CHAPTER XXX
PECULIAR MODIFICATIONS
It is not uncommon to find words modified in what seems to us an ungrammatical way; for example, an article modifying an adjective, as in the phrase all the same, or an adverb modifying a noun, as in the sentence, “We walked the whole distance, exactly three miles,” where the adverb exactly is a modifier of the noun phrase three miles. Some of these modifications we shall now consider.
1. The article the modifying an adjective.—We find this in many phrases that have become current in literature no less than in conversation; for example, all the quicker, none the worse, quite the contrary, at the best. In some instances, as in the last example given, we may say that the adjective has become a substantive in meaning and hence may be modified by the article. In other cases a noun may be supplied after the adjective, and the article may be said to modify the noun. But in most cases the adjective is used in the sense of an adjective, and it is impossible, too, to supply any noun after it, so we must take the expression as we find it and say that the article modifies an adjective, the construction being idiomatical.
Illustrations of this construction are found in the following sentences:—
(a) “Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same.”—Kipling.
(b) “The negroes declared that under the old house were solid rock chambers which had been built for dungeons, and had served for purposes which were none the less awful because they were vague and indefinite.”
Many of these phrases contain a modifying adverb. In just the same, the adverb just modifies the same. In all the more we have all used adverbially to modify the more.
The base-word of these phrases is just as often an adverb as an adjective, as in the sentences, “This news only made us walk the faster”; “He did it none the worse for the many interruptions.”
2. In such expressions as a few books, a good many trees, the article a may seem at first thought to modify a plural noun; but this is not the case. The article modifies the pronominal adjectives few and many, having the meaning of collective nouns, that is, meaning individuals taken as a group instead of singly. This pronominal is then modified by the prepositional phrase of books, of trees, with the preposition of understood. Usage alone settles for us when the preposition is to be expressed. We say a few of them; but if we use a noun in place of the pronoun them we omit the preposition; as, a few pennies. We say a score of years, and a couple of years, but we omit the preposition after dozen, another word denoting number, and say a dozen years. After the collective noun crowd we express the preposition; as, a crowd of boys; but if we say a great many in place of crowd, we omit the preposition, saying a great many boys. For analysis, however, the preposition should always be supplied.
3. Adverbs sometimes modify nouns.—This comes about often by abridging an adjective clause to an appositive phrase; for example, “John Adams was born at Quincy, then part of the ancient town of Braintree, on the 19th day of October (O. S.) 1735.”—Webster. If we supply which was after the noun Quincy, we have an adjective clause, in which the adverb then modifies the whole predicate—a regular construction. But in the sentence as originally written, the adverb modifies the noun part.
We occasionally find nouns used in the place of these modifying adverbs. We may say thrice the amount, wherein amount is modified by the adverb thrice, or we may substitute for thrice the noun phrase three times. We also find the noun something used in the place of the adverb somewhat, as in the sentence,—“He had something the manner of a Southerner.” Such a word restricts the application of the noun it modifies. The adverbs almost and about are used in the same way, as in almost a year, about a pound.
But is frequently used adjectively in the sense of only, having a limiting or restrictive force; thus, “He was but one generation removed from the soil.”—Boyesen.
Examples of adverbs modifying nouns are found in the following sentences:
(a) “The Scheld, almost exclusively a Belgian river, after leaving its fountains in Picardy, flows through the pleasant provinces of Flanders and Hainault.”—Motley.
(b) “It may well be doubted whether Roman literature, always a half-hardy exotic, could ripen the seeds of living reproduction.”—Lowell.
(c) “South Dome is a vast globe of bold rock, almost a full mile in height.”—King.
(d) “I fell a helpless prey to a boatman who addressed me in some words of wonderful English and then rowed me to the sea wall at about thrice the usual fare.”—Howells.
4. Some nouns like howl, cry, shock, derived from verbs denoting action, may be modified by an adverbial clause of time or place. We may say, “He cried out joyfully when he caught sight of me,” where the clause modifies the predicate cried out joyfully; or we may say, “His cry when he caught sight of me was joyful,” where the same clause with the same meaning modifies the subject his cry.
A clause introduced by as, with the meaning and construction of an adverbial clause of manner, may modify a noun and so save several words; for example, “Their plays are much shorter than the standard drama as it is known to us.”—Howells. Here as is equivalent to the group of words in the form in which.
5. There are some modifiers of verbs consisting of several words which should not be separated, inasmuch as they express only one idea. Some of these are by and by, off hand, day by day, side by side. Some of these expressions after they have been considered as units may be separated into their compound elements. In the sentence, “They have infested the place time out of mind,” we say that the predicate have infested the place is modified by the adverbial phrase time out of mind, this having the force of one adverb. We may then say that this phrase is made up of the noun time modified by the prepositional phrase out of mind.
6. Certain absolute phrases have become equivalent to single words and as such are used adjectively or adverbially to modify nouns or verbs. Some of these are wrong side out, upside down, one behind the other. Each of these consists of a substantive—wrong side, upside, one,—and an attribute of this substantive—out, down, and behind the other. These attributes are joined directly to the substantive because of the omission of the participle being. Examples of these phrases are found in the following sentences:
(a) “Apoplexy is only egotism wrong side out.”—Holmes.
(b) “Salvationists sat three in a seat and played concertinas.”—Bolles.
Exercise 37
Find examples of peculiar modifications in the following sentences.
1. One is always the better for a walk in the morning air, a medicine which may be taken over and over again without any sense of sameness or any failure of its invigorating quality.—Lowell.
2. Her gratitude for such thoughtfulness of his smote him like a reproach; all the more that he knew her gentle heart had never held a thought of reproach in it towards him.—H. H.
3. These barges were all tied one behind the other with tow-ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty.—Stevenson.
4. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the sea.—Dickens.
5. Æschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet.—Macaulay.
6. The dog-whip is six yards long, and the handle but sixteen inches.
7. Civilis was hemmed in by the ocean; his country, long the basis of Roman military operations, was accessible by river and canal.—Motley.
8. Sea Catch was fifteen years old, a huge gray fur-seal with almost a mane on his shoulders, and long, wicked dog-teeth.—Kipling.
9. He was the representative of the great dynasty whose name and effigies had been borne by all the coin of India until within some twenty years before.—McCarthy.
10. It is better to do a few things precisely as they should be done, than to do ten times as many in a loose, slovenly way.
11. One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of music.—Hawthorne.
12. He was a lean, nervous, flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor, and something the look of a horse jockey.—Stevenson.
13. The shock to the senses there, as one rides out from the level and sheltered forest, up to which our horses had been climbing two days, is scarcely less than if he had been instantly borne to a region where the Creator reveals more of himself in his works than can be learned from the ordinary scenery of this world.—King.
14. Thus the whole life upon the globe, as we see it, is the result of this blind groping and putting forth of nature in every direction.—Burroughs.
15. I know very well that he could better himself, and earn twice what I am able to give him.—Conan Doyle.
Exercise 38
Analyze the following sentences.
1. The sight of the resting country does his spirit good.—Stevenson.
2. To go to bed was to lie awake of cold, with an added shudder of fright whenever a loose casement or a waving curtain chose to give you the goose-flesh.
3. The house had been built many generations before by a stranger in this section, and the owners never made it their permanent home.—Page.
4. One stick, pointed, makes him a spear; two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty sticks tied together make him a house.—Drummond.
5. I often thought that he felt the dumb limitations which denied him the power of language.—Warner.
6. Lengths of brownish-green and yellow tapestry, none the fresher for its two centuries and more of existence, still protested against the modern heresy of wall-paper.—J. Hawthorne.
7. Centuries ago his granite crumbled and his marble became dust, but his sweet psalms and songs do still abide.—Hillis.
8. Besides the cattle we saw no living thing except a few birds and a great many fishermen.—Stevenson.
9. I passed some pleasant hours, a few years since, in the Registry of Deeds and the Town Records, looking up the history of the old house.—Holmes.
10. Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the ground.—Dickens.
11. The strength of a rope may be but the strength of its weakest part; but poets are to be judged in their happiest hours, and in their greatest works.—Birrell.
12. Why are you not on your way home?—Froude.
13. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of his own hands.—Holmes.
14. The spirit of local self-government, always the life-blood of liberty, was often excessive in its manifestations.—Motley.
15. Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away.—Kipling.
16. This was not the first time that I had been refused a lodging.—Stevenson.
17. It cost him the best years of his life to conquer them.—Lord.
18. The society was formed four centuries and a half after the poet’s death.—Lowell.
19. The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence, by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence, and yet they wonder that savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them nothing but mere existence and wretchedness.—Irving.
20. I arrived one winter morning about five o’clock, and was not so full of soul as I might have been in warmer weather.—Howells.
21. There is a gentleman with them, who somewhat resembles St. Nicholas as he appeared to the young Van Gleeks on the fifth of December.—Mrs. Dodge.
22. It took him twenty years to subdue these fierce warriors.—Lord.
23. One good, kind, story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt at home, with apples and gingerbread premiums, is worth all the schoolma’ams that ever stood by to see poor little fellows roast in those boy-traps called district schools.—Beecher.
24. The spectre started full jump with him.—Irving.
25. As in his tales he had endeavored to concentrate into a few strongly defined types the modern folk-life of the North, so in his dramas the same innate love of his nationality leads him to seek the typical features of his people, as they are revealed in the historic chieftains of the past.—Boyesen.