The Verb.

The definition of the verb is often erroneous or defective. Its radical idea of making a statement has come into our grammars only recently. The common one mostly heard yet, that it "expresses being, doing, or suffering," is true of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and in short is the basis of all idea and of its expression in words. Every conception must express being or doing or suffering.

The definition of transitive is peculiar. "An action that passes over to an object," is at least a strange idea, if we think of it, and I fear turns out to be unreal. What is an action that passes over to an object? Can the thing be done? The idea of a transitive verb can be given with greater simplicity from the necessity for a completion of the conception.

There is a confusion between tense and time. Tense, like gender, is a conception belonging to words; time to things. Tense is based on time, but is more than time. There are only three times, but there may be many tenses.

Mood requires reform and re-determination. If the indicative is the mood of direct statement, we demolish potential. "He can lift a ton" is as much indicative in every sense as "he is able to lift a ton." Some late grammarians have therefore rightly put this Latin mood aside.

Nothing requires more urgent reform than the infinitive and participles. The infinitive is the noun of the verb, yet page 11 we hear of the participles being used as nouns. The truth is, that we have at least three infinitives—an infinitive with to, an infinitive without to, and an infinitive with ing, which is a corruption of the old Saxon infinitive in an; while the ing of the participle is a corruption of the participial termination in and or end. The confusion has been made from the modern form ing representing two old terminations and two different moods.

The to of the infinitive also requires investigation; it is sometimes the preposition to in form and function, sometimes something else: but though it is interesting, into this we cannot enter.

The division of the infinitive and participle into present and past is, of course, erroneous. They have no time in the sense of the other moods, but take their time from the words to which they are joined. Their classification should be based on the state of the action, as complete or incomplete.

The future tense is generally wrongly given in our grammars, heard in our schools, and spoken in common speech by those that should know better. There are at least three tenses included in the one so-called future; one of simple statement of futurity, and two of determination, the one that of the speaker, the other that of the subject of the verb. Another form of the same tense is used, conveying the idea of the original meaning of "shall"= ought, as "Thou shalt not kill."

These should be distinguished and thoroughly conquered. If they were, we should hear less frequently the daily errors made in even good society.

Much has lately been done towards rendering our grammars more correct, and banishing common traditional errors, but much more still remains to be done. English grammarians have been bound hand and foot by traditional definitions and classifications, and most of all by painful adherence to Latin grammar. The English language has never received sufficient justice as an independent tongue, having its own idioms, and governed by its own laws and by those of the cognate Teutonic languages. On the revival of letters, the only grammar known and taught was, of course, the classical; and its forms and divisions got into our schools and scholars, and by these, and these only, the structure and forms of our language were determined and interpreted; to these it was made by every means to conform. No matter that the languages were those of very differing types. The classical grammar was so and so, the greatest and only grammar, and the English must be the same; and to this rock the undying Prometheus of the English tongue has been bound, with his strong thews stretched and twisted until now; and only recently have some of these bonds been untied. Our English tongue must be interpreted by its own principles and idioms and by those of its sister Teutonic tongues, and all foreign antagonistic systems and classifications must be rigorously expelled. English grammar, as taught in our schools, must be based on the genius and history of the English language. The great want in grammatical study is a historical English grammar. Many works have of late come into the field, and our noble language will ere long receive the full justice to which its independent and firmly-knit structure entitle it.