The American Language
pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and /his-or-her/ is
intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted.
The brothers Fowler have discovered "anybody else who have only
/themselves/ in view" in Richardson and "everybody is discontented
with /their/ lot" in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote "if a customer
wishes you to injure /their/ foot." In spoken American, even the most
careful, /they/ and /their/ often appear; I turn to the /Congressional
Record/ at random and in two minutes find "if anyone will look at the
bank statements /they/ will see."[70] In the lower reaches of the
language the plural seems to get into every sentence of any
complexity, even when the preceding noun or pronoun is plainly
singular. [Pg226]
§ 5
/The Adverb/--All the adverbial endings in English, save /-ly/, have
gradually fallen into decay; it is the only one that is ever used to
form new adverbs. At earlier stages of the language various other
endings were used, and some of them survive in a few old words, though
they are no longer employed in making new words. The Anglo-Saxon
endings were /-e/ and /-lice/. The latter was, at first, merely an
/-e/-ending to adjectives in /-lic/, but after a time it attained to
independence and was attached to adjectives not ending in /-lic/. In
early Middle English this /-lice/ changes to /-like/, and later on to
/-li/ and /-ly/. Meanwhile, the /-e/-ending, following the
/-e/-endings of the nouns, adjectives and verbs, ceased to be
pronounced, and so it gradually fell away. Thus a good many adverbs
came to be indistinguishable from their ancestral adjectives, for
example, /hard/ in to /pull hard/, /loud/ in /to speak loud/, and
/deep/ in /to bury deep/ (=Anglo-Saxon, /dĕop-e/). Worse, not a few
adverbs actually became adjectives, for example, /wide/, which was
originally the Anglo-Saxon adjective /wid/ (=/wide/) with the
adverbial /-e/-ending, and /late/, which was originally the
Anglo-Saxon adjective /laet/ (=/slow/) with the same ending.
The result of this movement toward identity in form was a confusion
between the two classes of words, and from the time of Chaucer down to
the eighteenth century one finds innumerable instances of the use of
the simple adjective as an adverb. "He will answer /trewe/" is in Sir
Thomas More; "and /soft/ unto himself he sayd" in Chaucer; "the
singers sang /loud/" in the Revised Version of the Bible (Nehemiah
xii, 42), and "/indifferent/ well" in Shakespeare. Even after the
purists of the eighteenth century began their corrective work this
confusion continued. Thus, one finds, "the people are /miserable/
poor" in Hume, "how /unworthy/ you treated mankind" in /The
Spectator/, and "/wonderful/ silly" in Joseph Butler. To this day the
grammarians battle with the barbarism, still without complete success;
every new volume of rules and regulations for those who would speak by
the book is full of warnings against it. Among [Pg227] the great
masses of the plain people, it goes without saying, it flourishes
unimpeded. The cautions of the school-marm, in a matter so subtle and
so plainly lacking in logic or necessity, are forgotten as quickly as
her prohibition of the double negative, and thereafter the adjective
and the adverb tend more and more to coalesce in a part of speech
which serves the purposes of both, and is simple and intelligible and
satisfying.
Charters gives a number of characteristic examples of its use:
"wounded very /bad/," "I /sure/ was stiff," "drank out of a cup
/easy/," "he looked up /quick/." Many more are in Lardner: "a chance
to see me work /regular/," "I am glad I was lucky enough to marry
/happy/," "I beat them /easy/," and so on. And others fall upon the
ear every day: "he done it /proper/," "he done himself /proud/," "she
was dressed /neat/," "she was /awful/ ugly," "the horse ran /O. K./,"
"it /near/ finished him," "it sells /quick/," "I like it /fine/," "he
et /hoggish/," "she acted /mean/," "they keep company /steady/." The
bob-tailed adverb, indeed, enters into a large number of the commonest
coins of vulgar speech. /Near-silk/, I daresay, is properly
/nearly-silk/. The grammarians protest that "run /slow/" should be
"run /slowly/." But /near-silk/ and "run /slow/" remain, and so do "to
be in /bad/," "to play it up /strong/" and their brothers. What we
have here is simply an incapacity to distinguish any ponderable
difference between adverb and adjective, and beneath it, perhaps, is
the incapacity, already noticed in dealing with "it is /me/," to
distinguish between the common verb of being and any other verb. If
"it /is/ bad" is correct, then why should "it /leaks/ bad" be
incorrect? It is just this disdain of purely grammatical reasons that
is at the bottom of most of the phenomena visible in vulgar American,
and the same impulse is observable in all other languages during
periods of inflectional decay. During the highly inflected stage of a
language the parts of speech are sharply distinct, but when
inflections fall off they tend to disappear. The adverb, being at best
the step-child of grammar--as the old Latin grammarians used to say,
"/Omnis pars orationis migrat in adverbium/"--is one of the chief
victims of this anarchy. John Horne Tooke, despairing of bringing it
to any [Pg228] order, even in the most careful English, called it, in
his "Epea Ptercenta," "the common sink and repository of all
heterogeneous and unknown corruptions."
Where an obvious logical or lexical distinction has grown up between
an adverb and its primary adjective the unschooled American is very
careful to give it its terminal /-ly/. For example, he seldom confuses
/hard/ and /hardly/, /scarce/ and /scarcely/, /real/ and /really/.
These words convey different ideas. /Hard/ means unyielding; /hardly/
means barely. /Scarce/ means present only in small numbers; /scarcely/
is substantially synonymous with /hardly/. /Real/ means genuine;
/really/ is an assurance of veracity. So, again, with /late/ and
/lately/. Thus, an American says "I don't know, /scarcely/," not "I
don't know, /scarce/"; "he died /lately/," not "he died /late/." But
in nearly all such cases syntax is the preservative, not grammar.
These adverbs seem to keep their tails largely because they are
commonly put before and not after verbs, as in, for example, "I
/hardly/ (or /scarcely/) know," and "I /really/ mean it." Many other
adverbs that take that position habitually are saved as well, for
example, /generally/, /usually/, /surely/, /certainly/. But when they
follow verbs they often succumb, as in "I'll do it /sure/" and "I seen
him /recent/." And when they modify adjectives they sometimes succumb,
too, as in "it was /sure/ hot." Practically all the adverbs made of
adjectives in /-y/ lose the terminal /-ly/ and thus become identical
with their adjectives. I have never heard /mightily/ used; it is
always /mighty/, as in "he hit him /mighty/ hard." So with /filthy/,
/dirty/, /nasty/, /lowly/, /naughty/ and their cognates. One hears "he
acted /dirty/," "he spoke /nasty/," "the child behaved /naughty/," and
so on. Here even standard English has had to make concessions to
euphony. /Cleanlily/ is seldom used;, /cleanly/ nearly always takes
its place. And the use of /illy/ is confined to pedants.
Vulgar American, like all the higher forms of American and all save
the most precise form of written English, has abandoned the old
inflections of /here/, /there/ and /where/, to wit, /hither/ and
/hence/, /thither/ and /thence/, /whither/ and /whence/. These fossil
remains of dead cases are fast disappearing from the language.
[Pg229] In the case of /hither/ (=/to here/) even the preposition has
been abandoned. One says, not "I came /to here/," but simply "I came
/here/." In the case of /hence/, however, /from here/ is still used,
and so with /from there/ and /from where/. Finally, it goes without
saying that the common American tendency to add /-s/ to such adverbs
as /towards/ is carried to full length in the vulgar language. One
constantly hears, not only /somewheres/ and /forwards/, but even
/noways/ and /anyways/. Here we have but one more example of the
movement toward uniformity and simplicity. /Anyways/ is obviously
fully supported by /sideways/ and /always/.
§ 6
/The Noun and Adjective/--The only inflections of the noun remaining
in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in
these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar
American occur. The rule that, in forming the plurals of compound
nouns or noun-phrases, the /-s/ shall be attached to the principal
noun is commonly disregarded, and it goes at the end. Thus, "I have
two /sons-in-law/" is never heard; one always hears "I have two
/son-in-laws/." So with the genitive. I once overheard this: "that
umbrella is /the young lady I go with's/." Often a false singular is
formed from a singular ending in /s/, the latter being mistaken for a
plural. /Chinee/, /Portugee/ and /Japanee/ are familiar; I have also
noted /trapee/, /tactic/ and /summon/ (from /trapeze/, /tactics/ and
/summons/). Paradoxically, the word /incidence/ is commonly misused
for /incident/, as in "he told an /incidence/." Here /incidence/ (or
/incident/) seems to be regarded as a synonym, not for /happening/,
but for /story/. I have never heard "he told /of/ an incidence." The
/of/ is always omitted. The general disregard of number often shows
itself when the noun is used as object. I have already quoted
Lardner's "some of the men has brung their /wife/ along"; in a popular
magazine I lately encountered "those book ethnologists ... can't see
what is before their /nose/." Many similar examples might be brought
forward.
The adjectives are inflected only for comparison, and the [Pg230]
American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double
comparative or superlative to ease his soul. /More better/ is the
commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man
is reported today to be /better/. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is
he to be reported /better/ again, or /best/? The standard language
gets around the difficulty by using /still better/. The American
vulgate boldly employs /more better/. In the case of /worse/, /worser/
is used, as Charters shows. He also reports /baddest/, /more queerer/
and /beautifulest/. /Littler/, which he notes, is still outlawed from
standard English, but it has, with /littlest/, a respectable place in
American. The late Richard Harding Davis wrote a play called "The
/Littlest/ Girl." The American freely compares adjectives that are
incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports /most
principal/, and I myself have heard /uniquer/ and even /more uniquer/,
as in "I have never saw nothing /more uniquer/." I have also heard
/more ultra/, /more worse/, /idealer/, /liver/ (that is, /more
alive/), and /wellest/, as in "he was the /wellest/ man you ever
seen." In general, the /-er/ and /-est/ terminations are used instead
of the /more/ and /most/ prefixes, as in /beautiful/, /beautifuller/,
/beautifullest/. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the
superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never
heard "the /better/ of the two," but always "the /best/ of the two."
Charters also reports "the /hardest/ of the two" and "my brother and I
measured and he was the /tallest/." I have frequently heard "it ain't
so /worse/," but here a humorous effect seems to have been intended.
Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either
substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use
for that purpose is /-y/, as in /tony/, /classy/, /daffy/, /nutty/,
/dinky/, /leery/, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix /super-/ is
confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seem to