CHAPTER XXV.
ON PREPOSITIONS.
[§ 599]. All prepositions govern an oblique case. If a word cease to do this, it ceases to be a preposition. In the first of the two following sentences the word up is a preposition, in the second an adverb.
1. I climbed up the tree.
2. I climbed up.
All prepositions in English precede the noun which they govern. I climbed up the tree, never I climbed the tree up. This is a matter not of government, but of collocation. It is the case in most languages; and, from the frequency of its occurrence, the term pre-position (or prefix) has originated. Nevertheless, it is by no means a philological necessity. In many languages the prepositions are post-positive, following their noun.
[§ 600]. No preposition, in the present English, governs a genitive case. This remark is made, because expressions like the part of the body=pars corporis,—a piece of the bread=portio panis, make it appear as if the preposition of did so. The true expression is, that the preposition of followed by an objective case, is equivalent, in many instances, to the genitive case of the classical languages.
[§ 601]. The writer, however, of a paper on English preterites and genitives, in the Philological Museum (II. 261) objects to the current doctrine concerning such constructions as, this is a picture of the king's. Instead of considering the sentence elliptic, and equivalent to this is a picture of or (from) the king's pictures, he entertains the following view,—"I confess, however, that I feel some doubt whether this phrase is
indeed to be regarded as elliptical, that is, whether the phrase in room of which it is said to stand, was ever actually in use. It has sometimes struck me that this may be a relict of the old practice of using the genitive after nouns as well as before them, only with the insertion of the preposition of. One of the passages quoted above from 'Arnold's Chronicle,' supplies an instance of a genitive so situated; and one cannot help thinking that it was the notion that of governed the genitive, that led the old translators of Virgil to call his poem The Booke of Eneidos, as it is termed by Phaer, and Gawin Douglas, and in the translation printed by Caxton. Hence it may be that we put the genitive after the noun in such cases, in order to express those relations which are most appropriately expressed by the genitive preceding it. A picture of the king's is something very different from the king's picture: and so many other relations are designated by of with the objective noun, that if we wish to denote possession thereby, it leaves an ambiguity: so, for this purpose, when we want to subjoin the name of the possessor to the thing possest, we have recourse to the genitive, by prefixing which we are wont to express the same idea. At all events as, if we were askt whose castle Alnwick is, we should answer, The Duke of Northumberland's; so we should also say, What a grand castle that is of the Duke of Northumberland's! without at all taking into account whether he had other castles besides: and our expression would be equally appropriate, whether he had or not."
Again, Mr. Guest quotes, amongst other passages, the following:—
Suffice this hill of ours—
They fought two houres of the nightes—
Yet neither class of examples is conclusive.
Ours does not necessarily mean of us. It may also mean of our hills, i. e., of the hills of our choice. Nightes may mean of the night's hours. In the expression, what a grand castle, &c., it is submitted to the reader that we do take into our account other castles, which the Duke of Northumberland
may or may not have. The Booke of Eneidos is a mistaken Latinism. As it does not seem to have been sufficiently considered that the real case governed by of (as by de in Latin) is the ablative, it is the opinion of the present writer that no instance has yet been produced of of either governing, or having governed a genitive case.
[§ 602]. It is not so safe to say in the present English that no preposition governs a dative. The expression give it him is good English; and it is also equivalent to the Latin da ei. But we may also say give it to him. Now the German zu=to governs a dative case, and in Anglo-Saxon, the preposition to, when prefixed to the infinitive mood, required the case that followed it to be a dative.
[§ 603]. When the infinitive mood is used as the subject of a proposition, i.e., as a nominative case, it is impossible to allow to the preposition to, by which it is preceded, any separate existence whatever,—to rise=rising; to err=error. Here the preposition must, for the purposes of syntax, be considered as incorporated with the noun, just like an inseparable inflection. As such it may be preceded by another preposition. The following example, although a Grecism, illustrates this:—
Yet not to have been dipt in Lethe's lake,
Could save the son of Thetis from to die.
[§ 604]. Akin to this, but not the same, is the so-called vulgarism, consisting of the use of the preposition for. I am ready to go=I am ready for going=the so-called vulgarism, I am ready for to go. Now, this expression differs from the last in exhibiting, not only a verbal accumulation of prepositions, but a logical accumulation as well: inasmuch as for and to express like ideas.
[§ 605]. Composition converts prepositions into adverbs. Whether we say upstanding or standing-up, we express the manner in which an action takes place, and not the relation between two substantives. The so-called prepositional compounds in Greek (ἀναβαίνω, ἀποθνήσκω, &c.) are all adverbial.