nevertheless it is profitable to glance at them as they [Pg213]
stand. The only variations that they show from standard English are
the substitution of /n/ for /s/ as the distinguishing mark of the
absolute form of the possessive, and the attempt to differentiate
between the logical and the merely polite plurals in the second person
by adding the usual sign of the plural to the former. The use of /n/
in place of /s/ is not an American innovation. It is found in many of
the dialects of English, and is, in fact, historically quite as sound
as the use of /s/. In John Wiclif's translation of the Bible (/circa/
1380) the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount (Mark v, 3) is
made: "Blessed be the pore in spirit, for the kyngdam in hevenes is
/heren/." And in his version of Luke xxiv, 24, is this: "And some of
/ouren/ wentin to the grave." Here /heren/, (or /herun/) represents,
of course, not the modern /hers/, but /theirs/. In Anglo-Saxon the
word was /heora/, and down to Chaucer's day a modified form of it,
/here/, was still used in the possessive plural in place of the modern
/their/, though /they/ had already displaced /hie/ in the
nominative.[54] But in John Purvey's revision of the Wiclif Bible,
made a few years later, /hern/ actually occurs in II Kings viii, 6,
thus: "Restore thou to hir alle things that ben /hern/." In
Anglo-Saxon there had been no distinction between the conjoint and
absolute forms of the possessive pronouns; the simple genitive
sufficed for both uses. But with the decay of that language the
surviving remnants of its grammar began to be put to service somewhat
recklessly, and so there arose a genitive inflection of this
genitive--a true double inflection. In the Northern dialects of
English that inflection was made by simply adding /s/, the sign of the
possessive. In the Southern dialects the old /n/-declension was
applied, and so there arose such forms as /minum/ and /eowrum/
(=/mine/ and /yours/), from /min/ and /eower/ (=/my/ and /your/).[55]
Meanwhile, the original simple genitive, now become /youre/, also
survived, and so the literature of [Pg214] the fourteenth century
shows the three forms flourishing side by side: /youre/, /youres/ and
/youren/. All of them are in Chaucer.
Thus, /yourn/, /hern/, /hisn/, /ourn/ and /theirn/, whatever their
present offense to grammarians, are of a genealogy quite as
respectable as that of /yours/, /hers/, /his/, /ours/ and /theirs/.
Both forms represent a doubling of inflections, and hence grammatical
debasement. On the side of the /yours/-form is the standard usage of
the past five hundred years, but on the side of the /yourn/-form there
is no little force of analogy and logic, as appears on turning to
/mine/ and /thine/. In Anglo-Saxon, as we have seen, /my/ was /min/;
in the same way /thy/ was /thin/. During the decadence of the language
the final /n/ was dropped in both cases before nouns--that is, in the
conjoint form--but it was retained in the absolute form. This usage
survives to our own day. One says "/my/ book," but "the book is
/mine/"; "/thy/ faith," but "I am /thine/."[56] Also, one says "/no/
matter," but "I have /none/." Without question this retention of the
/n/ in these pronouns had something to do with the appearance of the
/n/-declension in the treatment of /your/, /her/, /his/ and /our/,
and, after /their/ had displaced /here/ in the third person plural, in
/their/. And equally without question it supports the vulgar American
usage today. What that usage shows is simply the strong popular
tendency to make language as simple and as regular as possible--to
abolish subtleties and exceptions. The difference between "/his/ book"
and "the book is /his'n/" is exactly that between /my/ and /mine/,
/thy/ and /thine/, in the examples just given. "Perhaps it would have
been better," says Bradley, "if the literary language had accepted
/hisn/, but from some cause it did not do so."[57]
As for the addition of /s/ to /you/ in the nominative and objective of
the second person plural, it exhibits no more than an effort to give
clarity to the logical difference between the true plural and the mere
polite plural. In several other dialects of [Pg215] English the same
desire has given rise to cognate forms, and there are even secondary
devices in American. In the South, for example, the true plural is
commonly indicated by /you-all/, which, despite a Northern belief to
the contrary, is never used in the singular by any save the most
ignorant.[58] /You-all/, like /yous/, simply means /you-jointly/ as
opposed to the /you/ that means /thou/. Again, there is the form
observed in "you can /all of you/ go to hell"--another plain effort to
differentiate between singular and plural. The substitution of /you/
for /thou/ goes back to the end of the thirteenth century. It appeared
in late Latin and in the other continental languages as well as in
English, and at about the same time. In these languages the true
singular survives alongside the transplanted plural, but English has
dropped it entirely, save in its poetical and liturgical forms and in
a few dialects. It passed out of ordinary polite speech before
Elizabeth's day. By that time, indeed, its use had acquired an air of
the offensive, such as it has today, save between intimates or to
children, in Germany. Thus, at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in
1603, Sir Edward Coke, then attorney-general, displayed his animosity
to Raleigh by addressing him as /thou/, and finally burst into the
contemptuous "I /thou/ thee, /thou/ traitor!" And in "Twelfth Night"
Sir Toby Belch urges Sir Andrew Aguecheek to provoke the disguised
Viola to combat by /thouing/ her. In our own time, with thou passed
out entirely, even as a pronoun of contempt, the confusion between
/you/ in the plural and /you/ in the singular presents plain
difficulties to a man of limited linguistic resources. He gets around
them by setting up a distinction that is well supported by logic and
analogy. "I seen /yous/" is clearly separated from "I seen /you/.".
And in the conjoint position "/yous/ guys" is separated from "/you/
liar."
So much for the personal pronouns. As we shall see, they are used in
such a manner that the distinction between the nominative and the
objective forms, though still existing grammatically, has begun to
break down. But first it may be well to glance at the demonstrative
and relative pronouns. Of the former there [Pg216] are but two in
English, /this/ and /that/, with their plural forms, /these/ and
/those/. To them, American adds a third, /them/, which is also the
personal pronoun of the third person, objective case.[59] In addition
it has adopted certain adverbial pronouns, /this-here/, /these-here/,
/that-there/, /those-there/ and /them-there/, and set up inflections
of the original demonstratives by analogy with /mine/, /hisn/ and
/yourn/, to wit, /thisn/, /thesen/, /thatn/ and /thosen/. I present
some examples of everyday use:
/Them/ are the kind I like.
/Them/ men all work here.
Who is /this-here/ Smith I hear about?
/These-here/ are mine.
/That-there/ medicine ain't no good.
/Those-there/ wops has all took to the woods.
I wisht I had one of /them-there/ Fords.
/Thisn/ is better'n /thatn/.
I like /thesen/ better'n /thosen/.
The origin of the demonstratives of the /thisn/-group is plain: they
are degenerate forms of /this-one/, /that-one/, etc., just as /none/
is a degenerate composition form of /no(t)-one/. In every case of
their use that I have observed the simple demonstratives might have
been set free and /one/ actually substituted for the terminal /n/. But
it must be equally obvious that they have been reinforced very greatly
by the absolutes of the /hisn/-group, for in their relation to the
original demonstratives they play the part of just such absolutes and
are never used conjointly. Thus, one says, in American, "I take
/thisn/" or "/thisn/ is mine," but one never says "I take /thisn/ hat"
or "/thisn/ dog is mine." In this conjoint situation plain /this/ is
always used, and the same rule [Pg217] applies to /these/, /those/
and /that/. /Them/, being a newcomer among the demonstratives, has not
yet acquired an inflection in the absolute. I have never heard
/them'n/, and it will probably never come in, for it is forbiddingly
clumsy. One says, in American, both "/them/ are mine" and "/them/
collars are mine."
/This-here/, /these-here/, /that-there/, /those-there/ and
/them-there/ are plainly combinations of pronouns and adverbs, and
their function is to support the distinction between proximity, as
embodied in /this/ and /these/, and remoteness, as embodied in /that/,
/those/ and /them/. "/This-here/ coat is mine" simply means "this
coat, /here/, or this /present/ coat, is mine." But the adverb
promises to coalesce with the pronoun so completely as to obliterate
all sense of its distinct existence, even as a false noun or
adjective. As commonly pronounced, /this-here/ becomes a single word,
somewhat like /thish-yur/, and /these-here/ becomes /these-yur/, and
/that-there/ and /them-there/ become /that-ere/ and /them-ere/.
/Those-there/, if I observed accurately, is still pronounced more
distinctly, but it, too, may succumb to composition in time. The
adverb will then sink to the estate of a mere inflectional particle,
as /one/ has done in the absolutes of the /thisn/-group. /Them/, as a
personal pronoun in the absolute, of course, is commonly pronounced
/em/, as in "I seen /em/," and sometimes its vowel is almost lost, but
this is also the case in all save the most exact spoken English. Sweet
and Lounsbury, following the German grammarians, argue that this /em/
is not really a debased form of /them/, but the offspring of /hem/,
which survived as the regular plural of the third person in the
objective case down to the beginning of the fifteenth century. But in
American /them/ is clearly pronounced as a demonstrative. I have never
heard "/em/ men" or "/em/ are the kind I like," but always "/them/
men" and "/them/ are the kind I like."
The relative pronouns, so far as I have been able to make out, are
declined as follows:
/Nominative/ who which what that
/Possessive Conjoint/ whose whose
/Possessive Absolute/ whosen whosen
/Objective/ who which what that
[Pg218]
Two things will be noted in this paradigm. First there is the
disappearance of /whom/ as the objective form of /who/, and secondly
there is the appearance of an inflected form of /whose/ in the
absolute, by analogy with /mine/, /hisn/ and /thesen/. /Whom/, as we
have seen, is fast disappearing from standard spoken American;[60] in
the vulgar language it is already virtually extinct. Not only is /who/
used in such constructions as "/who/ did you find there?" where even
standard spoken English would tolerate it, but also in such
constructions as "the man /who/ I saw," "them /who/ I trust in" and
"to /who/?" Krapp explains this use of /who/ on the ground that there
is a "general feeling," due to the normal word-order in English, that
"the word which precedes the verb is the subject word, or at least the
subject form."[61] But this explanation is probably fanciful. Among
the plain people no such "general feeling" for case exists. Their only
"general feeling" is a prejudice against case inflections in any form
whatsoever. They use /who/ in place of /whom/ simply because they can
discern no logical difference between the significance of the one and
the significance of the other.
/Whosen/ is obviously the offspring of the other absolutes in /n/. In
the conjoint relation plain /whose/ is always used, as in "/whose/ hat
is that?" and "the man /whose/ dog bit me." But in the absolute
/whosen/ is often substituted, as in "if it ain't /hisn/, then
/whosen/ is it?" The imitation is obvious. There is an analogous form
of /which/, to wit, /whichn/, resting heavily on /which one/. Thus,
"/whichn/ do you like?" and "I didn't say /whichn/" are plainly
variations of "/which one/ do you like?" and "I didn't say /which
one/." That, as we have seen, has a like form, /thatn/, but never, of
course, in the relative situation. "I like /thatn/," is familiar, but
"the one /thatn/ I like" is never heard. If /that/, as a relative,
could be used absolutely, I have no doubt that it would change to
/thatn/, as it does as a demonstrative. So with /what/. As things
stand, it is sometimes substituted for /that/, as in "them's the kind
/what/ I like." Joined to /but/ it can also take the place of /that/
in other situations, as in "I don't know /but what/." [Pg219]
The substitution of /who/ for /whom/ in the objective case, just
noticed, is typical of a general movement toward breaking down all
case distinctions among the pronouns, where they make their last stand
in English and its dialects. This movement, of course, is not peculiar
to vulgar American; nor is it of recent beginning. So long ago as the
fifteenth century the old clear distinction between /ye/, nominative,
and /you/, objective, disappeared, and today the latter is used in
both cases. Sweet says that the phonetic similarity between /ye/ and
/thee/, the objective form of the true second singular, was
responsible for this confusion.[62] At the start /ye/ actually went
over to the objective case, and the usage thus established shows
itself in such survivors of the period as /harkee/ (/hark ye/) and
/look ye/. In modern spoken English, indeed, /you/ in the objective
often has a sound far more like that of /ye/ than like that of /you/,
as, for example, in "how do y' do?" and in American its vowel takes
the neutral form of the /e/ in the definite article, and the word
becomes a sort of shortened /yuh/. But whenever emphasis is laid upon
it, /you/ becomes quite distinct, even in American. In "I mean /you/,"
for example, there is never any chance of mistaking it for /ye/.
In Shakespeare's time the other personal pronouns of the objective
case threatened to follow /you/ into the nominative, and there was a
compensatory movement of the nominative pronouns toward the objective.
Lounsbury has collected many examples.[63] Marlowe used "is it /him/
you seek?" "'tis /her/ I esteem" and "nor /thee/ nor /them/, shall
want"; Fletcher used "'tis /her/ I admire"; Shakespeare himself used
"that's /me/." Contrariwise, Webster used "what difference is between
the duke and /I/?" and Greene used "nor earth nor heaven shall part my
love and /I/." Krapp has unearthed many similar examples from the
Restoration dramatists.[64] Etheredge used "'tis /them/," "it may be
/him/," "let you and /I/" and "nor is it /me/"; Matthew Prior, in a
famous couplet, achieved this: [Pg220]
For thou art a girl as much brighter than /her/.
As he was a poet sublimer than /me/.
The free exchange continued, in fact, until the eighteenth century was
well advanced; there are examples of it in Addison. Moreover, it
survived, at least in part, even the attack that was then made upon it
by the professors of the new-born science of English grammar, and to
this day "it is /me/" is still in more or less good colloquial use.
Sweet thinks that it is supported in such use, though not, of course,
grammatically, by the analogy of the correct "it is /he/" and "it is
/she/." Lounsbury, following Dean Alford, says it came into English in
imitation of the French /c'est moi/, and defends it as at least as
good as "it is /I/."[65] The contrary form, "between you and /I/," has
no defenders, and is apparently going out. But in the shape of
"between my wife and /I/" it is seldom challenged, at least in spoken
English.
All these liberties with the personal pronouns, however, fade to
insignificance when put beside the thoroughgoing confusion of the case
forms in vulgar American. "/Us/ fellers" is so far established in the
language that "/we/ fellers," from the mouth of a car conductor, would
seem almost an affectation. So, too, is "/me/ and /her/ are friends."
So, again, are "I seen you and /her/," "/her/ and I set down
together," "/him/ and his wife," and "I knowed it was /her/." Here are
some other characteristic examples of the use of the objective forms
in the nominative from Charters and Lardner:
/Me/ and /her/ was both late.
His brother is taller than /him/.
That little boy was /me/.
/Us/ girls went home.
They were John and /him/.
/Her/ and little Al is to stay here.
She says she thinks /us/ and the Allens.
If Weaver and /them/ had not of begin kicking.
But not /me/.
/Him/ and I are friends.
/Me/ and /them/ are friends.
[Pg221]
Less numerous, but still varied and plentiful, are the substitutions
of nominative forms for objective forms:
She gave it to mother and /I/.
She took all of /we/ children.
I want you to meet /he/ and I at 29th street.
He gave /he/ and I both some.
It is going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby.
Anything she has is O. K. for /I/ and Florrie.
Here are some grotesque confusions, indeed. Perhaps the best way to
get at the principles underlying them is to examine first, not the
cases of their occurrence, but the cases of their non-occurrence. Let
us begin with the transfer of the objective form to the nominative in
the subject relation. "/Me/ and /her/ was both late" is obviously
sound American; one hears it, or something like it, on the streets
every day. But one never hears "/me/ was late" or "/her/ was late" or
"/us/ was late" or "/him/ was late" or "/them/ was late." Again, one
hears "/us/ girls was there" but never "/us/ was there." Yet again,
one hears "/her/ and John was married," but never "/her/ was married."
The distinction here set up should be immediately plain. It exactly
parallels that between /her/ and /hern/, /our/ and /ourn/, /their/ and
/theirn/: the tendency, as Sweet says, is "to merge the distinction of
nominative and objective in that of conjoint and absolute."[66] The
nominative, in the subject relation, takes the usual nominative form
only when it is in immediate contact with its verb. If it be separated
from its verb by a conjunction or any other part of speech, even
including another pronoun, it takes the objective form. Thus "/me/
went home" would strike even the most ignorant shopgirl as "bad
grammar," but she would use "/me/ and my friend went," or "/me/ and
/him/," or "/he/ and /her/," or "/me/ and /them/" without the
slightest hesitation. What is more, if the separation be effected by a
conjunction and another pronoun, the other pronoun also changes to the
objective form, even though its contact with the verb may be
immediate. Thus one hears "/me/ and /her/ was there," not "/me/ and
/she/"; /her/ and "/him/ kissed," not "/her/ and /he/." Still more,
this second pronoun [Pg222] commonly undergoes the same inflection
even when the first member of the group is not another pronoun, but a
noun. Thus one hears "John and /her/ were married," not "John and
/she/." To this rule there is but one exception, and that is in the
case of the first person pronoun, especially in the singular. "/Him/
and /me/ are friends" is heard often, but "/him/ and /I/ are friends"
is also heard. /I/ seems to suggest the subject very powerfully; it is
actually the subject of perhaps a majority of the sentences uttered by
an ignorant man. At all events, it resists the rule, at least
partially, and may even do so when actually separated from the verb by
another pronoun, itself in the objective form, as for example, in "/I/
and /him/ were there."
In the predicate relation the pronouns respond to a more complex
regulation. When they follow any form of the simple verb of being they
take the objective form, as in "it's /me/," "it ain't /him/," and "I
am /him/," probably because the transitiveness of this verb exerts a
greater pull than its function as a mere copula, and perhaps, too,
because the passive naturally tends to put the speaker in the place of
the object. "I seen /he/" or "he kissed /she/" or "he struck /I/"
would seem as ridiculous to an ignorant American as to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and his instinct for simplicity and regularity
naturally tends to make him reduce all similar expressions, or what
seem to him to be similar expressions, to coincidence with the more
seemly "I seen /him/." After all, the verb of being is fundamentally
transitive, and, in some ways, the most transitive of all verbs, and
so it is not illogical to bring its powers over the pronoun into
accord with the powers exerted by the others. I incline to think that
it is some such subconscious logic, and not the analogy of "it is
/he/," as Sweet argues, that has brought "it is /me/" to
conversational respectability, even among rather careful speakers of
English.[67]
But against this use of the objective form in the nominative [Pg223]
position after the verb of being there also occurs in American a use
of the nominative form in the objective position, as in "she gave it
to mother and /I/" and "she took all of /we/ children." What lies at
the bottom of it seems to be a feeling somewhat resembling that which
causes the use of the objective form before the verb, but exactly
contrary in its effects. That is to say, the nominative form is used
when the pronoun is separated from its governing verb, whether by a
noun, a noun-phrase or another pronoun, as in "she gave it to mother
and /I/," "she took all of /we/ children" and "he paid her and /I/"
respectively. But here usage is far from fixed, and one observes
variations in both directions--that is, toward using the correct
objective when the pronoun is detached from the verb, and toward using
the nominative even when it directly follows the verb. "She gave it to
mother and /me/," "she took all of /us/ children" and "he paid her and
/me/" would probably sound quite as correct, to a Knight of Pythias,
as the forms just given. And at the other end Charters and Lardner
report such forms as "I want you to meet /he/ and /I/" and "it is
going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby." I have
noticed, however, that, in the overwhelming main, the use of the
nominative is confined to the pronoun of the first person, and
particularly to its singular. Here again we have an example of the
powerful way in which /I/ asserts itself. And superimposed upon that
influence is a cause mentioned by Sweet in discussing "between you and
/I/."[68] It is a sort of by-product of the pedagogical war upon "it
is /me/." "As such expressions," he says, "are still denounced by the
grammars, many people try to avoid them in speech as well as in
writing. The result of this reaction is that the /me/ in such
constructions as 'between John and /me/' and 'he saw John and /me/'
sounds vulgar and ungrammatical, and is consequently corrected into
/I/." Here the pedagogues, seeking to impose an inelastic and
illogical grammar upon a living speech, succeed only in corrupting it
still more.
Following /than/ and /as/ the American uses the objective form of the
pronoun, as in "he is taller than /me/" and "such as /her/." [Pg224]
He also uses it following /like/, but not when, as often happens, he
uses the word in place of /as/ or /as if/. Thus he says "do it like
/him/," but "do it like /he/ does" and "she looks like /she/ was
sick." What appears here is an instinctive feeling that these words,
followed by a pronoun only, are not adverbs, but prepositions, and
that they should have the same power to put the pronoun into an
oblique case that other prepositions have. Just as "the taller of
/we/" would sound absurd to all of us, so "taller than /he/," to the
unschooled American, sounds absurd. This feeling has a good deal of
respectable support. "As /her/" was used by Swift, "than /me/" by
Burke, and "than /whom/" by Milton. The brothers Fowler show that, in
some cases, "than /him/," is grammatically correct and logically
necessary.[69] For example, compare "I love you more than /him/" and
"I love you more than /he/." The first means "I love you more than (I
love) /him/"; the second, "I love you more than /he/ (loves you)." In
the first /him/ does not refer to /I/, which is nominative, but to
/you/, which is objective, and so it is properly objective also. But
the American, of course, uses /him/ even when the preceding noun is in
the nominative, save only when another verb follows the pronoun. Thus,
he says, "I love you better than /him/," but "I love you better than
/he/ does."