THE MECHANISM OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.
To us the unit of speech is the word; historically, the unit is the sentence. It matters little which of the theories respecting the first forms of speech we adopt; all such theories may be rejected, and still we shall find it most reasonable to believe that man’s earliest utterances were wholes, answering in value to our sentences. A revolution has been effected and we have a part of speech for our unit. We construct or build our sentences out of pieces of different meaning and value. Our simplest sentence has two of these pieces—a subject or noun, and a verb; a long sentence may have a dozen or a score of pieces. The making of sentences out of parts of speech is a kind of mechanics. The sentence has its mechanism, of which we usually learn the science by analyzing sentences. This analytical process yields what we call the principles of syntax. It must be remembered, however, that we learn to talk before we learn grammar, and that multitudes of people scarcely know any unit except the sentence. Their vocabulary is a phrase-book, in which every word has a fixed and unchangeable position. These persons abound in the illiterate countries; in Italy, for example, the majority of the people speak only in sentences having invariable forms; change the order of the words and you become unintelligible to them. The same effect is produced by employing a synonym for any word in any sentence. Our people are usually more alert to variety in expression and catch meanings in forms and arrangements to which they are unaccustomed.
A long sentence falls, when we take it apart, into two large pieces; the subject and its belongings, and the predicate and its belongings. Each of these large pieces breaks up into a number of small pieces. If we look carefully at the average long sentence, we shall find that the parts are held together by a systematic and habitual principle of arrangement, and that this changes in passing from one language to another. French says “a man good,” English “a good man.” Reverse the order of noun and adjective in either language, and the sense is obscured for the average hearer or reader. There is a number of these differences; and therefore every language has its peculiar mechanism. In mechanical type languages fall into groups. Greek and Latin, for example, use inflections to connect the words with each other; English does not employ inflections for this purpose. We have a few inflected forms, but we use them merely because they have come down to us. Greek syntax is inflectional; our syntax is said to be that of flat construction, or, as I prefer to say, it is positional. The place of a word determines its function and relations in the sentence. This flat construction is found in other tongues; but English abounds in it and depends upon it as a principle of arrangement. When we say “proud men,” the hearer knows that the adjective proud describes the noun men. In Latin, the adjective would have a termination to correspond in value to that of the noun, and the two might be separated by several words. Our principle requires the two to keep close together. If the adjective is to be modified, we may reverse the order and write “Men proud of their country.” If, however, the sentence is simple enough, the adjective may move to the other end of the statement and become a predicate, as when we say, “Men in that country are proud of their civilization.” These rules show the mechanics of the adjective. We expect it to precede the noun or to follow it with a dependent clause, or to follow, at an interval, the verb as a predicate. Young writers will be helped in their work by remembering that these are principles of mechanism—that they are building their sentences, and that the parts have their proper place and order, just as wood, brick and stone have in a building.
The foregoing illustrations are briefly stated to prepare the way for a few suggestions respecting some special mechanical contrivances of our language. A general principle in grammar acts as an aggressive and conquering force; it extends its domain, insensibly and gradually, but surely, as far as possible. In an inflectional age a tendency to increase and perfect inflections is discovered; in a flat-construction age the tendency to extend the domain of flat syntax is equally manifest. In our language some constructions are common now, though at one time they were scarcely allowed. This general observation is illustrated in the flat construction of a modifying clause in the nature of a relative pronoun clause. For example, “The man we saw” is a flat construction which has invaded the territory of the relative pronoun. The sentence is cut down from “the men whom we saw.” Very little study has been given to these encroachments and conquests; but they will amply reward the careful student of them. The flat construction in the province of the relative is one of our devices for reducing the use of who, which, whose, whom and that. These words occur so frequently in the speech and on the printed page that we have quite unconsciously gone about reducing their importance, and the results are so considerable as to merit special attention. I have made some comparative studies, having for their object something like accurate measurement of the change in the use of this class of pronouns, since the year 1611, the date of the English Bible of King James. Two great changes are easily discovered. (1) The number of relative pronouns on a page has been reduced, on an average, about one half. (2) The word that has been almost pushed out of the relative office. The devices by which the use of relatives has been rendered unnecessary, are generally forms of the flat construction. The ousting of that from relative functions has been promoted by the unconscious effort to dispense with the excessive repetition of the word. When used as a conjunction, a demonstrative and a relative, its repetition becomes tiresome to both writer and reader. A careful study will show that present English employs that very seldom as a relative, and much less frequently than the English of the last century employed it as a connective and a demonstrative. In the case of that we see the operation of a principle in architectural criticism. If a particular architectural device becomes common, it becomes unfashionable. Its frequency offends the taste and the offense is punished by a change. Forty years ago the ordinary Greek column was used on small private dwellings in many sections of this country. It became so disagreeable to our taste that this column was for some time nearly out of use in public buildings. That is, like any piece in architecture, made so common as to become unconsciously offensive. The fact brings out a subtle principle of sentence mechanics—we require variety and dislike a dreary uniformity in this kind of architecture. Good writing in English, readable English, will always respond in greater or less measure to the unconscious demand of the English-reading mind. Most persons do not know what is the offending element in a dreary sentence; they only know that “the style” is tiresome, and that they can not interest themselves in the reading. The good writer overcomes the difficulty by avoiding the offending elements.
It will usually be found that the tiresome effect is produced by repetition and uniformity. The pieces used may all be good; but we do not like to see Greek pillars before every house along the road. We tire of Gibbon’s periods, of Addison’s perfection, of Macaulay’s stateliness. We can read a little of each with delight; for daily diet we do not desire any of them. I will now give some of the results of my comparative studies of relative pronouns in the English sentence. I begin with the Bible of 1611. I notice first here that the Psalms differ from other books of the Bible, and I suppose that the difference arises from the superior directness of prayer. The same difference is discoverable between the modern prayer and the sermon. In the Psalms there is one relative in each ninety-five words, on the average; and about four fifths of these are thats. In the number of relatives, the Psalms approach closely to modern parsimony; but in the use of that they exaggerate the practice of the sixteenth century. Many of these thats are used in a formula now seldom heard, of which “he that” is a typical example. In St. Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the Mount, there is one relative to each forty-four words; in St. John’s gospel, chapters one to ten inclusive, there are two hundred and eleven relatives, and one hundred and three are thats. The proportion of relatives is one to each forty-six words. In the first six chapters of I. Corinthians there are sixty relatives, and of these twenty-seven are thats. The proportion is one relative in forty-five words. Combining the results obtained by this counting in the New Testament, the result is one relative for each forty-five words, and more than three sevenths are thats. It is probably safe to assume that in the New Testament sentence every forty-fifth word (on the average) is a relative pronoun, and that three times in seven this relative is the word that. In the Psalms the relative occurs not quite half so frequently, but four times in five this relative is that. We should also remember that at least one form of sentence architecture of which the relative that is the conspicuous piece has practically disappeared in modern English. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high,” is a common syntax of the Psalms. There are men who say and write “he who would be rich;” but it is an archaic formula.
Let us turn to Shakspere. My counting here has not been as abundant as I could wish, but I think the results are practically correct for the plays. The selections are Richard III., first and second scenes, and “Love’s Labor Lost,” first and second acts. The proportion is one relative to each ninety-three words; and of these relatives that appears a little more frequently than three times in seven. Shakspere is, therefore, in this use of that almost exactly like the New Testament; while, like the Psalms, he is modern in his parsimonious use of relatives. Readers with more leisure than myself may find interesting employment in examining Addison and Samuel Johnson. In an idle hour I fell upon a copy of Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” and found more relatives and a larger proportion of thats than in the New Testament. In Samuel Johnson there are probably fewer relatives; his stately Latinity avoided these mean little hinges of clauses. Since writing the last sentences I have examined the first act of Shakspere’s “Hamlet,” and I find a smaller proportion of relatives than I have found in any work except modern poetry. I find but forty-eight relatives in the whole act, and just half are thats. Another thing to note is that this act contains a large proportion of flat constructions. A further examination shows that the Plays differ much in the management of connective apparatus for clauses. The elevated tone and strong emotion of “Hamlet” account for infrequent use of the lifeless relative forms.
Before taking up any recent author, let me state as a general rule of proportion that present English uses relatives less frequently than the Psalms and Shakspere, and not quite half as frequently as the New Testament. There is, however, one difference to be noted: English writers have carried this reform somewhat farther than Americans have carried it. It is still further to be noted that preachers and theological writers usually have a good deal of biblical syntax, and therefore employ relatives more freely than other writers. It is a convenient place to mention the fact that in modern English of the best type, ellipsis is more common than in older writers or inferior modern writers. The old writers and their readers had more time than we have, and the “economy of attention” was not in Shakspere’s day a recognized rule of rhetoric. The inferior modern writer is afraid to trust an ellipsis to the tender mercies of the critic, and spoils his sentences by trying to say everything. Ellipsis is one of the chief places for art and genius in writing. As a rule, American writers are in greater awe of the grammarians than Englishmen are. We shall find, then, more relatives in American than in English writers; we shall find more in sermons than in other writings. Young ministers are often advised to cultivate a biblical style. I must confess my inability to sympathize with efforts to employ religion upon the unavailing task of continuing the use of dead words and forms. If we are to write and speak in dead tongues as a religious duty, let us go back to Greek, at least, if not to Hebrew. The truth is that we ought to put the Bible into modern English, and so end the unprofitable business of disagreeing about the claims of a biblical style upon the pulpit. At present the contention is that in order to imitate the Bible of 1611, preachers should use obsolete English.
Turning now to the usage of modern writing in the employment of relative pronouns, let us begin with a modern Englishman. I select Mr. Bagehot’s books, because in him we may hope to find the high-water mark of this reform. Mr. Bagehot was an editor and a banker; he represents the directness, force, and brevity of editorial and business writing. His “Lombard Street” is a book on the financial arrangements of the business public of England. It is therefore practical; but it is also essentially scientific. In this book Mr. Bagehot employs, on the average, one relative pronoun in one hundred and twenty-seven words. This is a little more than one third as many as the New Testament employs. I call this high-water mark; two thirds of the relatives have disappeared. I am not sure of it, but I think Mr. Bagehot did not use that as a relative pronoun. I find that about one fortieth of the relatives in the American edition are thats; but it is probable that some of them were put in by the American printers—unconsciously, of course—and it is possible that all have a typographical parentage. In “Money and the Mechanism of Exchange,” by Professor Jevons, I can not find a relative that; there may be a few; but in this case, too, the edition is American. Accepting, however, the count, let the readers measure the change from the Psalms of 1611, in which eighty per cent. of the relatives are thats, to Walter Bagehot, in whose “Lombard Street” only about two per cent. of the relatives are thats. The relatives occur a little more frequently in the book of Professor Jevons, just referred to. By my count there is one relative in one hundred and thirteen words. I have more carefully counted the relatives in the essays of Mr. James Anthony Froude, and find one relative in each one hundred and twenty words. I have only American editions of these essays, and in these editions that is employed as a relative in a very few cases. This use of that is so infrequent and so opposite to Mr. Froude’s ordinary practice, that we may safely set it down as some one’s blunder—possibly Mr. Froude’s, more probably the American printer’s. If we accept these thats as Mr. Froude’s, the per cent. of them is so small as to deprive them of importance. I thought I had caught Mr. Froude’s secret when I found that in his essay on Norway he apparently wrote “trout that” and “fish that.” Mr. Froude is a mighty fisherman, and it was possible that he might glorify the fish by a peculiar form of pronoun. But I turned to the essay on “A Day’s Fishing at Cheney’s,” and found “fish which” and “trout which.” This failure to find even a fanciful explanation leaves nothing to be said except that “some one has blundered” into the relative thats of Mr. Froude. These three English writers—Bagehot, Jevons, and Froude—probably represent very fairly the untheological writers of our generation.
For a test specimen of theological writers, I turn to a volume of sermons by the Rev. James Martineau. I have counted the relatives in three sermons, “The Bread of Life,” “The Unknown Paths,” and “The Finite and the Infinite in Human Nature.” The relatives occur more frequently than in the non-theological writers. My count shows an average of one relative in each ninety-three words. The use of that is abundant. Out of one hundred and seven relative words, thirty-one are thats. These sermons were probably composed forty years ago, and represent an archaic type of sermonic style, a style largely affected by that of the Bible of 1611. I have noted without counting, that the sermons of Mr. Spurgeon contain a higher proportion of relatives, and that this great preacher employs that with as much frequency as Mr. Martineau. Turning to American preachers, I have taken up a recent sermon of Dr. John Hall, of New York, and I find one relative in each sixty-five words, and of these relatives more than one third are thats. Dr. Hall used in 1884 more thats than James Martineau used forty years earlier. But Dr. Hall is a preacher of a very biblical type, and his choice of relatives is often dictated by partial quotation of texts. Passing over to non-theological writers of our time and country, let us take the general result of countings in essays and books. The average number of relatives is about ten per cent. greater than in contemporary English writers, and that is relatively employed about one fifth of the time. The importance of the reduction of the use of relatives can not be properly appreciated without remembering two or three conditions of their use. One fact is that there is seldom any discernible rule which is followed in the choice of that in place of which. The example given from Mr. Froude’s practice—whether it is his or his printer’s—illustrates the absence of any guidance by a rule.
That has no longer any standing place in the relative ranks; it merely relieves which of a part of its work; and in English writers even this supernumerary function has practically ceased to be filled by it. A second condition of the use of relatives is much more important. It has always been possible to build the best of English sentences without relatives. A peculiarly animated sentence of any age will usually contain no relatives. In Dr. John Hall’s sermon, the longest sentences and the animated passages contain no relatives. When he drops into a relative, we see that the exaltation of feeling is passing off, and the sermon is sinking to a lower level of interest. It is apparently a law, then, that relatives are more rarely found in animated, elevated and perfectly clear English than in weaker and less emotional writing. A third fact is that I find the relatives of a sermon, book, or essay, occurring in groups. Often there are whole pages with none; then come three, four, five or more in about as many lines. This grouping is almost as true of the Bible as of modern English. In Dr. Hall’s sermon, fifty-six occur in the first and least animated half of it, and only thirty-eight in the second half of it, and one fifth of all the relatives of the discourse occur in groups; take twenty-four printed lines out of the sermon, and there will be left only about as many as Professor Jevons employs. The effect of these groups deserves, I have thought, careful study; but the results require more space than is now at command. A single example from Mr. Froude will suffice to indicate the general conclusion. Within thirty-six lines—taken in groups of from two to fourteen lines—Mr. Froude uses twenty-five relatives—or one relative in each fourteen words, while his general average is—as above stated—one in each one hundred and twenty words. How shall we describe such a use of relatives? Plainly they are not necessary. The only explanation I can think of is that it is a careless habit. The relatived passages are the poorest and weakest, in all the modern English I have examined. The groups of relatives are to me very significant; they show that relative pronouns are unnecessary; the ineffectiveness of the English where they occur shows that the relative is obsolescent.
To compress this study into a small space I have omitted a number of important facts. I pass to the conclusions (a) I have reached. (1) The relative pronoun (b) being essentially an inflectional device, is opposed by the tendencies (c) prevailing in English syntax—tendencies to flat construction. If the reader will look at (a), (b) and (c) in the preceding sentences, he will see specimens of the flat construction. (2) That is dead as a relative pronoun. Its use is a mere carelessness. (3) In some of the so-called idioms for the relative that, the word is not a relative at all, and the “idiom” itself is a case of flat construction. In “All that we know,” the relative usually following the demonstrative that has been omitted. (4) The so-called compound relative what is not a relative at all; in our modern use it is another flat construction to reduce the employment of which and its antecedent demonstrative. (5) I infer that the flat constructions ought to be classified and studied in schools. The effect of such teaching and study will be seen in a more vigorous English, and it will not be long before we shall begin to say, “The relative pronoun must go.”