many
indications that the parent Indo-European in an early stage of its
existence had no signs of gender at all. The terminations of the names
of _father_ and _mother_, _pater_ and _mater_, for example, are exactly
the same, and in Latin and Greek many diphthongal stems, as well as
stems in _i_ or _ya_ and u (like [Greek: naus] and [Greek: nekus],
[Greek: polis] and [Greek: lis]), may be indifferently masculine and
feminine. Even stems in _o_ and _a_ (of the second and first
declensions), though the first are generally masculine and the second
generally feminine, by no means invariably maintain the rule; and
feminines like _humus_ and [Greek: hodos], or masculines like _advena_
and [Greek: polites], show that there was a time when these stems also
indicated no particular gender, but owed their subsequent adaptation,
the one to mark the masculine and the other to mark the feminine, to the
influence of analogy. The idea of gender was first suggested by the
difference between man and woman, male and female, and, as in so many
languages at the present day, was represented not by any outward sign
but by the meaning of the words themselves. When once arrived at, the
conception of gender was extended to other objects besides those to
which it properly belonged. The primitive Indo-European did not
distinguish between subject and object, but personified objects by
ascribing to them the motives and powers of living beings. Accordingly
they were referred to by different pronouns, one class denoting the
masculine and another class the feminine, and the distinction that
existed between these two classes of pronouns was after a time
transferred to the nouns. As soon as the preponderant number of stems in
_o_ in daily use had come to be regarded as masculine on account of
their meaning, other stems in _o_, whatever might be their
signification, were made to follow the general analogy and were
similarly classed as masculines. In the same way, the suffix _i_ or _ya_
acquired a feminine sense, and was set apart to represent the feminine
gender. Unlike the Semites, the Indo-Europeans were not satisfied with
these two genders, masculine and feminine. As soon as object and
subject, patient and agent, were clearly distinguished from each other,
there arose a need for a third gender, which should be neither masculine
nor feminine, but denote things without life. This third gender was
fittingly expressed either by the objective case used as a nominative
(e.g. _regnum_), or by a stem without any case ending at all (e.g.
_virus_).
The adverbial meaning of so many of the cases explains the readiness
with which they became crystallized into adverbs and prepositions. An
adverb is the attribute of an attribute--"the rose smells sweetly," for
example, being resolvable into "the rose has the attribute of scent with
the further attribute of sweetness." In our own language _once_,
_twice_, _needs_, are all genitives; _seldom_ is a dative. The Latin and
Greek _humi_ and [Greek: chamai] are locatives, _facillime_
(_facillumed_) and [Greek: eutychos] ablatives, [Greek: pante] and
[Greek: hama] instrumentals, [Greek: paros], [Greek: hexes] and [Greek:
telou] genitives. The frequency with which particular cases of
particular nouns were used in a specifically attributive sense caused
them to become, as it were, petrified, the other cases of the nouns in
question passing out of use, and the original force of those that were
retained being gradually forgotten. Prepositions are adverbs employed to
define nouns instead of verbs and adjectives. Their appearance in the
Indo-European languages is comparatively late, and the Homeric poems
allow us to trace their growth in Greek. The adverb, originally intended
to define the verb, came to be construed with the noun, and the
government of the case with which it was construed was accordingly
transferred from the verb to the noun. Thus when we read in the
_Odyssey_(iv. 43), [Greek: autous d eisegon theion domon], we see that
[Greek: eis] is still an adverb, and that the accusative is governed by
the verb; it is quite otherwise, however, with a line like [Greek:
Atreides de gerontas aolleas egen Achaion es klisien] (Il. i. 89) where
the adverb has passed into a preposition. The same process of
transformation is still going on in English, where we can say
indifferently, "What are you looking at?" using "at" as an adverb, and
governing the pronoun by the verb, and "At what are you looking?" where
"at" has become a preposition. With the growth and increase of
prepositions the need of the case-endings diminished, and in some
languages the latter disappeared altogether.
Like prepositions, conjunctions also are primarily adverbs used in a
demonstrative and relative sense. Hence most of the conjunctions are
petrified cases of pronouns. The relation between two sentences was
originally expressed by simply setting them side by side, afterwards by
employing a demonstrative at the beginning of the second clause to refer
to the whole preceding one. The relative pronoun can be shown to have
been in the first instance a demonstrative; indeed, we can still use
_that_ in English in a relative sense. Since the demonstrative at the
beginning of the second clause represented the first clause, and was
consequently an attribute of the second, it had to stand in some case,
and this case became a conjunction. How closely allied the adverb and
the conjunction are may be seen from Greek and Latin, where [Greek: hos]
or _quum_ can be used as either the one or the other. Our own _and_, it
may be observed, has probably the same root as the Greek locative adverb
[Greek: eti], and originally signified "going further."
Another form of adverb is the infinitive, the adverbial force of which
appears clearly in such a phrase as "A wonderful thing to see." Various
cases, such as the locative, the dative or the instrumental, are
employed in Vedic Sanskrit in the sense of the infinitive, besides the
bare stem or neuter formed by the suffixes _man_ and _van_. In Greek the
neuter stem and the dative case were alone retained for the purpose. The
first is found in infinitives like [Greek: domen] and [Greek: ferein]
(for an earlier [Greek: fere-wen]), the second in the infinitives in
[Greek: -ai]. Thus the Gr. [Greek: dounai] answers letter for letter to
the Vedic dative _davane_, "to give," and the form [Greek: pseudesthai]
is explained by the Vedic _vayodhai_, for _vayas-dhai_, literally "to do
living," _dhai_ being the dative of a noun from the root _dha_, "to
place" or "do." When the form [Greek: pseudesthai] had once come into
existence, analogy was ready to create such false imitations as [Greek:
grapsasthai] or [Greek: graphthesesthai]. The Latin infinitive in _-re_
for _-se_ has the same origin, _amare_, for instance, being the dative
of an old stem _amas_. In _fieri_ for _fierei_ or _fiesei_, from the
same root as our English _be_, the original length of the final syllable
is preserved. The suffix in _-um_ is an accusative, like the
corresponding infinitive of classical Sanskrit. This origin of the
infinitive explains the Latin construction of the accusative and
infinitive. When the Roman said, "Miror te ad me nihil scribere," all
that he meant at first was, "I wonder at you for writing nothing to me,"
where the infinitive was merely a dative case used adverbially.
The history of the infinitive makes it clear how little distinction must
have been felt at the outset between the noun and the verb. Indeed, the
growth of the verb was a slow process. There was a time in the history
of Indo-European speech when it had not as yet risen to the
consciousness of the speaker, and in the period when the noun did not
possess a plural there was as yet also no verb. The attachment of the
first and second personal pronouns, or of suffixes resembling them, to
certain stems, was the first stage in the development of the latter.
Like the Semitic verb, the Indo-European verb seems primarily to have
denoted relation only, and to have been attached as an attribute to the
subject. The idea of time, however, was soon put into it, and two tenses
were created, the one expressing a present or continuous action, the
other an aoristic or momentary one. The distinction of sense was
symbolized by a distinction of pronunciation, the root-syllable of the
aorist being an abbreviated form of that of the present. This
abbreviation was due to a change in the position of the accent (which
was shifted from the stem-syllable to the termination), and this change
again was probably occasioned by the prefixing of the so-called augment
to the aorist, which survived into historical times only in Sanskrit,
Zend and Greek, and the origin of which is still a mystery. The weight
of the first syllable in the aorist further caused the person-endings to
be shortened, and so two sets of person-endings, usually termed primary
and secondary, sprang into existence. By reduplicating the root-syllable
of the present tense a perfect was formed; but originally no distinction
was made between present and perfect, and Greek verbs like [Greek:
didomi] and [Greek: heko] are memorials of a time when the difference
between "I am come" and "I have come" was not yet felt. Reduplication
was further adapted to the expression of intensity and desire (in the
so-called intensive and desiderative forms). By the side of the aorist
stood the imperfect, which differed from the aorist, so far as outward
form was concerned, only in possessing the longer and more original stem
of the present. Indeed, as Benfey first saw, the aorist itself was
primitively an imperfect, and the distinction between aorist and
imperfect is not older than the period when the stem-syllables of
certain imperfects were shortened through the influence of the accent,
and this differentiation of forms appropriated to denote a difference
between the sense of the aorist and the imperfect which was beginning to
be felt. After the analogy of the imperfect, a pluperfect was created
out of the perfect by prefixing the augment (of which the Greek [Greek:
ememekon] is an illustration); though the pluperfect, too, was
originally an imperfect formed from the reduplicated present.
Besides time, mood was also expressed by the primitive Indo-European
verb, recourse being had to symbolization for the purpose. The
imperative was represented by the bare stem, like the vocative, the
accent being drawn back to the first syllable, though other modes of
denoting it soon came into vogue. Possibility was symbolized by the
attachment of the suffix _-ya_ to the stem, probability by the
attachment of _-a_ and _-a_, and in this way the optative and
conjunctive moods first arose. The creation of a future by the help of
the suffix _-sya_ seems to belong to the same period in the history of
the verb. This suffix is probably identical with that used to form a
large class of adjectives and genitives (like the Greek [Greek: hippoio]
for [Greek: hipposio]); in this case future time will have been regarded
as an attribute of the subject, no distinction being drawn, for
instance, between "rising sun" and "the sun will rise." It is possible,
however, that the auxiliary verb _as_, "to be," enters into the
composition of the future; if so, the future will be the product of the
second stage in the development of the Indo-European verb when new forms
were created by means of composition. The sigmatic or first aorist is in
favour of this view, as it certainly belongs to the age of Indo-European
unity, and may be a compound of the verbal stem with the auxiliary _as_.
After the separation of the Indo-European languages, composition was
largely employed in the formation of new tenses. Thus in Latin we have
perfects like _scrip-si_ and _ama-vi_, formed by the help of the
auxiliaries _as (sum)_ and _fuo_, while such forms as _amaveram
(amavi-eram)_ or _amarem (ama-sem)_ bear their origin on their face. So,
too, the future in Latin and Old Celtic (_amabo_, Irish _carub_) is
based upon the substantive verb _fuo_, "to be," and the English
preterite in _-ed_ goes back to a suffixed _did_, the reduplicated
perfect of _do_. New tenses and moods, however, were created by the aid
of suffixes as well as by the aid of composition, or rather were formed
from nouns whose stems terminated in the suffixes in question. Thus in
Greek we have aorists and perfects in [Greek: -ka], and the
characteristics of the two passive aorists, _ye_ and _the_, are more
probably the suffixes of nominal stems than the roots of the two verbs
_ya_, "to go," and _dha_, "to place," as Bopp supposed. How late some of
these new formations were may be seen in Greek, where the Homeric poems
are still ignorant of the weak future passive, the optative future, and
the aspirated perfect, and where the strong future passive occurs but
once and the desiderative but twice. On the other hand, many of the
older tenses were disused and lost. In classical Sanskrit, for instance,
of the modal aorist forms the precative and benedictive almost alone
remain, while the pluperfect, of which Delbruck has found traces in the
Veda, has wholly disappeared.
The passive voice did not exist in the parent Indo-European speech. No
need for it had arisen, since such a sentence as "I am pleased" could be
as well represented by "This pleases me," or "I please myself." It was
long before the speaker was able to imagine an action without an object,
and when he did so, it was a neuter or substantival rather than a
passive verb that he formed. The passive, in fact, grew out of the
middle or reflexive, and, except in the two aorists, continued to be
represented by the middle in Greek. So, too, in Latin the second person
plural is really the middle participle with _estis_ understood, and the
whole class of deponent or reflexive verbs proves that the
characteristic _r_ which Latin shares with Celtic could have had at the
outset no passive force.
Much light has been thrown on the character and construction of the
primitive Indo-European sentence by comparative syntax. In
contradistinction to Semitic, where the defining word follows that which
is defined, the Indo-European languages place that which is defined
after that which defines it; and Bergaigne has made it clear that the
original order of the sentence was (1) object, (2) verb, and (3)
subject. Greater complication of thought and its expression, the
connexion of sentences by the aid of conjunctions, and rhetorical
inversion caused that dislocation of the original order of the sentence
which reaches its culminating point in the involved periods of Latin
literature. Our own language still remains true, however, to the syntax
of the parent Indo-European when it sets both adjective and genitive
before the nouns which they define. In course of time a distinction came
to be made between an attribute used as a mere qualificative and an
attribute used predicatively, and this distinction was expressed by
placing the predicate in opposition to the subject and accordingly after
it. The opposition was of itself sufficient to indicate the logical
copula or substantive verb; indeed, the word which afterwards commonly
stood for the latter at first signified "existence," and it was only
through the wear and tear of time that a phrase like _Deus bonus est_,
"God exists as good," came to mean simply "God is good." It is needless
to observe that neither of the two articles was known to the parent
Indo-European; indeed, the definite article, which is merely a decayed
demonstrative pronoun, has not yet been developed in several of the
languages of the Indo-European family.
Investigation of English grammar.
We must now glance briefly at the results of a scientific investigation
of English grammar and the modifications they necessitate in our
conception of it. The idea that the free use of speech is tied down by
the rules of the grammarian must first be given up; all that the
grammarian can do is to formulate the current uses of his time, which
are determined by habit and custom, and are accordingly in a perpetual
state of flux. We must next get rid of the notion that English grammar
should be modelled after that of ancient Rome; until we do so we shall
never understand even the elementary principles upon which it is based.
We cannot speak of declensions, since English has no genders except in
the pronouns of the third person, and no cases except the genitive and a
few faint traces of an old dative. Its verbal conjugation is essentially
different from that of an inflexional language like Latin, and cannot be
compressed into the same categories. In English the syntax has been
enlarged at the expense of the accidence; position has taken the place
of forms. To speak of an adjective "agreeing" with its substantive is as
misleading as to speak of a verb "governing" a case. In fact, the
distinction between noun and adjective is inapplicable to English
grammar, and should be replaced by a distinction between objective and
attributive words. In a phrase like "this is a cannon," _cannon_ is
objective; in a phrase like "a cannon-ball," it is attributive; and to
call it a substantive in the one case and an adjective in the other is
only to introduce confusion. With the exception of the nominative, the
various forms of the noun are all attributive; there is no difference,
for example, between "doing a thing" and "doing badly." Apart from the
personal pronouns, the accusative of the classical languages can be
represented only by position; but if we were to say that a noun which
follows a verb is in the accusative case we should have to define "king"
as an accusative in such sentences as "he became king" or "he is king."
In conversational English "it is me" is as correct as "c'est moi" in
French, or "det er mig" in Danish; the literary "it is I" is due to the
influence of classical grammar. The combination of noun or pronoun and
preposition results in a compound attribute. As for the verb, Sweet has
well said that "the really characteristic feature of the English finite
verb is its inability to stand alone without a pronominal prefix." Thus
"dream" by itself is a noun; "I dream" is a verb. The place of the
pronominal prefix may be taken by a noun, though both poetry and vulgar
English frequently insert the pronoun even when the noun precedes. The
number of inflected verbal forms is but small, being confined to the
third person singular and the special forms of the preterite and past
participle, though the latter may with more justice be regarded as
belonging to the province of the lexicographer rather than to that of
the grammarian. The inflected subjunctive (_be, were, save_ in "God save
the King," &c.) is rapidly disappearing. New inflected forms, however,
are coming into existence; at all events, we have as good a right to
consider _wont, shant, cant_ new inflected forms as the French _aimerai
(amare habeo), aimerais (amare habebam)_. If the ordinary grammars are
correct in treating forms like "I am loving," "I was loving," "I did
love," as separate tenses, they are strangely inconsistent in omitting
to notice the equally important emphatic form "I do love" or the
negative form "I do not love" ("I don't love"), as well as the
semi-inflexional "I'll love," "he's loving." It is true that these
latter contracted forms are heard only in conversation and not seen in
books; but the grammar of a language, it must be remembered, is made by
those who speak it and not by the printers.
History of formal grammar.
Our school grammars are the inheritance we have received from Greece and
Rome. The necessities of rhetoric obliged the Sophists to investigate
the structure of the Greek language, and to them was accordingly due the
first analysis of Greek grammar. Protagoras distinguished the three
genders and the verbal moods, while Prodicus busied himself with the
definition of synonyms. Aristotle, taking the side of Democritus, who
had held that the meaning of words is put into them by the speaker, and
that there is no necessary connexion between sound and sense, laid down
that words "symbolize" objects according to the will of those who use
them, and added to the [Greek: onoma] or "noun," and the [Greek: rhema]
or "verb," the [Greek: sundesmos] or "particle." He also introduced the
term [Greek: ptosis], "case," to denote any flexion whatsoever. He
further divided nouns into simple and compound, invented for the neuter
another name than that given by Protagoras, and starting from the
termination of the nominative singular, endeavoured to ascertain the
rules for indicating a difference of gender. Aristotle was followed by
the Stoics, who separated the [Greek: arthron] or "article" from the
particles, determined a fifth part of speech, [Greek: pandektes] or
"adverb," confined the term "case" to the flexions of the nouns,
distinguishing the four principal cases by names, and divided the verb
into its tenses, moods and classes. Meanwhile the Alexandrian critics
were studying the language of Homer and the Attic writers, and comparing
it with the language of their own day, the result being a minute
examination of the facts and rules of grammar. Two schools of
grammarians sprang up--the Analogists, headed by Aristarchus, who held
that a strict law of analogy existed between idea and word, and refused
to admit exceptions to the grammatical rules they laid down, and the
Anomalists, who denied general rules of any kind, except in so far as
they were consecrated by custom. Foremost among the Anomalists was
Crates of Mallos, the leader of the Pergamenian school, to whom we owe
the first formal Greek grammar and collection of the grammatical facts
obtained by the labours of the Alexandrian critics, as well as an
attempt to reform Greek orthography. The immediate cause of this grammar
seems to have been a comparison of Latin with Greek, Crates having
lectured on the subject while ambassador of Attalus at Rome in 159 B.C.
The zeal with which the Romans threw themselves into the study of Greek
resulted in the school grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of
Aristarchus, which he published at Rome in the time of Pompey and which
is still in existence. Latin grammars were soon modelled upon it, and
the attempt to translate the technical terms of the Greek grammarians
into Latin was productive of numerous blunders which have been
perpetuated to our own day. Thus _tenues_ is a mistranslation of the
[Greek: psila], "unaspirated"; _genetivus_ of [Greek: genike], the case
"of the genus"; _accusativus_ of [Greek: aitiatike], the case "of the
object"; _infinitivus_ of [Greek: aparemphatos], "without a secondary
meaning" of tense or person. New names were coined to denote forms
possessed by Latin and not by Greek; _ablative_, for instance, was
invented by Julius Caesar, who also wrote a treatise _De analogia_. By
the 2nd century of the Christian era the dispute between the Anomalists
and the Analogists was finally settled, analogy being recognized as the
principle that underlies language, though every rule admits of
exceptions. Two eminent grammarians of Alexandria, Apollonius Dyscolus
and his son Herodian, summed up the labours and controversies of their
predecessors, and upon their works were based the Latin grammar composed
by Aelius Donatus in the 4th century, and the eighteen books on grammar
compiled by Priscian in the age of Justinian. The grammar of Donatus
dominated the schools of the middle ages, and, along with the
productions of Priscian, formed the type and source of the Latin and
Greek school-grammars of modern Europe.
Learning of grammar of foreign languages.
A few words remain to be said, in conclusion, on the bearing of a
scientific study of grammar upon the practical task of teaching and
learning foreign languages. The grammar of a language is not to be
confined within the rules laid down by grammarians, much less is it the
creation of grammarians, and consequently the usual mode of making the
pupil learn by heart certain fixed rules and paradigms not only gives a
false idea of what grammar really is, but also throws obstacles in the
way of acquiring it. The unit of speech is the sentence; and it is with
the sentence therefore, and not with lists of words and forms, that the
pupil should begin. When once a sufficient number of sentences has been,
so to speak, assimilated, it will be easy to analyse them into their
component parts, to show the relations that these bear to one another,
and to indicate the nature and varieties of the latter. In this way the
learner will be prevented from regarding grammar as a piece of dead
mechanism or a Chinese puzzle, of which the parts must be fitted
together in accordance with certain artificial rules, and will realize
that it is a living organism which has a history and a reason of its
own. The method of nature and science alike is analytic; and if we would
learn a foreign language properly we must learn it as we did our
mother-tongue, by first mastering the expression of a complete thought
and then breaking up this expression into its several elements.
(A. H. S.)
See PHILOLOGY, and articles on the various languages. Also Steinthal,
_Charakteristik der hauptsachlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues_ (Berlin,
1860); Schleicher, _Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the
Indo-European Languages_, translated by H. Bendall (London, 1874);
Pezzi, _Aryan Philology according to the most recent Researches_,
translated by E. S. Roberts (London, 1879); Sayce, _Introduction to
the Science of Language_ (London, 1879); Lersch, _Die
Sprachphilosophie der Alten_ (Bonn, 1838-1841); Steinthal, _Geschichte
der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Romern mit besonderer
Rucksicht auf die Logik_ (Berlin, 1863, 2nd ed. 1890); Delbruck,
_Ablativ localis instrumentalis im Altindischen, Lateinischen,
Griechischen, und Deutschen_ (Berlin, 1864); Jolly, _Ein Kapitel
vergleichender Syntax_ (Munich, 1873); Hubschmann, _Zur Casuslehre_
(Munich, 1875); Holzweissig, _Wahrheit und Irrthum der localistischen
Casustheorie_ (Leipzig, 1877); Draeger, _Historische Syntax der
lateinischen Sprache_ (Leipzig, 1874-1876); Sweet, _Words, Logic, and
Grammar_ (London, 1876); P. Giles, _Manual of Comp. Philology_ (1901);
C. Abel, _Agypt.-indo-eur. Sprachverwandschaft_ (1903); Brugmann and
Delbruck, _Grundriss d. vergl. Gram. d. indogerm. Spr._ (1886-1900);
Fritz Mauthner, _Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache_ vol. iii.
(1902); T. G. Tucker, _Introd. to a Nat. Hist. of Language_ (1908).
GRAMMICHELE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Catania, 55 m. S.W. of
it by rail and 31 m. direct. Pop. (1901) 15,075. It was built in 1693,
after the destruction by an earthquake of the old town of Occhiala to
the north; the latter, on account of the similarity of name, is
generally identified with Echetla, a frontier city between Syracusan and
Carthaginian territory in the time of Hiero II., which appears to have
been originally a Sicel city in which Greek civilization prevailed from
the 5th century onwards. To the east of Grammichele a cave shrine of
Demeter, with fine votive terra-cottas, has been discovered.
See _Mon. Lincei_, vii. (1897), 201; _Not. degli scavi_ (1902), 223.
GRAMMONT (the Flemish name _Gheeraardsbergen_ more clearly reveals its
etymology _Gerardi-mons_), a town in East Flanders, Belgium, near the
meeting point with the provinces of Brabant and Hainaut. It is on the
Dender almost due south of Alost, and is chiefly famous because the
charter of Grammont given by Baldwin VI., count of Flanders, in A.D.
1068 was the first of its kind. This charter has been styled "the most
ancient written monument of civil and criminal laws in Flanders." The
modern town is a busy industrial centre. Pop. (1904) 12,835.
GRAMONT, ANTOINE AGENOR ALFRED, DUC DE, DUC DE GUICHE, PRINCE DE BIDACHE
(1819-1880), French diplomatist and statesman, was born at Paris on the
14th of August 1819, of one of the most illustrious families of the old
_noblesse_, a cadet branch of the viscounts of Aure, which took its name
from the seigniory of Gramont in Navarre. His grandfather, Antoine Louis
Marie, duc de Gramont (1755-1836), had emigrated during the Revolution,
and his father, Antoine Heraclius Genevieve Agenor (1789-1855), duc de
Gramont and de Guiche, fought under the British flag in the Peninsular
War, became a lieutenant-general in the French army in 1823, and in 1830
accompanied Charles X. to Scotland. The younger generation, however,
were Bonapartist in sympathy; Gramont's cousin Antoine Louis Raymond,
comte de Gramont (1787-1825), though also the son of an _emigre_, served
with distinction in Napoleon's armies, while Antoine Agenor, duc de
Gramont, owed his career to his early friendship for Louis Napoleon.
Educated at the Ecole Polytechnique, Gramont early gave up the army for
diplomacy. It was not, however, till after the _coup d'etat_ of the 2nd
of December 1851, which made Louis Napoleon supreme in France, that he
became conspicuous as a diplomat. He was successively minister
plenipotentiary at Cassel and Stuttgart (1852), at Turin (1853),
ambassador at Rome (1857) and at Vienna (1861). On the 15th of May 1870
he was appointed minister of foreign affairs in the Ollivier cabinet,
and was thus largely, though not entirely, responsible for the bungling
of the negotiations between France and Prussia arising out of the
candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the throne of Spain,
which led to the disastrous war of 1870-71. The exact share of Gramont
in this responsibility has been the subject of much controversy. The
last word may be said to have been uttered by M. Emile Ollivier himself
in his _L'Empire liberal_ (tome xii., 1909, _passim_). The famous
declaration read by Gramont in the Chamber on the 6th of July, the
"threat with the hand on the sword-hilt," as Bismarck called it, was the
joint work of the whole cabinet; the original draft presented by Gramont
was judged to be too "elliptical" in its conclusion and not sufficiently
vigorous; the reference to a revival of the empire of Charles V. was
suggested by Ollivier; the paragraph asserting that France would not
allow a foreign power to disturb to her own detriment the actual
equilibrium of Europe was inserted by the emperor. So far, then, as this
declaration is concerned, it is clear that Gramont's responsibility must
be shared with his sovereign and his colleagues (Ollivier _op. cit._
xii. 107; see also the two _projets de declaration_ given on p. 570). It
is clear, however that he did not share the "passion" of his colleagues
for "peace with honour," clear also that he wholly misread the
intentions of the European powers in the event of war. That he reckoned
upon the active alliance of Austria was due, according to M. Ollivier,
to the fact that for nine years he had been a _persona grata_ in the
aristocratic society of Vienna, where the necessity for revenging the
humiliation of 1866 was an article of faith. This confidence made him
less disposed than many of his colleagues to make the best of the
renunciation of the candidature made, on behalf of his son, by the
prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. It was Gramont who pointed out to
the emperor, on the evening of the 12th, the dubious circumstances of
the act of renunciation, and on the same night, without informing M.
Ollivier, despatched to Benedetti at Ems the fatal telegram demanding
the king of Prussia's guarantee that the candidature would not be
revived. The supreme responsibility for this act must rest with the
emperor, "who imposed it by an exercise of personal power on the only
one of his ministers who could have lent himself to such a forgetfulness
of the safeguards of a parliamentary regime." As for Gramont, he had "no
conception of the exigencies of this regime; he remained an ambassador
accustomed to obey the orders of his sovereign; in all good faith he had
no idea that this was not correct, and that, himself a parliamentary
minister, he had associated himself with an act destructive of the
authority of parliament."[1] "On his part," adds M. Ollivier, "it was
the result only of obedience, not of warlike premeditation" (_op. cit._
p. 262). The apology may be taken for what it is worth. To France and to
the world Gramont was responsible for the policy which put his country
definitely into the wrong in the eyes of Europe, and enabled Bismarck to
administer to her the "slap in the face" (_soufflet_)--as Gramont called
it in the Chamber--by means of the mutilated "Ems telegram," which was
the immediate cause of the French declaration of war on the 15th.
After the defeat of Weissenburg (August 4) Gramont resigned office with
the rest of the Ollivier ministry (August 9), and after the revolution
of September he went to England, returning after the war to Paris, where
he died on the 18th of January 1880. His marriage in 1848 with Miss
Mackinnon, a Scottish lady, remained without issue. During his
retirement he published various apologies for his policy in 1870,
notably _La France et la Prusse avant la guerre_ (Paris, 1872).
Besides M. Ollivier's work quoted in the text, see L. Thouvenel, _Le
Secret de l'empereur, correspondance ... echangee entre M. Thouvenel,
le duc de Gramont, et le general comte de Flahaut 1860-1863_ (2nd ed.,
2 vols., 1889). A small pamphlet containing his _Souvenirs 1848-1850_
was published in 1901 by his brother Antoine Leon Philibert Auguste de
Gramont, duc de Lesparre.