competent authority to determine the special characters of this
general tongue of the /mobile vulgus/. That authority is Dr. W. W.
Charters, now head of the School of Education at the University of
Illinois. In 1914 Dr. Charters was dean of the faculty of education
and professor of the theory of teaching in the University of Missouri,
and one of the problems he was engaged upon was that of the teaching
of grammar. In the course of this study he encountered the theory that
such instruction should be confined to the rules habitually
violated--that the one aim of teaching grammar was to correct the
speech of the pupils, and that it was useless to harass them with
principles which they already instinctively observed. Apparently
inclining to this somewhat dubious notion, Dr. Charters applied to the
School Board of Kansas City for permission to undertake an examination
of the language actually used by the children in the elementary
schools of that city, and this permission was granted. The materials
thereupon gathered were of two classes. First, the teachers of grades
III to VII inclusive in all the Kansas City public-schools were
instructed to turn over to Dr. Charters all the written work of their
pupils, "ordinarily done in the regular order of school work" during a
period of four weeks. Secondly, the teachers of grades II to VII
inclusive were instructed to make note of "all oral errors in grammar
made in the school-room and around the school-building" during the
five school-days of one week, by children of any age, and to dispatch
these notes to Dr. Charters also. The result was an accumulation of
material so huge that it was unworkable with the means at hand, and so
the investigator and his assistants reduced it. Of the oral reports,
two studies were made, the first of those from grades III and VII and
the second of those from grades VI and VII. Of the written reports,
only those from grades VI and VII of twelve typical schools were
examined.
The ages thus covered ran from nine or ten to fourteen or fifteen, and
perhaps five-sixths of the material studied came from [Pg188]
children above twelve. Its examination threw a brilliant light upon
the speech actually employed by children near the end of their
schooling in a typical American city, and, /per corollary/, upon the
speech employed by their parents and other older associates. If
anything, the grammatical and syntactical habits revealed were a bit
less loose than those of the authentic /Volkssprache/, for practically
all of the written evidence was gathered under conditions which
naturally caused the writers to try to write what they conceived to be
correct English, and even the oral evidence was conditioned by the
admonitory presence of the teachers. Moreover, it must be obvious that
a child of the lower classes, during the period of its actual study of
grammar, probably speaks better English than at any time before or
afterward, for it is only then that any positive pressure is exerted
upon it to that end. But even so, the departures from standard usage
that were unearthed were numerous and striking, and their tendency to
accumulate in definite groups showed plainly the working of general
laws.[17]
Thus, no less than 57 per cent of the oral errors reported by the
teachers of grades III and VII involved the use of the verb, and
nearly half of these, or 24 per cent, of the total, involved a
confusion of the past tense form and the perfect participle. Again,
double negatives constituted 11 per cent of the errors, and the misuse
of adjectives or of adjectival forms for adverbs ran to 4 per cent.
Finally, the difficulties of the objective case among the pronouns,
the last stronghold of that case in English, were responsible for 7
per cent, thus demonstrating a clear tendency to get rid of it
altogether. Now compare the errors of these children, half of whom, as
I have just said, were in grade III, and hence wholly uninstructed in
formal grammar, with the errors made by children of the second oral
group--that is, children of grades VI and VII, in both of which
grammar is studied. Dr. Charters' tabulations show scarcely any
difference in the [Pg189] character and relative rank of the errors
discovered. Those in the use of the verb drop from 57 per cent of the
total to 52 per cent, but the double negatives remain at 7 per cent
and the errors in the case of pronouns at 11 per cent.
In the written work of grades VI and VII, however, certain changes
appear, no doubt because of the special pedagogical effort against the
more salient oral errors. The child, pen in hand, has in mind the
cautions oftenest heard, and so reveals something of that greater
exactness which all of us show when we do any writing that must bear
critical inspection. Thus, the relative frequency of confusions
between the past tense forms of verbs and the perfect participles
drops from 24 per cent to 5 per cent, and errors based on double
negatives drop to 1 per cent. But this improvement in one direction
merely serves to unearth new barbarisms in other directions, concealed
in the oral tables by the flood of errors now remedied. It is among
the verbs that they are still most numerous; altogether, the errors
here amount to exactly 50 per cent of the total. Such locutions as /I
had went/ and /he seen/ diminish relatively and absolutely, but in all
other situations the verb is treated with the lavish freedom that is
so characteristic of the American common speech. Confusions of the
past and present tenses jump from 2 per cent to 19 per cent, thus
eloquently demonstrating the tenacity of the error. And mistakes in
the forms of nouns and pronouns increase from 2 per cent to 16: a
shining proof of a shakiness which follows the slightest effort to
augment the vocabulary of everyday.
The materials collected by Dr. Charters and his associates are not, of
course, presented in full, but his numerous specimens must strike
familiar chords in every ear that is alert to the sounds and ways of
the /sermo vulgus/. What he gathered in Kansas City might have been
gathered just as well in San Francisco, or New Orleans, or Chicago, or
New York, or in Youngstown, O., or Little Rock, Ark., or Waterloo,
Iowa. In each of these places, large or small, a few localisms might
have been noted--/oi/ substituted for ur in New York, /you-all/ in the
South, a few Germanisms in Pennsylvania and in the upper Mississippi
[Pg190] Valley, a few Spanish locutions in the Southwest, certain
peculiar vowel-forms in New England--but in the main the report would
have been identical with the report he makes. That vast uniformity
which marks the people of the United States, in political doctrine, in
social habit, in general information, in reaction to ideas, in
prejudices and enthusiasms, in the veriest details of domestic custom
and dress, is nowhere more marked than in language. The incessant
neologisms of the national speech sweep the whole country almost
instantly, and the iconoclastic changes which its popular spoken form
are undergoing show themselves from coast to coast. "He hurt
/his/self," cited by Dr. Charters, is surely anything but a Missouri
localism; one hears it everywhere. And so, too, one hears "she invited
/him/ and /I/," and "it hurt /terrible/," and "I /set/ there," and
"this /here/ man," and "no, I /never, neither/", and "he /ain't/
here," and "where is he /at/?" and "it seems /like/ I remember," and
"if I /was/ you," and "/us/ fellows," and "he /give/ her hell." And
"he /taken/ and kissed her," and "he /loaned/ me a dollar," and "the
man was /found/ two dollars," and "the bee /stang/ him," and "I
/wouldda/ thought," and "/can/ I have one?" and "he got /hisn/," and
"the boss /left/ him off," and "the baby /et/ the soap," and "/them/
are the kind I like," and "he /don't/ care," and "no one has /their/
ticket," and "how /is/ the folks?" and "if you would /of gotten/ in
the car you could /of rode/ down."
Curiously enough, this widely dispersed and highly savory
dialect--already, as I shall show, come to a certain grammatical
regularity--has attracted the professional writers of the country
almost as little as it has attracted the philologists. There are
foreshadowings of it in "Huckleberry Finn," in "The Biglow Papers" and
even in the rough humor of the period that began with J. C. Neal and
company and ended with Artemus Ward and Josh Billings, but in those
early days it had not yet come to full flower; it wanted the influence
of the later immigrations to take on its present character. The
enormous dialect literature of twenty years ago left it almost
untouched. Localisms were explored diligently, but the general dialect
went virtually unobserved. It is not in "Chimmie Fadden"; it is not
in [Pg191] "David Harum"; it is not even in the pre-fable stories of
George Ade, perhaps the most acute observer of average,
undistinguished American types, urban and rustic, that American
literature has yet produced. The business of reducing it to print had
to wait for Ring W. Lardner, a Chicago newspaper reporter. In his
grotesque tales of base-ball players, so immediately and so deservedly
successful and now so widely imitated,[18] Lardner reports the common
speech not only with humor, but also with the utmost accuracy. The
observations of Charters and his associates are here reinforced by the
sharp ear of one specially competent, and the result is a mine of
authentic American.
In a single story by Lardner, in truth, it is usually possible to
discover examples of almost every logical and grammatical peculiarity
of the emerging language, and he always resists very stoutly the
temptation to overdo the thing. Here, for example, are a few typical
sentences from "The Busher's Honeymoon":[19]
I and Florrie /was/ married the day before yesterday just /like/ I
told you we /was/ going to be.... You /was/ wise to get married in
Bedford, where /not nothing/ is nearly half so dear.... The sum of
what I have /wrote/ down is $29.40.... Allen told me I /should ought/
to give the priest $5.... I never /seen/ him before.... I didn't used
to eat /no/ lunch in the playing season except when I /knowed/ I was
not going to work.... I guess the meals /has/ cost me all together
about $1.50, and I have /eat/ very little myself....
I was willing to tell her all about /them/ two poor girls.... They
must not be /no/ mistake about who is the boss in my house. Some men
/lets/ their /wife/ run all over them.... Allen has /went/ to a
college football game. One of the reporters /give/ him a pass.... He
called up and said he /hadn't/ only the one pass, but he was not
hurting my feelings /none/.... The flat across the hall from this
/here/ one is for rent.... If we should /of boughten/ furniture it
would cost us in the neighborhood of $100, even without /no/
piano.... I consider myself lucky to /of/ found out about this before
it was too late and somebody else had /of/ gotten the tip.... It will
always be /ourn/, even when we move away.... Maybe you could /of did/
better if you had /of went/ at it in a different way.... Both /her/
and you /is/ welcome at my house.... I never /seen/ so much wine
/drank/ in my life....
[Pg192]
Here are specimens to fit into most of Charters' categories--verbs
confused as to tense, pronouns confused as to case, double and even
triple negatives, nouns and verbs disagreeing in number, /have/
softened to /of/, /n/ marking the possessive instead of /s/, /like/
used in place of /as/, and the personal pronoun substituted for the
demonstrative adjective. A study of the whole story would probably
unearth all the remaining errors noted in Kansas City. Lardner's
baseball player, though he has pen in hand and is on his guard, and is
thus very careful to write /would not/ instead of /wouldn't/ and even
/am not/ instead of /ain't/, offers a comprehensive and highly
instructive panorama of popular speech habits. To him the forms of the
subjunctive mood have no existence, and /will/ and /shall/ are
identical, and adjectives and adverbs are indistinguishable, and the
objective case is merely a variorum form of the nominative. His past
tense is, more often than not, the orthodox present tense. All fine
distinctions are obliterated in his speech. He uses invariably the
word that is simplest, the grammatical form that is handiest. And so
he moves toward the philological millennium dreamed of by George T.
Lanigan, when "the singular verb shall lie down with the plural noun,
and a little conjugation shall lead them."
§ 3
/The Verb/--A study of the materials amassed by Charters and Lardner,
if it be reinforced by observation of what is heard on the streets
every day, will show that the chief grammatical peculiarities of
spoken American lie among the verbs and pronouns. The nouns in common
use, in the overwhelming main, are quite sound in form. Very often, of
course, they do not belong to the vocabulary of English, but they at
least belong to the vocabulary of American: the proletariat, setting
aside transient slang, calls things by their proper names, and
pronounces those names more or less correctly. The adjectives, too,
are treated rather politely, and the adverbs, though commonly
transformed into adjectives, are not further mutilated. But the verbs
and pronouns undergo changes which set off the common speech very
[Pg193] sharply from both correct English and correct American. Their
grammatical relationships are thoroughly overhauled and sometimes they
are radically modified in form.
This process is natural and inevitable, for it is among the verbs and
pronouns, as we have seen, that the only remaining grammatical
inflections in English, at least of any force or consequence, are to
be found, and so they must bear the chief pressure of the influences
that have been warring upon all inflections since the earliest days.
The primitive Indo-European language, it is probable, had eight cases
of the noun; the oldest known Teutonic dialect reduced them to six; in
Anglo-Saxon they fell to four, with a weak and moribund instrumental
hanging in the air; in Middle English the dative and accusative began
to decay; in Modern English they have disappeared altogether, save as
ghosts to haunt grammarians. But we still have two plainly defined
conjugations of the verb, and we still inflect it for number, and, in
part, at least, for person. And we yet retain an objective case of the
pronoun, and inflect it for person, number and gender.
Some of the more familiar conjugations of verbs in the American common
speech, as recorded by Charters or Lardner or derived from my own
collectanea, are here set down:
/Present/ /Preterite/ /Perfect Participle/
Am was bin (or ben)[20]
Attack attackted attackted
(Be)[21] was bin (or ben) [20]
Beat beaten beat
Become[22] become became
Begin begun began
Bend bent bent
Bet bet bet
Bind bound bound
Bite bitten bit
Bleed bled bled
Blow blowed (or blew) blowed (or blew)
Break broken broke
Bring brought (or brung, or brang) brung
Broke (passive) broke broke
Build built built
Burn burnt[23] burnt
Burst[24] ---- ----
Bust busted busted
Buy bought (or boughten) bought (or boughten)
Can could could'a
Catch caught[25] caught
Choose chose choose
Climb clum clum
Cling (to hold fast) clung clung
Cling (to ring) clang clang
Come come came
Creep crep (or crope) crep
Crow crew crew
Cut cut cut
Dare dared dared
Deal dole dealt
Dig dug dug
Dive dove dived
Do done done (or did)
Drag drug dragged
Draw drawed[26] drawed (or drew)
Dream dreampt dreampt
Drink drank (or drunk) drank
Drive drove drove
Drown drownded drownded
Eat et (or eat) ate
Fall fell (or fallen) fell
Feed fed fed
Feel felt felt
Fetch fetched[27] fetch
Fight fought[28] fought
Find found found
Fine found found
Fling flang flung
Flow flew flowed
Fly flew flew
Forget forgotten forgotten
Forsake forsaken forsook
Freeze frozen (or friz) frozen
Get got (or gotten) gotten
Give give give
Glide glode[29] glode
Go went went
Grow growed growed
Hang hung[30] hung
Have had had (or hadden)
Hear heerd heerd (or heern)
Heat het[31] het
Heave hove hove
Hide hidden hid
H'ist[32] h'isted h'isted
Hit hit hit
Hold helt held (or helt)
Holler hollered hollered
Hurt hurt hurt
Keep kep kep
Kneel knelt knelt
Know knowed knew
Lay laid (or lain) laid
Lead led led
Lean lent lent
Leap lep lep
Learn learnt learnt
Lend loaned[33] loaned
Lie (to falsify) lied lied
Lie (to recline) laid (or lain) laid
Light lit lit
Lose lost lost
Make made made
May ---- might'a
Mean meant meant
Meet met met
Mow mown mowed
Pay paid paid
Plead pled pled
Prove proved (or proven) proven
Put put put
Quit quit quit
Raise raised raised
Read read read
Rench[34] renched renched
Rid rid rid
Ride ridden rode
Rile[35] riled riled
Ring rung rang
Rise riz (or rose) riz
Run run ran
Say sez said
See seen saw
Sell sold sold
Send sent sent
Set set[36] sat
Shake shaken (or shuck) shook
Shave shaved shaved
Shed shed shed
Shine (to polish) shined shined
Shoe shoed shoed
Shoot shot shot
Show shown showed
Sing sung sang
Sink sunk sank
Sit[37] ---- ----
Skin skun skun
Sleep slep slep
Slide slid slid
Sling slang slung
Slit slitted slitted
Smell smelt smelt
Sneak snuck snuck
Speed speeded speeded
Spell spelt spelt
Spill spilt spilt
Spin span span
Spit spit spit
Spoil spoilt spoilt
Spring sprung sprang
Steal stole stole
Sting stang stang
Stink stank stank
Strike struck struck
Swear swore swore
Sweep swep swep
Swell swole swollen
Swim swum swam
Swing swang swung
Take taken took
Teach taught taught
Tear tore torn
Tell tole tole
Think thought[38] thought
Thrive throve throve
Throw throwed threw
Tread tread tread
Wake woke woken
Wear wore wore
Weep wep wep
Wet wet wet
Win won (or wan)[39] won (or wan)
Wind wound wound
Wish (wisht) wisht wisht
Wring wrung wrang
Write written wrote
[Pg198]
A glance at these conjugations is sufficient to show several general
tendencies, some of them going back, in their essence, to the earliest
days of the English language. The most obvious is that leading to the
transfer of verbs from the so-called strong conjugation to the weak--a
change already in operation before the Norman Conquest, and very
marked during the Middle English period. Chaucer used /growed/ for
/grew/ in the prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale," and /rised/ for
/rose/ and /smited/ for /smote/ are in John Purvey's edition of the
Bible, /circa/ 1385.[40] Many of these transformations were afterward
abandoned, but a large number survived, for example, /climbed/ for
/clomb/ as the preterite of /to climb/, and /melted/ for /molt/ as the
preterite of /to melt/. Others showed themselves during the early part
of the Modern English period. /Comed/ as the perfect participle of /to
come/ and /digged/ as the preterite of /to dig/ are both in
Shakespeare, and the latter is also in Milton and in the Authorized
Version of the Bible. This tendency went furthest, of course, in the
vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects. /I
seen/ and /I knowed/, for example, are common to many of them. But
during the seventeenth century it seems to have been arrested, and
even to have given way to a contrary tendency--that is, toward strong
conjugations. The English of Ireland, which preserves many seventeenth
century forms, shows this plainly. /Ped/ for /paid/, /gother/ for
/gathered/, and /ruz/ for /raised/ are still in use there, and Joyce
says flatly that the Irish, "retaining the old English custom [/i. e./,
the custom of the period of Cromwell's invasion, /circa/ 1650],
have a leaning toward the strong inflection."[41] Certain verb forms
of the American colonial period, now reduced to the estate of
localisms, are also probably survivors of the seventeenth century.
"The three great causes of change in language," says Sayce, "may be
briefly described as (1) imitation or analogy, (2) a wish to be clear
and emphatic, and (3) laziness. Indeed, if we choose to go deep enough
we might reduce all three causes to the general one of laziness, since
it is easier to imitate than to say [Pg199] something new."[42] This
tendency to take well-worn paths, paradoxically enough, is responsible
both for the transfer of verbs from the strong to the weak declension,
and for the transfer of certain others from the weak to the strong. A
verb in everyday use tends almost inevitably to pull less familiar
verbs with it, whether it be strong or weak. Thus /fed/ as the
preterite of /to feed/ and /led/ as the preterite of /to lead/ paved
the way for /pled/ as the preterite of /to plead/, and /rode/ as
plainly performed the same office for /glode/, and /rung/ for /brung/,
and /drove/ for /dove/ and /hove/, and /stole/ for /dole/, and /won/
for /skun/. Moreover, a familiar verb, itself acquiring a faulty
inflection, may fasten a similar inflection upon another verb of like
sound. Thus /het/, as the preterite of /to heat/, no doubt owes its
existence to the example of /et/, the vulgar preterite of /to eat/. So
far the irregular verbs. The same combination of laziness and
imitativeness works toward the regularization of certain verbs that
are historically irregular. In addition, of course, there is the fact
that regularization is itself intrinsically simplification--that it
makes the language easier. One sees the antagonistic pull of the two
influences in the case of verbs ending in /-ow/. The analogy of /knew/
suggests /snew/ as the preterite of /to snow/, and it is sometimes
encountered in the American vulgate. But the analogy of /snowed/ also
suggests /knowed/, and the superior regularity of the form is enough
to overcome the greater influence of /knew/ as a more familiar word
than /snowed/. Thus /snew/ grows rare and is in decay, but /knowed/
shows vigor, and so do /growed/ and /throwed/. The substitution of
/heerd/ for /heard/ also presents a case of logic and convenience
supporting analogy. The form is suggested by /steered/, /feared/ and
/cheered/, but its main advantage lies in the fact that it gets rid of
a vowel change, always an impediment to easy speech. Here, as in the
contrary direction, one barbarism breeds another. Thus /taken/, as the
preterite of /to take/, has undoubtedly helped to make preterites of
two other perfects, /shaken/ and /forsaken/.
But in the presence of two exactly contrary tendencies, the one in
accordance with the general movement of the language [Pg200] since
the Norman Conquest and the other opposed to it, it is unsafe, of
course, to attempt any very positive generalizations. All one may
exhibit with safety is a general habit of treating the verb
conveniently. Now and then, disregarding grammatical tendencies, it is
possible to discern what appear to be logical causes for verb
phenomena. That /lit/ is preferred to /lighted/ and /hung/ to /hanged/
is probably the result of an aversion to fine distinctions, and
perhaps, more fundamentally, to the passive. Again, the use of /found/
as the preterite of /to fine/ is obviously due to an ignorant
confusion of /fine/ and /find/, due to the wearing off of /-d/ in
/find/, and that of /lit/ as the preterite of /to alight/ to a
confusion of /alight/ and /light/. Yet again, the use of /tread/ as
its own preterite in place of /trod/ is probably the consequence of a
vague feeling that a verb ending with /d/ is already of preterite
form. /Shed/ exhibits the same process. Both are given a logical
standing by such preterites as /bled/, /fed/, /fled/, /led/, /read/,
/dead/ and /spread/. But here, once more, it is hazardous to lay down
laws, for /shredded/, /headed/, /dreaded/, /threaded/ and /breaded/ at
once come to mind. In other cases it is still more difficult to
account for preterites in common use. /Drug/ is wholly illogical, and
so are /clum/ and /friz/. Neither, fortunately, has yet supplanted the
more intelligible form of its verb, and so it is not necessary to
speculate about them. As for /crew/, it is archaic English surviving
in American, and it was formed, perhaps, by analogy with /knew/, which
has succumbed in American to /knowed/.