movements that go back to the Anglo-Saxon period, and even beyond.
There is, for example, the disappearance of the final /t/ in such
words as /crep/, /slep/, /lep/, /swep/ and /wep/. Most of these, in
Anglo-Saxon, were strong verbs. The preterite of /to sleep/
(/slâepan/), for example, was /slēp/, and that of /to weep/ was
/weop/. But in the course of time both /to sleep/ and /to weep/
acquired weak preterite endings, the first becoming /slâepte/ and the
second /wepte/. This weak conjugation was itself degenerated.
Originally, the inflectional suffix had been /-de/ or /-ede/ and in
some cases /-ode/, and the vowels were always pronounced. The wearing
down process that set in in the twelfth century disposed [Pg201] of
the final /e/, but in certain words the other vowel survived for a
good while, and we still observe it in such archaisms as /belovéd/.
Finally, however, it became silent in other preterites, and /loved/,
for example, began to be pronounced (and often written) as a word of
one syllable: /lov'd/.[43] This final /d/-sound now fell upon
difficulties of its own. After certain consonants it was hard to
pronounce clearly, and so the sonant was changed into the easier surd,
and such words as /pushed/ and /clipped/ became, in ordinary
conversation, /pusht/ and /clipt/. In other verbs the /t/-sound had
come in long before, with the degenerated weak ending, and when the
final /e/ was dropped their stem vowels tended to change. Thus arose
such forms as /slept/. In vulgar American another step is taken, and
the suffix is dropped altogether. Thus, by a circuitous route, verbs
originally strong, and for many centuries hovering between the two
conjugations, have eventually become strong again.
The case of /helt/ is probably an example of change by false analogy.
During the thirteenth century, according to Sweet,[44] "/d/ was
changed to /t/ in the weak preterites of verbs [ending] in /rd/, /ld/
and /nd/." Before that time the preterite of /sende/ (/send/) had been
/sende/; now it became /sente/. It survives in our modern /sent/, and
the same process is also revealed in /built/, /girt/, /lent/, /rent/
and /bent/. The popular speech, disregarding the fact that /to hold/
is a strong verb, arrives at /helt/ by imitation. In the case of
/tole/, which I almost always hear in place of /told/, there is a
leaping of steps. The /d/ is got rid of without any transitional use
of /t/. So also, perhaps, in /swole/, which is fast displacing
/swelled/. /Attackted/ and /drownded/ seem to be examples of an effort
to dispose of harsh combinations by a contrary process. Both are very
old in English. /Boughten/ and /dreampt/ [Pg202] present greater
difficulties. Lounsbury says that /boughten/ probably originated in
the Northern [/i. e./, Lowland Scotch] dialect of English, "which ...
inclined to retain the full form of the past participle," and even to
add its termination "to words to which it did not properly
belong."[45] I record /dreampt/ without attempting to account for it.
I have repeatedly heard a distinct /p/-sound in the word.
The general tendency toward regularization is well exhibited by the
new verbs that come into the language constantly. Practically all of
them show the weak conjugation, for example, /to phone/, /to bluff/,
/to rubber-neck/, /to ante/, /to bunt/, /to wireless/, /to insurge/
and /to loop-the-loop/. Even when a compound has as its last member a
verb ordinarily strong, it remains weak itself. Thus the preterite of
/to joy-ride/ is not /joy-rode/, nor even /joy-ridden/, but
/joy-rided/. And thus /bust/, from /burst/, is regular and its
preterite is /busted/, though /burst/ is irregular and its preterite
is the verb itself unchanged. The same tendency toward regularity is
shown by the verbs of the /kneel/-class. They are strong in English,
but tend to become weak in colloquial American. Thus the preterite of
/to kneel/, despite the example of /to sleep/ and its analogues, is
not /knel'/, nor even /knelt/, but /kneeled/. I have even heard
/feeled/ as the preterite of /to feel/, as in "I /feeled/ my way,"
though here /felt/ still persists. /To spread/ also tends to become
weak, as in "he /spreaded/ a piece of bread." And /to peep/ remains
so, despite the example of /to leap/. The confusion between the
inflections of /to lie/ and those of /to lay/ extends to the higher
reaches of spoken American, and so does that between /lend/ and
/loan/. The proper inflections of /to lend/ are often given to /to
loan/, and so /leaned/ becomes /lent/, as in "I /lent/ on the
counter." In the same way /to set/ has almost completely superseded
/to sit/, and the preterite of the former, /set/, is used in place of
/sat/. But the perfect participle (which is also the disused
preterite) of /to sit/ has survived, as in "I have /sat/ there." /To
speed/ and /to shoe/ have become regular, not only because of the
general tendency toward the weak conjugation, but also for logical
reasons. The prevalence of speed contests [Pg203] of various sorts,
always to the intense interest of the proletariat, has brought such
words as /speeder/, /speeding/, /speed-mania/, /speed-maniac/ and
/speed-limit/ into daily use, and /speeded/ harmonizes with them
better than the stronger /sped/. As for /shoed/, it merely reveals the
virtual disappearance of the verb in its passive form. An American
would never say that his wife was well /shod/; he would say that she
wore good shoes. /To shoe/ suggests to him only the shoeing of
animals, and so, by way of /shoeing/ and /horse-shoer/, he comes to
/shoed/. His misuse of /to learn/ for /to teach/ is common to most of
the English dialects. More peculiar to his speech is the use of /to
leave/ for /to let/. Charters records it in "Washington /left/ them
have it," and there are many examples of it in Lardner. /Spit/, in
American, has become invariable; the old preterite, /spat/, has
completely disappeared. But /slit/, which is now invariable in English
(though it was strong in Old English and had both strong and weak
preterites in Middle English), has become regular in American, as in
"she /slitted/ her skirt."
In studying the American verb, of course, it is necessary to remember
always that it is in a state of transition, and that in many cases the
manner of using it is not yet fixed. "The history of language," says
Lounsbury, "when looked at from the purely grammatical point of view,
is little else than the history of corruptions." What we have before
us is a series of corruptions in active process, and while some of
them have gone very far, others are just beginning. Thus it is not
uncommon to find corrupt forms side by side with orthodox forms, or
even two corrupt forms battling with each other. Lardner, in the case
of /to throw/, hears "if he had /throwed/"; my own observation is that
/threw/ is more often used in that situation. Again, he uses "the
rottenest I ever seen /gave/"; my own belief is that /give/ is far
more commonly used. The conjugation of /to give/, however, is yet very
uncertain, and so Lardner may report accurately. I have heard "I
/given/" and "I would of /gave/," but "I /give/" seems to be
prevailing, and "I would of /give/" with it, thus reducing /to give/
to one invariable form, like those of /to cut/, /to hit/, /to put/,
/to cost/, /to hurt/ and /to spit/. My table of verbs shows [Pg204]
various other uncertainties and confusions. The preterite of /to hear/
is /heerd/; the perfect may be either /heerd/ or /heern/. That of /to
do/ may be either /done/ or /did/, with the latter apparently
prevailing; that of /to draw/ is /drew/ if the verb indicates to
attract or to abstract and /drawed/ if it indicates to draw with a
pencil. Similarly, the preterite of /to blow/ may be either /blowed/
or /blew/, and that of /to drink/ oscillates between /drank/ and
/drunk/, and that of /to fall/ is still usually /fell/, though
/fallen/ has appeared, and that of /to shake/ may be either /shaken/
or /shuck/. The conjugation of /to win/ is yet far from fixed. The
correct English preterite, /won/, is still in use, but against it are
arrayed /wan/ and /winned/. /Wan/ seems to show some kinship, by
ignorant analogy, with /ran/ and /began/. It is often used as the
perfect participle, as in "I have /wan/ $4."
The misuse of the perfect participle for the preterite, now almost the
invariable rule in vulgar American, is common to many other dialects
of English, and seems to be a symptom of a general decay of the
perfect tenses. That decay has been going on for a long time, and in
American, the most vigorous and advanced of all the dialects of the
language, it is particularly well marked. Even in the most pretentious
written American it shows itself. The English, in their writing, still
use the future perfect, albeit somewhat laboriously and
self-consciously, but in America it has virtually disappeared: one
often reads whole books without encountering a single example of it.
Even the present perfect and the past perfect seem to be instinctively
avoided. The Englishman says "I /have/ dined," but the American says
"I /am through/ dinner"; the Englishman says "I /had/ slept," but the
American often says "I /was done/ sleeping." Thus the perfect tenses
are forsaken for the simple present and the past. In the vulgate a
further step is taken, and "I /have been/ there" becomes "I /been/
there." Even in such phrases as "he /hasn't/ been here," /ain't/ (=/am
not/) is commonly substituted for /have not/, thus giving the present
perfect a flavor of the simple present. The step from "I /have taken/"
to "/I taken/" was therefore neither difficult nor unnatural, and once
it had been made the resulting locution was supported by the greater
[Pg205] apparent regularity of its verb. Moreover, this perfect
participle, thus put in place of the preterite, was further reinforced
by the fact that it was the adjectival form of the verb, and hence
collaterally familiar. Finally, it was also the authentic preterite in
the passive voice, and although this influence, in view of the decay
of the passive, may not have been of much consequence, nevertheless it
is not to be dismissed as of no consequence at all.
The contrary substitution of the preterite for the perfect participle,
as in "I have /went/" and "he has /did/," apparently has a double
influence behind it. In the first place, there is the effect of the
confused and blundering effort, by an ignorant and unanalytical
speaker, to give the perfect some grammatical differentiation when he
finds himself getting into it--an excursion not infrequently made
necessary by logical exigencies, despite his inclination to keep out.
The nearest indicator at hand is the disused preterite, and so it is
put to use. Sometimes a sense of its uncouthness seems to linger, and
there is a tendency to give it an /en/-suffix, thus bringing it into
greater harmony with its tense. I find that /boughten/, just
discussed, is used much oftener in the perfect than in the simple past
tense;[46] for the latter /bought/ usually suffices. The quick ear of
Lardner detects various other coinages of the same sort, among them
/tooken/, as in "little Al might of /tooken/ sick."[47] /Hadden/ is
also met with, as in "I would of /hadden/." But the majority of
preterites remain unchanged. Lardner's baseball player never writes "I
have /written/" or "I have /wroten/," but always "I have /wrote/." And
in the same way he always writes, "I have /did/, /ate/, /went/,
/drank/, /rode/, /ran/, /saw/, /sang/, /woke/ and /stole/." Sometimes
the simple form of the verb persists through all tenses. This is
usually the case, for example, with /to give/. I have noted "I /give/"
both as present and as preterite, and "I have /give/," and even "I had
/give/." But even here "I have /gave/" offers rivalry to "I have
/give/," and usage is not settled. So, too, with /to come/. "I have
/come/" and "I have /came/" seem to be almost equally [Pg206]
favored, with the former supported by pedagogical admonition and the
latter by the spirit of the language.
Whatever the true cause of the substitution of the preterite for the
perfect participle, it seems to be a tendency inherent in English, and
during the age of Elizabeth it showed itself even in the most formal
speech. An examination of any play of Shakespeare's will show many
such forms as "I have /wrote/," "I am /mistook/" and "he has /rode/."
In several cases this transfer of the preterite has survived. "I have
/stood/," for example, is now perfectly correct English, but before
1550 the form was "I have /stonden/." /To hold/ and /to sit/ belong to
the same class; their original perfect participles were not /held/ and
/sat/, but /holden/ and /sitten/. These survived the movement toward
the formalization of the language which began with the eighteenth
century, but scores of other such misplaced preterites were driven
out. One of the last to go was /wrote/, which persisted until near the
end of the century.[48] Paradoxically enough, the very purists who
performed the purging showed a preference for /got/ (though not for
/forgot/), and it survives in correct English today in the
preterite-present form, as in "I have /got/," whereas in American,
both vulgar and polite, the elder and more regular /gotten/ is often
used. In the polite speech /gotten/ indicates a distinction between a
completed action and a continuing action,--between obtaining and
possessing. "I have /gotten/ what I came for" is correct, and so is "I
have /got/ the measles." In the vulgar speech, much the same
distinction exists, but the perfect becomes a sort of simple tense by
the elision of /have/. Thus the two sentences change to "I /gotten/
what I come for" and "I /got/ the measles," the latter being
understood, not as past, but as present.
In "I have /got/ the measles" /got/ is historically a sort of
auxiliary of /have/, and in colloquial American, as we have seen in
the examples just given, the auxiliary has obliterated the verb. /To
have/, as an auxiliary, probably because of its intimate relationship
with the perfect tenses, is under heavy pressure, and [Pg207]
promises to disappear from the situations in which it is still used. I
have heard /was/ used in place of it, as in "before the Elks /was/
come here."[49] Sometimes it is confused ignorantly with a distinct
/of/, as in "she would /of/ drove," and "I would /of/ gave." More
often it is shaded to a sort of particle, attached to the verb as an
inflection, as in "he would '/a/ tole you," and "who could '/a/ took
it?" But this is not all. Having degenerated to such forms, it is now
employed as a sort of auxiliary to itself, in the subjunctive, as in
"if you had /of/ went," "if it had /of/ been hard," and "if I had /of/
had."[50] I have encountered some rather astonishing examples of this
doubling of the auxiliary: one appears in "I wouldn't had '/a/ went."
Here, however, the /a/ may belong partly to /had/ and partly to
/went/; such forms as /a-going/ are very common in American. But in
the other cases, and in such forms as "I had '/a/ wanted," it clearly
belongs to /had/. Sometimes for syntactical reasons, the degenerated
form of /have/ is put before /had/ instead of after it, as in "I could
/of/ had her if I had /of/ wanted to."[51] Meanwhile, /to have/,
ceasing to be an auxiliary, becomes a general verb indicating
compulsion. Here it promises to displace /must/. The American seldom
says "I /must/ go"; he almost invariably says "I /have/ to go," or "I
/have got/ to go," in which last case, as we have seen, /got/ is the
auxiliary.
The most common inflections of the verb for mode and voice are shown
in the following paradigm of /to bite/:
ACTIVE VOICE
/Indicative Mode/
/Present/ I bite /Past Perfect/ I had of bit
/Present Perfect/ I have bit /Future/ I will bite
/Past/ I bitten /Future Perfect/ (wanting)
/Subjunctive Mode/
/Present/ If I bite /Past Perfect/ If I had of bit
/Past/ If I bitten
/Potential Mode/
/Present/ I can bite /Past/ I could bite
/Present Perfect/ (wanting) /Past Perfect/ I could of bit
/Imperative/ (or /Optative/) /Mode/
/Future/ I shall (or will) bite
/Infinitive Mode/
(wanting)
PASSIVE VOICE
/Indicative Mode/
/Present/ I am bit /Past Perfect/ I had been bit
/Present Perfect/ I been bit /Future/ I will be bit
/Past/ I was bit /Future Perfect/ (wanting)
/Subjunctive Mode/
/Present/ If I am bit /Past Perfect/ If I had of been bit
/Past/ If I was bit
/Potential Mode/
/Present/ I can be bit /Past/ I could be bit
/Present Perfect/ (wanting) /Past Perfect/ I could of been bit
/Imperative Mode/
(wanting)
/Infinitive Mode/
(wanting)
A study of this paradigm reveals several plain tendencies. One has
just been discussed: the addition of a degenerated form of /have/ to
the preterite of the auxiliary, and its use in place of the auxiliary
itself. Another is the use of /will/ instead of /shall/ in the first
person future. /Shall/ is confined to a sort of optative, indicating
much more than mere intention, and even here it is yielding to /will/.
Yet another is the consistent use of the transferred preterite in the
passive. Here the rule in correct English is followed faithfully,
though the perfect participle [Pg209] employed is not the English
participle. "I am /broke/" is a good example. Finally, there is the
substitution of /was/ for /were/ and of /am/ for /be/ in the past and
present of the subjunctive. In this last case American is in accord
with the general movement of English, though somewhat more advanced.
/Be/, in the Shakespearean form of "where /be/ thy brothers?" was
expelled from the present indicative two hundred years ago, and
survives today only in dialect. And as it thus yielded to /are/ in the
indicative, it now seems destined to yield to /am/ and /is/ in the
subjunctive. It remains, of course, in the future indicative: "I will
/be/." In American its conjugation coalesces with that of /am/ in the
following manner:
/Present/ I am /Past Perfect/ I had of ben
/Present Perfect/ I bin (or ben) /Future/ I will be
/Past/ I was /Future Perfect/ (wanting)
And in the subjunction:
/Present/ If I am /Past Perfect/ If I had of ben
/Past/ If I was
All signs of the subjunctive, indeed, seem to be disappearing from
vulgar American. One never hears "if I /were/ you," but always "if I
/was/ you." In the third person the /-s/ is not dropped from the verb.
One hears, not "if she /go/," but "if she /goes/." "If he /be/ the
man" is never heard; it is always "if he /is/." This war upon the
forms of the subjunctive, of course, extends to the most formal
English. "In Old English," says Bradley,[52] "the subjunctive played
as important a part as in modern German, and was used in much the same
way. Its inflection differed in several respects from that of the
indicative. But the only formal trace of the old subjunctive still
remaining, except the use of /be/ and /were/, is the omission of the
final /s/ in the third person singular. And even this is rapidly
dropping out of use.... Perhaps in another generation the subjunctive
forms will have ceased to exist except in the single instance of
/were/, which serves a useful function, although we manage to [Pg210]
dispense with a corresponding form in other verbs." Here, as
elsewhere, unlettered American usage simply proceeds in advance of the
general movement. /Be/ and the omitted /s/ are already dispensed with,
and even /were/ has been discarded.
In the same way the distinction between /will/ and /shall/, preserved
in correct English but already breaking down in the most correct
American, has been lost entirely in the American common speech. /Will/
has displaced /shall/ completely, save in the imperative. This
preference extends to the inflections of both. /Sha'n't/ is very
seldom heard; almost always /won't/ is used instead. As for /should/,
it is displaced by /ought to/ (degenerated to /oughter/ or /ought'a/),
and in its negative form by /hadn't ought'a/, as in "he /hadn't
oughter/ said that," reported by Charters. Lardner gives various
redundant combinations of /should/ and /ought/, as in "I don't feel as
if I /should ought to/ leave" and "they /should not ought to/ of had."
I have encountered the same form, but I don't think it is as common as
the simple /ought'a/-forms. In the main, /should/ is avoided,
sometimes at considerable pains. Often its place is taken by the more
positive /don't/. Thus "I /don't/ mind" is used instead of "I
/shouldn't/ mind." /Don't/ has also completely displaced /doesn't/,
which is very seldom heard. "He /don't/" and "they /don't/" are
practically universal. In the same way /ain't/ has displaced /is not/,
/am not/, /isn't/ and /aren't/, and even /have not/ and /haven't/. One
recalls a famous speech in a naval melodrama of twenty years ago: "We
/ain't/ got no manners, but we can fight like hell." Such forms as "he
/ain't/ here," "I /ain't/ the man," "them /ain't/ what I want" and "I
/ain't/ heerd of it" are common.
This extensive use of /ain't/, of course, is merely a single symptom
of a general disregard of number, obvious throughout the verbs, and
also among the pronouns, as we shall see. Charters gives many
examples, among them, "how /is/ Uncle Wallace and Aunt Clara?" "you
/was/," "there /is/ six" and the incomparable "it /ain't/ right to
say, 'He /ain't/ here today.'" In Lardner there are many more, for
instance, "them Giants is not such rotten hitters, /is/ they?" "the
people /has/ all wanted to shake hands with Matthewson and I" and
"some of the men /has/ [Pg211] brung their wife along." /Sez/
(=/says/), used as the preterite of /to say/, shows the same
confusion. One observes it again in such forms as "then I /goes/ up to
him." Here the decay of number helps in what threatens to become a
decay of tense. Examples of it are not hard to find. The average
race-track follower of the humbler sort seldom says "I /won/ $2," or
even "I /wan/ $2," but almost always "I /win/ $2." And in the same way
he says "I /see/ him come in," not "I /saw/ him" or "/seen/ him."
Charters' materials offers other specimens, among them "we /help/
distributed the fruit," "she /recognize/, hug, and /kiss/ him" and
"her father /ask/ her if she intended doing what he /ask/." Perhaps
the occasional use of /eat/ as the preterite of /to eat/, as in "I
/eat/ breakfast as soon as I got up," is an example of the same
flattening out of distinctions. Lardner has many specimens, among them
"if Weaver and them had not of /begin/ kicking" and "they would of
/knock/ down the fence." I notice that /used/, in /used to be/, is
almost always reduced to simple /use/, as in "it /use/ to be the
rule." One seldom, if ever, hears a clear /d/ at the end. Here, of
course, the elision of the /d/ is due primarily to assimilation with
the /t/ of /to/--a second example of one form of decay aiding another
form. But the tenses apparently tend to crumble without help. I
frequently hear whole narratives in a sort of debased present: "I
/says/ to him.... Then he /ups/ and /says/.... I /land/ him one on the
ear.... He /goes/ down and out, ..." and so on.[53] Still under the
spell of our disintegrating inflections, we are prone to regard the
tense inflections of the verb as absolutely essential, but there are
plenty of languages that get on without them, and even in our own
language children and foreigners often reduce them to a few simple
forms. Some time ago an Italian contractor said to me "I have /go/
there often." Here one of our few surviving inflections was displaced
by an analytical devise, and yet the man's meaning was quite clear,
and it would be absurd to say that his sentence violated the inner
spirit of English. That inner spirit, in fact, has inclined steadily
toward "I have /go/" for a thousand years. [Pg212]
§ 4
/The Pronoun/--The following paradigm shows the inflections of the
personal pronoun in the American common speech:
FIRST PERSON
/Common Gender/
/Singular/ /Plural/
/Nominative/ I we
/Possessive Conjoint/ my our
/Possessive Absolute/ mine ourn
/Objective/ me us
SECOND PERSON
/Common Gender/
/Singular/
/Nominative/ you yous
/Possessive Conjoint/ your your
/Possessive Absolute/ yourn yourn
/Objective/ you yous
THIRD PERSON
/Masculine Gender/
/Nominative/ he they
/Possessive Conjoint/ his their
/Possessive Absolute/ hisn theirn
/Objective/ him them
/Feminine Gender/
/Nominative/ she they
/Possessive Conjoint/ her their
/Possessive Absolute/ hern theirn
/Objective/ her them
/Neuter Gender/
/Nominative/ it they
/Possessive Conjoint/ its theirn
/Possessive Absolute/ its their
/Objective/ it them