Thus, though the meaning of the genitives in This is my father’s house, and in God’s goodness is essentially different—the one expressing an ownership of one person with regard to a material external object, the other the relation between a being and an immaterial inherent quality,—both are felt as one kind of relation; nay, the superficial thinker has some difficulty in fully realising that they express really TWO meanings. More easily felt is the difference between the Latin and French ‘genitivus subjectivus’ and ‘genitivus objectivus:’ amor patriæ, l’amour de la patrie (the love for our fatherland, ob. gen.), and amor matris, l’amour de la mère (the love which our mother feels for us, sub. gen.). Yet, once more, even this difference is not always realised by every one who uses both constructions. Another use of the genitive once was to form adverbs. As long as any genitive could be thus employed, we may be sure that the ordinary speaker will have grouped, when thus using it, not only the particular form with other cases of the same noun, etc., but also the genitives, as such, with other genitives. When, however, other modes of forming the adverbs prevailed, the old genitival adverbs which remained were no longer felt as genitives, and became isolated and no longer productive as examples for other formations. A remnant of this genitive survives in needs, and perhaps in Shakespeare’s Come a little nearer this ways (Merry Wives, II. ii.; ed. Collier);[90] in straightways, and certainly in M.E. his thankes, here unthankes (libenter, ingratis), or A.S. heora ágnes ðances (eorum voluntate). It further survives in adverbs derived from adjectives: else (from an adj. pron. el) unawares, inwards, upwards, etc.
Similarly the preposition of, which early began to serve as a substitute for the genitive, has been employed in some adverbial and other expressions. This usage, however, if it ever was really “alive,” is now completely dead. We find I must of force (Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., II. ii.) and my custom always of the afternoon (Hamlet, I. v.); and still can say of an evening; all of a sudden; but not, e.g., of a moment. Nor should we now imitate Shakespeare’s not be seen to wink of all the day (Love’s Labour’s Lost, I. i. 43); Did you not of late days hear (Henry VIII., II. i. 147), though we still have of late, of old.
Many other prepositions offer in their constructions illustrations of isolation. Thus, e.g., the combination of any preposition with a noun without an article was exceedingly common in the older language, and we still possess a numerous collection of such combinations in almost daily use. Thus we find indeed, in fact, in truth, in reality, in jest, etc., a construction which perhaps may yet be considered a living one when the noun is an abstraction. Adverbs of place, however, such as in bed, in church, are no longer formed at will: no one would say in house, in room.
So, again, we have at home, at sea, at hand, but not at house,[91] at water, at foot. We can throw something overboard, but not over wall or over river. We can stand on shore, on land, on foot, on board, but do not speak of standing on bank, on ship. We can sit at table, not at sideboard. One may come to grief, to ruin, but cannot omit his or her in come to ... death. We can say by night, by day, by this day week, but not by spring, by winter. Lastly: we travel by land, by sea, by water, by rail; we send a packet by parcel delivery; we communicate by letter, or by word of mouth, but should not ask for information by saying, Let me know by line (instead of by a line), will you?
In the isolation of the genitives, which we discussed above, and in all similar syntactical isolations, it would perhaps be correct to distinguish two phases of development, or—as they are not necessarily chronologically separated—two sides of the same process. For while in course of time, as we have seen, one of the SYNTACTICAL MEANINGS OF THE GENITIVE CASE became isolated from the other relationships expressed by that same case, we must, on the other hand, also remember that this involved an isolation of certain formal or modal groups (in this case, of —s forms) from their historical nominatives, which in most cases in its turn caused, or was accompanied by, a more or less clearly marked separation in development of meanings. When the genitive case was no longer generally employed to form adverbs from nouns and adjectives, words like needs, straightways, else, upwards, were no longer felt as genitives, and we now feel that the adverb needs is not in our consciousness grouped with the noun need, in the same way as, for instance, the nom. plur. needs with the sing. need; nay, if we carefully examine the meaning of the adverb, we find that its material meaning no longer completely coincides with that of the noun.
The various meanings of the NOUN need are urgent want, poverty, position of difficulty, distress, necessity, compulsion; the ADVERB answers only to the last two: He must needs go could not be used for He must go on account of urgent want, or as a consequence of poverty or distress, but only for He must go of necessity, indispensably, inevitably.
Such formal isolation, then, is almost always at the same time a material one. Thus, we may say that the noun tilth is not so intimately connected with the group I till, tilling, well tilled, etc., as, e.g., writing is connected with to write, etc.; and this because the suffix -ing is a living and productive one, i.e. one which still forms verbal nouns at our will, whenever the need arises, and from whatever verb; whilst the suffix th is no longer so used, being at the present day comparatively rare in English (health, wealth, strength, length, breath, width), and, indeed, more often occurring as an adjectival than as a verbal suffix.
The closest groups are naturally always those consisting of the different inflected forms of the same noun or verb, and the ties connecting the members of such a group are undoubtedly stronger than those between words of different functions, etymologically connected, but whose mode of formation or derivation is not so vividly realised by the ordinary speaker. This is so true, that the same form, when used as present participle, must be said to be more closely connected with the other parts of the verb than when used as an adjective; and this can be proved by the fact that often such an adjective has undergone changes in meaning in which the verb and even the present participle, as such, has not participated. Thus, e.g., the present part. living, in ‘he is living,’ whether we mean this for ‘he is alive’ or ‘he is dwelling in ...’ has the same usage as the verb he lives, and no more. This is, however, no longer true of the ADJECTIVE living, in a phrase like ‘I give you living water.’ To realise this we need but replace the adjective by a relative clause, ‘which lives,’ when we at once feel that we extend the use of the verb in an unusual way. Thus, again, the NOUN writing, in ‘These are the writings of ...’ for ‘These are his (perhaps printed) works,’ has an application which we could not give to the verb to write.
This illustrates the fact that a development in meaning of a derivative is not necessarily shared by or transferred to the primary word, whilst any extension of usage of such parent-word is likely to spread to its derivatives. The same is of course true of simple and compound words. Hence the process of isolation of derivative from primary, or compound from simple, generally originates in change of meaning in the former of each of these groups. Thus, the noun undertaker is isolated from the verb to undertake in consequence of a restriction of its meaning to the person who makes it his profession to undertake the management, etc., of funerals. So, again, though the noun keeper = guardian, watchman, protector, is applied to a certain gold ring, we could hardly say that such a ring keeps the others. A beggar, originally ‘one who begs,’ is now one who ‘habitually begs and obtains his living by doing so,’ while, if ever we do apply the term in the wider and older sense, we often indicate—in writing at least—the closer connection with the verb to beg by using the termination er, the characteristic termination of the nomen agentis begger. There is, in German, a very interesting word which illustrates this fact to an extent which it would be difficult to parallel completely in English. By the side of the verb reiten, ‘to ride,’ a noun ritter exists, of which the original meaning was merely a rider. Like our word ‘beggar,’ this ritter was specialised in meaning, and applied to one who rides habitually and as a profession, i.e. a warrior who fights on horseback. When these warriors began to form a privileged body (an order to which many were admitted who never, at least professionally, rode) the noun attained a meaning to which no verb could correspond.
Again, some adverbs, especially such as emphasise our expressions, have developed in meaning often much further than the primary adjective has followed them. Thus very, as adverb a mere emphatic word, has, as adjective, retained much more fully its original meaning of true: cf. this is very true, very false, with, a very giant. It is the same with the adverb awfully, now indeed common, but noted by Charles Lamb as a Scotticism, and with the adjective sore, and the adverb sorely.