The Grammar of English Grammars

by Goold Brown

RULE XIV.—FINITE VERBS.

Every finite Verb must agree with its subject, or nominative, in person and number: as, "I know; thou knowst, or knowest; he knows, or knoweth"—"The bird flies; the birds fly."

"Our fathers' fertile fields by slaves are till'd,
And Rome with dregs of foreign lands is fill'd."
—Rowe's Lucan, B. vii, l. 600.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XIV.

OBS. 1.—To this general rule for the verb, there are properly no exceptions;[385] and all the special rules that follow, which prescribe the concord of verbs in particular instances, virtually accord with it. Every finite verb, (that is, every verb not in the infinitive mood,) must have some noun, pronoun, or phrase equivalent, known as the subject of the being, action, or passion;[386] and with this subject, whether expressed or understood, the verb must agree in person and number. The infinitive mood, as it does not unite with a nominative to form an assertion, is of course exempt from any such agreement. These may be considered principles of Universal Grammar. The Greeks, however, had a strange custom of using a plural noun of the neuter gender, with a verb of the third person singular; and in both Greek and Latin, the infinitive mood with an accusative before it was often equivalent to a finite verb with its nominative. In English we have neither of these usages; and plural nouns, even when they denote no absolute plurality, (as shears, scissors, trowsers, pantaloons, tongs,) require plural verbs or pronouns: as, "Your shears come too late, to clip the bird's wings."—SIDNEY: Churchill's Gram., p. 30.

OBS. 2.—When a book that bears a plural title, is spoken of as one thing, there is sometimes presented an apparent exception to the foregoing rule; as, "The Pleasures of Memory was published in the year 1792, and became at once popular."—Allan Cunningham. "The 'Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man' is written with great coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity."—Johnson's Life of Swift. "The 'Pleasures of Hope' is a splendid poem; it was written for perpetuity."—Samuel L. Knapp. In these instances, there is, I apprehend, either an agreement of the verb, by the figure syllepsis, with the mental conception of the thing spoken of; or an improper ellipsis of the common noun, with which each sentence ought to commence; as, "The poem entitled,"—"The work entitled," &c. But the plural title sometimes controls the form of the verb; as, "My Lives are reprinting."—Dr. Johnson.

OBS. 3.—In the figurative use of the present tense for the past or imperfect, the vulgar have a habit of putting the third person singular with the pronoun I; as, "Thinks I to myself."—Rev. J. Marriott. "O, says I, Jacky, are you at that work?"—Day's Sandford and Merton. "Huzza! huzza! Sir Condy Rackrent forever, was the first thing I hears in the morning."—Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, p. 97. This vulgarism is to be avoided, not by a simple omission of the terminational s, but rather by the use of the literal preterit: as, "Thought I to myself;"—"O, said I;"—"The first thing I heard." The same mode of correction is also proper, when, under like circumstances, there occurs a disagreement in number; as, "After the election was over, there comes shoals of people from all parts."—Castle Rackrent, p. 103. "Didn't ye hear it? says they that were looking on."—Ib., p. 147. Write, "there came,"—"said they."

OBS. 4.—It has already been noticed, that the article a, or a singular adjective, sometimes precedes an arithmetical number with a plural noun; as, "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday."—Psalms, xc, 4. So we might say, "One thousand years are,"—"Each thousand years are"—"Every thousand years are," &c. But it would not be proper to say, "A thousand years is," or, "Every thousand years is;" because the noun years is plainly plural, and the anomaly of putting a singular verb after it, is both needless and unauthorized. Yet, to this general rule for the verb, the author of a certain "English Grammar on the Productive System," (a strange perversion of Murray's compilation, and a mere catch-penny work, now extensively used in New England,) is endeavouring to establish, by his own bare word, the following exception: "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun, in which case the verb must be singular; as, 'Every hundred years constitutes a century.'"—Smith's New Gram., p. 103. His reason is this; that the phrase containing the nominative, "signifies a single period of time, and is, therefore, in reality singular."—Ib. Cutler also, a more recent writer, seems to have imbibed the same notion; for he gives the following sentence as an example of "false construction: Every hundred years are called a century."—Cutler's Grammar and Parser, p. 145. But, according to this argument, no plural verb could ever be used with any definite number of the parts of time; for any three years, forty years, or threescore years and ten, are as single a period of time, as "every hundred years," "every four years," or "every twenty-four hours." Nor is it true, that, "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun;" for "every years" or "every hours," would be worse than nonsense. I, therefore, acknowledge no such exception; but, discarding the principle of the note, put this author's pretended corrections among my quotations of false syntax.

OBS. 5.—Different verbs always have different subjects, expressed or understood; except when two or more verbs are connected in the same construction, or when the same word is repeated for the sake of emphasis. But let not the reader believe the common doctrine of our grammarians, respecting either the ellipsis of nominatives or the ellipsis of verbs. In the text, "The man was old and crafty," Murray sees no connexion of the ideas of age and craftiness, but thinks the text a compound sentence, containing two nominatives and two verbs; i.e., "The man was old, and the man was crafty." [387] And all his other instances of "the ellipsis of the verb" are equally fanciful! See his Octavo Gram., p. 219; Duodecimo, 175. In the text, "God loves, protects, supports, and rewards the rights," there are four verbs in the same construction, agreeing with the same nominative, and governing the same object; but Buchanan and others expound it, "God loves, and God protects, and God supports, and God rewards the righteous."—English Syntax, p. 76; British Gram., 192. This also is fanciful and inconsistent. If the nominative is here "elegantly understood to each verb," so is the objective, which they do not repeat. "And again," they immediately add, "the verb is often understood to its noun or nouns; as, He dreams of gibbets, halters, racks, daggers, &c. i.e. He dreams of gibbets, and he dreams of halters, &c."—Same works and places. In none of these examples is there any occasion to suppose an ellipsis, if we admit that two or more words can be connected in the same construction!

OBS. 6.—Verbs in the imperative mood commonly agree with the pronoun thou, ye, or you, understood after them; as, "Heal [ye] the sick, cleanse [ye] the lepers, raise [ye] the dead, cast [ye] out devils."—Matt., x, 8. "Trust God and be doing, and leave the rest with him."—Dr. Sibs. When the doer of a thing must first proceed to the place of action, we sometimes use go or come before an other verb, without any conjunction between the two; as, "Son, go work to-day in my vineyard."—Matt., xxi, 28. "Come see a man who [has] told me all things that ever I did."—John, iv, 29. "He ordered his soldiers to go murder every child about Bethlehem, or near it."—Wood's Dict. of Bible, w. Herod. "Take a present in thine hand, and go meet the man of God."—2 Kings, viii, 8. "I will go see if he be at home."—Walker's Particles, p. 169.

OBS. 7.—The place of the verb has reference mainly to that of the subject with which it agrees, and that of the object which it governs; and as the arrangement of these, with the instances in which they come before or after the verb, has already been noticed, the position of the latter seems to require no further explanation. See Obs. 2d under Rule 2d, and Obs. 2d under Rule 5th.

OBS. 8.—The infinitive mood, a phrase, or a sentence, (and, according to some authors, the participle in ing, or a phrase beginning with this participle,) is sometimes the proper subject of a verb, being equivalent to a nominative of the third person singular; as, "To play is pleasant."—Lowth's Gram., p. 80. "To write well, is difficult; to speak eloquently, is still more difficult."—Blair's Rhet., p. 81. "To take men off from prayer, tends to irreligiousness, is granted."—Barclay's Works, i, 214. "To educate a child perfectly, requires profounder thought, greater wisdom, than to govern a state."—Channing's Self-Culture, p. 30. "To determine these points, belongs to good sense."—Blair's Rhet., p. 321. "How far the change would contribute to his welfare, comes to be considered."—Id., Sermons. "That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution."—Life of Schiller, p. 148. "That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 360. "For what purpose they embarked, is not yet known."—"To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of sin, is utterly impossible."—Dr. J. Owen.

"There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking largely sobers us again."—Pope.

OBS. 9.—The same meaning will be expressed, if the pronoun it be placed before the verb, and the infinitive, phrase, or santance, after it; as, "It is pleasant to play,"—"It is difficult to write well;" &c. The construction of the following sentences is rendered defective by the omission of this pronoun: "Why do ye that which [it] is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?"—Luke, vi, 2. "The show-bread, which [it] is not lawful to eat, but for the priests only."—Ib., vi, 4. "We have done that which [it] was our duty to do."—Ib., xvii, 10. Here the relative which ought to be in the objective case, governed by the infinitives; but the omission of the word it makes this relative the nominative to is or was, and leaves to do and to eat without any regimen. This is not ellipsis, but error. It is an accidental gap into which a side piece falls, and leaves a breach elsewhere. The following is somewhat like it, though what falls in, appears to leave no chasm: "From this deduction, [it] may be easily seen how it comes to pass, that personification makes so great a figure."—Blair's Rhet., p. 155. "Whether the author had any meaning in this expression, or what it was, [it] is not easy to determine."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 298. "That warm climates should accelerate the growth of the human body, and shorten its duration, [it] is very reasonable to believe."—Ib., p. 144. These also need the pronoun, though Murray thought them complete without it.

OBS. 10.—When the infinitive mood is made the subject of a finite verb, it is most commonly used to express action or state in the abstract; as, "To be contents his natural desire."—Pope. Here to be stands for simple existence; or if for the existence of the Indian, of whom the author speaks, that relation is merely implied. "To define ridicule, has puzzled and vexed every critic."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 300. Here "to define" expresses an action quite as distinct from any agent, as would the participial noun; as, "The defining of ridicule," &c. In connexion with the infinitive, a concrete quality may also be taken as an abstract; as, "To be good is to be happy." Here good and happy express the quality of goodness and the state of happiness considered abstractly; and therefore these adjectives do not relate to any particular noun. So also the passive infinitive, or a perfect participle taken in a passive sense; as, "To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom."—"To appear discouraged, is the way to become so." Here the satisfaction and the discouragement are considered abstractly, and without reference to any particular person. (See Obs. 12th and 13th on Rule 6th.) So too, apparently, the participles doing and suffering, as well as the adjective weak, in the following example:

"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering."—Milton's Paradise Lost.

OBS. 11.—When the action or state is to be expressly limited to one class of beings, or to a particular person or thing, without making the verb finite; the noun or pronoun may be introduced before the infinitive by the preposition for: as, "For men to search their own glory, is not glory."—Prov., xxv, 27. "For a prince to be reduced by villany [sic—KTH] to my distressful circumstances, is calamity enough."—Translation of Sallust. "For holy persons to be humble, is as hard, as for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors."—TAYLOR: Priestley's Gram., p. 132; Murray's, 184. But such a limitation is sometimes implied, when the expression itself is general; as, "Not to know me, argues thyself unknown."—Milton. That is, "For thee not to know me." The phrase is put far, "Thy ignorance of me;" for an other's ignorance would be no argument in regard to the individual addressed. "I, to bear this, that never knew but better, is some burden."—Beauties of Shak., p. 327. Here the infinitive to bear, which is the subject of the verb is, is limited in sense by the pronoun I, which is put absolute in the nominative, though perhaps improperly; because, "For me to bear this," &c., will convey the same meaning, in a form much more common, and perhaps more grammatical. In the following couplet, there is an ellipsis of the infinitive; for the phrase, "fool with fool," means, "for fool to contend with fool," or, "for one fool to contend with an other:"

"Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor,
But fool with fool is barb'rous civil war."
—Pope, Dunciad, B. iii, l. 175.

OBS. 12.—The objective noun or pronoun thus introduced by for before the infinitive, was erroneously called by Priestley, "the subject of the affirmation;" (Gram., p. 132;) and Murray, Ingersoll, and others, have blindly copied the blunder. See Murray's Gram., p. 184; Ingersoll's, 244. Again, Ingersoll says, "The infinitive mood, or part of a sentence, is sometimes the subject of a verb, and is, therefore, its NOMINATIVE."—Conversations on English Gram., p. 246. To this erroneous deduction, the phraseology used by Murray and others too plainly gives countenance: "The infinitive mood, or part of a sentence, is sometimes put as the nominative case to the verb."—Murray's Gram., p. 144; Fisk's, 123; Kirkham's, 188; Lennie's, 99; Bullions's, 89; and many more. Now the objective before the infinitive may not improperly be called the subject of this form of the verb, as the nominative is, of the finite; but to call it "the subject of the affirmation," is plainly absurd; because no infinitive, in English, ever expresses an affirmation. And again, if a whole phrase or sentence is made the subject of a finite verb, or of an affirmation, no one word contained in it, can singly claim this title. Nor can the whole, by virtue of this relation, be said to be "in the nominative case;" because, in the nature of things, neither phrases nor sentences are capable of being declined by cases.

OBS. 13.—Any phrase or sentence which is made the subject of a finite verb, must be taken in the sense of one thing, and be spoken of as a whole; so that the verb's agreement with it, in the third person singular, is not an exception to Rule 14th, but a construction in which the verb may be parsed by that rule. For any one thing merely spoken of, is of the third person singular, whatever may be the nature of its parts. Not every phrase or sentence, however, is fit to be made the subject of a verb;—that is, if its own import, and not the mere expression, is the thing whereof we affirm. Thus Dr. Ash's example for this very construction, "a sentence made the subject of a verb," is, I think, a palpable solecism: "The King and Queen appearing in public was the cause of my going."—Ash's Gram., p. 52. What is here before the verb was, is no "sentence;" but a mere phrase, and such a one as we should expect to see used independently, if any regard were had to its own import. The Doctor would tell us what "was the cause of his going:" and here he has two nominatives, which are equivalent to the plural they; q.d., "They appearing in public was the cause." But such a construction is not English. It is an other sample of the false illustration which grammar receives from those who invent the proof-texts which they ought to quote.

OBS. 14.—One of Murray's examples of what he erroneously terms "nominative sentences," i.e., "sentences or clauses constituting the subject of an affirmation," is the following: "A desire to excel others in learning and virtue [,] is commendable."—Gram., 8vo, p. 144. Here the verb is agrees regularly with the noun desire, and with that only; the whole text being merely a simple sentence, and totally irrelevant to the doctrine which it accompanies.[388] But the great "Compiler" supposes the adjuncts of this noun to be parts of the nominative, and imagines the verb to agree with all that precedes it. Yet, soon after, he expends upon the ninth rule of Webster's Philosophical Grammar a whole page of useless criticism, to show that the adjuncts of a noun are not to be taken as parts of the nominative; and that, when objectives are thus subjoined, "the assertion grammatically respects the first nouns only."—Ib., p. 148. I say useless, because the truth of the doctrine is so very plain. Some, however, may imagine an example like the following to be an exception to it; but I do not, because I think the true nominative suppressed:

"By force they could not introduce these gods;
For ten to one in former days was odds."—Dryden's Poems, p. 38.

OBS. 15.—Dr. Webster's ninth rule is this: "When the nominative consists of several words, and the last of the names is in the plural number, the verb is commonly in the plural also; as, 'A part of the exports consist of raw silk.' 'The number of oysters increase.' GOLDSMITH. 'Such as the train of our ideas have lodged in our memories.' LOCKE. 'The greater part of philosophers have acknowledged the excellence of this government.' ANACHARSIS."—Philos. Gram., p. 146; Impr. Gram., 100. The last of these examples Murray omits; the second he changes thus: "A number of men and women were present." But all of them his reasoning condemns as ungrammatical. He thinks them wrong, upon the principle, that the verbs, being plural, do not agree with the first nouns only. Webster, on the contrary, judges them all to be right; and, upon this same principle, conceives that his rule must be so too. He did not retract or alter the doctrine after he saw the criticism, but republished it verbatim, in his "Improved Grammar," of 1831. Both err, and neither convinces the other.

OBS. 16.—In this instance, as Webster and Murray both teach erroneously, whoever follows either, will be led into many mistakes. The fact is, that some of the foregoing examples, though perhaps not all, are perfectly right; and hundreds more, of a similar character, might be quoted, which no true grammarian would presume to condemn. But what have these to do with the monstrous absurdity of supposing objective adjuncts to be "parts of the actual nominative?" The words, "part," "number," "train" and the like, are collective nouns; and, as such, they often have plural verbs in agreement with them. To say, "A number of men and women were present," is as correct as to say, "A very great number of our words are plainly derived from the Latin."—Blair's Rhet., p. 86. Murray's criticism, therefore, since it does not exempt these examples from the censure justly laid upon Webster's rule, will certainly mislead the learner. And again the rule, being utterly wrong in principle, will justify blunders like these: "The truth of the narratives have never been disputed;"—"The virtue of these men and women are indeed exemplary."—Murray's Gram., p. 148. In one of his notes, Murray suggests, that the article an or a before a collective noun must confine the verb to the singular number; as, "A great number of men and women was collected."—Ib., p. 153. But this doctrine he sometimes forgot or disregarded; as, "But if a number of interrogative or exclamatory sentences are thrown into one general group."—Ib., p. 284; Comly, 166; Fisk, 160; Ingersoll, 295.

OBS. 17.—Cobbett, in a long paragraph, (the 245th of his English Grammar,) stoutly denies that any relative pronoun can ever be the nominative to a verb; and, to maintain this absurdity, he will have the relative and its antecedent to be always alike in case, the only thing in which they are always independent of each other. To prove his point, he first frames these examples: "The men who are here, the man who is here; the cocks that crow, the cock that crows;" and then asks, "Now, if the relative be the nominative, why do the verbs change, seeing that here is no change in the relative?" He seems ignorant of the axiom, that two things severally equal to a third, are also equal to each other: and accordingly, to answer his own question, resorts to a new principle: "The verb is continually varying. Why does it vary? Because it disregards the relative and goes and finds the antecedent, and accommodates its number to that."—Ibid. To this wild doctrine, one erratic Irishman yields a full assent; and, in one American grammatist, we find a partial and unintentional concurrence with it.[389] But the fact is, the relative agrees with the antecedent, and the verb agrees with the relative: hence all three of the words are alike in person and number. But between the case of the relative and that of the antededent [sic—KTH], there never is, or can be, in our language, any sort of connexion or interference. The words belong to different clauses; and, if both be nominatives, they must be the subjects of different verbs: or, if the noun be sometimes put absolute in the nominative, the pronoun is still left to its own verb. But Cobbett concludes his observation thus: "You will observe, therefore, that, when I, in the etymology and syntax as relating to relative pronouns, speak of relatives as being in the nominative case, I mean, that they relate to nouns or to personal pronouns, which are in that case. The same observation applies to the other cases."—Ib., ¶ 245. This suggestion betrays in the critic an unaccountable ignorance of his subject.

OBS. 18.—Nothing is more certain, than that the relatives, who, which, what, that, and as, are often nominatives, and the only subjects of the verbs which follow them: as, "The Lord will show who are his, and who is holy."—Numbers, xvi, 5. "Hardly is there any person, but who, on such occasions, is disposed to be serious."—Blair's Rhet., p. 469. "Much of the merit of Mr. Addison's Cato depends upon that moral turn of thought which distinguishes it."—Ib., 469. "Admit not a single word but what is necessary."—Ib., p. 313. "The pleader must say nothing but what is true; and, at the same time, he must avoid saying any thing that will hurt his cause."—Ib., 313. "I proceed to mention such as appear to me most material."—Ib., p. 125. After but or than, there is sometimes an ellipsis of the relative, and perhaps also of the antecedent; as, "There is no heart but must feel them."—Blair's Rhet., p. 469. "There is no one but must be sensible of the extravagance."—Ib., p. 479. "Since we may date from it a more general and a more concerted opposition to France than there had been before."—Bolingbroke, on Hist., p. 213. That is, "than what there had been before;"—or, "than any opposition which there had been before." "John has more fruit than can be gathered in a week."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., pp. 196 and 331. I suppose this sentence to mean, "John has more fruit than what can be gathered in a week." But the author of it denies that it is elliptical, and seems to suppose that can be gathered agrees with John. Part of his comment stands thus: "The above sentence—'John has more fruit than can be gathered in a week'—in every respect full and perfect—must, to be grammatical! according to all the 'old theories,' stand, John has more fruit than that fruit is which, or which fruit can be gathered in a week!!!"—Ib., 331. What shall be done with the headlong critic who thus mistakes exclamation points for arguments, and multiplies his confidence in proportion to his fallacies and errors?

OBS. 19.—In a question, the nominative I or thou put after the verb, controls the agreement, in preference to the interrogative who, which, or what, put before it; as, "Who am I? What am I? Who art thou? What art thou?" And, by analogy, this seems to be the case with all plurals; as, "Who are we? Who are you? Who are they? What are these?" But sometimes the interrogative pronoun is the only nominative used; and then the verb, whether singular or plural, must agree with this nominative, in the third person, and not, as Cobbett avers, with an antecedent understood: as, "Who is in the house? Who are in the house? Who strikes the iron? Who strike the iron? Who was in the street? Who were in the street?"—Cobbett's Gram., ¶ 245. All the interrogative pronouns may be used in either number, but, in examples like the following, I imagine the singular to be more proper than the plural: "What have become of our previous customs?"—Hunt's Byron, p. 121. "And what have become of my resolutions to return to God?"—Young Christian, 2d Ed., p. 91. When two nominatives of different properties come after the verb, the first controls the agreement, and neither the plural number nor the most worthy person is always preferred; as, "Is it I? Is it thou? Is it they?"

OBS. 20.—The verb after a relative sometimes has the appearance of disagreeing with its nominative, because the writer and his reader disagree in their conceptions of its mood. When a relative clause is subjoined to what is itself subjunctive or conditional, some writers suppose that the latter verb should be put in the subjunctive mood; as, "If there be any intrigue which stand separate and independent."—Blair's Rhet., p. 457. "The man also would be of considerable use, who should vigilantly attend to every illegal practice that were beginning to prevail."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 171. But I have elsewhere shown, that relatives, in English, are not compatible with the subjunctive mood; and it is certain, that no other mood than the indicative or the potential is commonly used after them. Say therefore, "If there be any intrigue which stands," &c. In assuming to himself the other text, Murray's says, "That man also would be of considerable use, who should vigilantly attend to every illegal practice that was beginning to prevail."—Octavo Gram., p. 366. But this seems too positive. The potential imperfect would be better: viz., "that might begin to prevail."

OBS. 21.—The termination st or est, with which the second person singular of the verb is formed in the indicative present, and, for the solemn style, in the imperfect also; and the termination s or es, with which the third person singular is formed in the indicative present, and only there; are signs of the mood and tense, as well as of the person and number, of the verb. They are not applicable to a future uncertainty, or to any mere supposition in which we would leave the time indefinite and make the action hypothetical; because they are commonly understood to fix the time of the verb to the present or the past, and to assume the action as either doing or done. For this reason, our best writers have always omitted those terminations, when they intended to represent the action as being doubtful and contingent as well as conditional. And this omission constitutes the whole formal difference between the indicative and the subjunctive mood. The essential difference has, by almost all grammarians, been conceived to extend somewhat further; for, if it were confined strictly within the limits of the literal variation, the subjunctive mood would embrace only two or three words in the whole formation of each verb. After the example of Priestley, Dr. Murray, A. Murray, Harrison, Alexander, and others, I have given to it all the persons of the two simple tenses, singular and plural; and, for various reasons, I am decidedly of the opinion, that these are its most proper limits. The perfect and pluperfect tenses, being past, cannot express what is really contingent or uncertain; and since, in expressing conditionally what may or may not happen, we use the subjunctive present as embracing the future indefinitely, there is no need of any formal futures for this mood. The comprehensive brevity of this form of the verb, is what chiefly commends it. It is not an elliptical form of the future, as some affirm it to be; nor equivalent to the indicative present, as others will have it; but a true subjunctive, though its distinctive parts are chiefly confined to the second and third persons singular of the simple verb: as, "Though thou wash thee with nitre."—Jer., ii, 22. "It is just, O great king! that a murderer perish."—Corneille. "This single crime, in my judgment, were sufficient to condemn him."—Duncan's Cicero, p. 82. "Beware that thou bring not my son thither."—BIBLE: Ward's Gram., p. 128. "See [that] thou tell no man."—Id., ib. These examples can hardly be resolved into any thing else than the subjunctive mood.