What is vaguely known as the rhetorical class of questions arises from a desire, on the part of the interrogator, to make the person addressed reflect upon and admit the truth of information indirectly contained in the interrogation. Such are the questions in some catechisms, and those in the ‘Guide to Knowledge;’ e.g., Do not mulberry trees often bear two crops of leaves in a year? Must not every substance be prepared before it receives the colour? This use of the interrogation and interrogative form is, of course, of much more recent date than the other common usages.
The foregoing consideration of the sentence in its simplest form, as consisting of simple subject and predicate only, will have prepared us for the study of the development of all other syntactical relations from this the only primitive one. For all other extensions of the sentence—with the single exception of the copulative union of two simple ones—arise from the repetition of the relation between subject and predicate.[37] The copulative extension is now commonly indicated by means of conjunctions or other particles; e.g., ‘John wrote and Alfred was reading:’ but even now mere co-ordination is sufficient; as, John wrote, Alfred read; He came, he saw, he conquered; One rises, the other falls; Men die, books live; etc. It is therefore easy to imagine that, at one time, this mere juxtaposition, which seems to us an exceptional usage, may have been the regular one.
Among the other extensions, two main cases are to be distinguished, as either (1) two equivalent members combine in the same clause with another (i.e. two subjects with one predicate, or two predicates with a single subject); or[38] (2) a combination (a) of subject and predicate becomes, as such, the subject or predicate of some other word or combination (b), which latter is then the predicate or subject to (a) the former.
It is not easy to illustrate these extensions by instances drawn from modern English: nay, it is impossible if we insist upon invariably framing sentences which the present state of our language would regard as admissible. But we must remember that we are now attempting to trace the probable development of our syntactical relations, or rather of our method of expressing the various syntactical relations, as it proceeded during a very primitive stage of the history of language. At this period the speakers were struggling to find intelligible utterance for their thoughts, which were themselves but primitive, confused, childish. All the examples which we have given heretofore should be regarded therefore merely as illustrating processes common in very remote linguistic periods, and not as instances of what is usual at the present period. We have found it necessary on previous occasions to illustrate our arguments by combining English words in a way which is not and has never been English,—the advantage of such illustration being that it aided us to understand, at least in a certain measure, the mode in which our linguistic ancestors of ages long past thought. To this artifice we shall find it necessary to revert somewhat largely, as the analytical character of modern English, with its necessarily fixed order of words, has effaced most traces of this primitive state of language.
We should have an instance of the first main case of extension mentioned if, after saying, e.g., John reads, we remembered that Alfred too was reading, and then merely added this second subject. We have shown that we must not suppose that originally the order of the words was, as is now invariably the case in modern English, (1) subject, (2) verb: so that John read (without inflection, read being a mere name of the action) was just as correct as read John, but not more so. If we clearly grasp this, we can fully understand that such a combination as John read Alfred (or, indeed, John, Alfred read) might once have been intelligible for what we should now express by John and Alfred are reading.
Similarly, a little linguistic imagination will suffice to enable us to conceive of the production by those primitive language-makers of a sentence like Sing(ing) John dance(ing) to express John sings and dances. Such constructions of two equal parts in combination with a third might be symbolised. Thus we might put s for subject, p for predicate, then the symbolisation would run sps, ssp, psp, or spp, etc., or a + b + a.[39]
In the first fictitious example, the two subjects stood BOTH IN PRECISELY THE SAME RELATION to the predicate, and in the second the two predicates stood in exactly the same relation to the subject. In such cases, the facts may be described just as correctly and just as completely by a sentence consisting of two parts only, viz., a compound subject, consisting of the two joined by a copula, + the predicate (or subject + compound predicate). Of these two modes of expression, closely allied as they are, the one appears to us strange and, indeed, impossible,—the other so familiar that we can hardly imagine a state of language in which both alike may have been regular. On the other hand, we have no difficulty in seeing how the two systems have become confused.
All traces, therefore, of the construction which we have now lost are interesting and worth studying. A sentence like Cicero’s Consules, prætores, tribuni plebis, senatus, Italia cuncta a vobis deprecata est (= Consuls, prætors, tribunes of the plebs, the senate, all Italy implored of you) is constructed much upon the model of the method now obsolete. In this case, however, the construction seems to us less unnatural, because the subject last named in the sentence, viz., Italia, may be considered to include all the others and to stand alone in their stead: hence it is that we find the verb in the singular, and hence the feminine gender of deprecata (implored). In another passage Cicero says, Speusippus et Xenocrates et Polemo et Cantor nihil ab Aristotele dissentit. This would be a perfect instance of ssp were it not for the insertion of et, which (due, as it is, to confusion with the compound subject in the sentence consisting of two parts only) would lead us to expect that the verb would be placed in the plural. It is, however, precisely this fact that the verb stands in the singular which demonstrates that it belongs as predicate to each subject separately, and not to the group indicated by the enumerated subjects jointly. In M.H.G. we meet with such constructions, especially those where one part—as the subject, for instance—is placed between the two others; as, Dô spranc von dem gesidele her Hagene alsô sprach = ‘Then sprang from the seat hither Hagen thus spoke.’ In A.S., too, we find occasionally a somewhat similar construction, as in Beowulf, 90-92: Saegde se ðe cúðe ... cwæð ðæt se Ælmihtiga = ‘Said he who knew ... spoke that the Almighty.’ If we change the order, and add and, we transform this sentence into one of two parts: SUBJECT, he who knew; PREDICATE (compound), said and spoke. Even in modern language this construction is not wholly without parallels. Cf. Another love succeeds, another race (Pope, Essay on Man, iii., line 130); cf. also, Dust thou art, to dust returnest (Longfellow).
Or, again, we find sentences where the two equal parts both follow or both precede. He ðæs frófre gebád, wéox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum ðáh (He received consolation [compensation], grew up under the clouds [= on earth], increased in fame) (Beowulf, 7); He weepeth, wayleth, maketh sory cheere (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 3618); Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead? (Shakespeare, Richard II., Act III., ii., 141); Of ðære heortan cumað yfele geðancas, mannslyhtas, unriht-hæmedu, forligru, stale, léase gewitnyssa, tællíce word (Matt. xv. 19).
But it is also quite conceivable that (REMEMBERING THE EXTENDED MEANING WHICH, FOR THE PRIMITIVE STAGE OF LANGUAGE, WE MUST ATTACH TO THESE TERMS) two subjects should come into the consciousness as related to the same predicate, even though that RELATION is OF a very DIFFERENT NATURE in the case of the one from that in the other. To illustrate this, let us remember that the noun must once have been uninflected, or, at least, no definite system of inflection had been evolved; the verb had a much vaguer and less definite meaning than at present; the order of words had not yet begun to be significant; that John strike, as well as strike John, or words equivalent in meaning, could stand for John strikes, or John has been striking; nay, even, if only accompanied by appropriate gestures, for John was struck, or John is being struck.