There are many cases in which an attributive adjective is employed convertibly with an adverb; cf. Hispania postrema perdomita est = ‘Spain LAST (fem. sing.) was conquered,’ for ‘AT LAST’ (Livy, xxviii. 12); Il arrive toujours le dernier, ‘He always comes last;’ Il est mort content = ‘He died happy.’ Compare also these two usages—De ces deux sœurs la cadette est celle qui est le plus aimée, ‘Of these two sisters the younger is the one who is the (neut.) more loved (fem. sing.);’ or la plus aimée, ‘the (fem.) more loved (fem.)’ (Acad.)[206]
Adjectives used in connection with nouns signifying the agent or the action are used in a way hardly to be distinguished from an adverbial use; as, a good story, a good story-teller, an old bookseller. In English, owing to its lack of inflections, an ambiguity may arise in such cases as the last cited; we might apply the word old to the man who sells the books, as well as to the books themselves. The common custom in English is to shun ambiguity by the use of the hyphen; as, an old-book seller. But English attempts likewise to remove the ambiguity by maintaining the adverb for one case, after the analogy of the construction with the verb—as, an early riser, a timely arrival, etc.—though this distinction is not consistently carried out.
The resemblance of adjectives and adverbs produces uncertainty in the meaning to be attached to certain adjectives; the adjective, when attached to a noun, may be conceived of as referring either to the person, or as referring to one of his qualities; thus, a bad coachman may either mean ‘a wicked coachman,’ or ‘a coachman looked upon as bad in the quality of his driving.’ In the latter case, the adjective is used in the special sense acquired by the adverb; as, he drives badly.
It is natural, then, as the adjective and the adverb so generally exist in pairs, that we should feel the need of possessing both parts of speech for all cases. There are, however, many adverbs which are derived from no adjective, and which thus have no adjective parallel to them. In this case we are compelled to employ the adverb with the function of the adjective, as in ‘He is there,’ ‘He is up,’ ‘The door is to,’ ‘Heaven is above;’ in which cases the instinct of language apprehends the construction as identical with that found in such phrases as He is active, The door is open, etc. Again, in such sentences as the mountain yonder, the enemy there, the drive hither, the adverb marks its difference from the adjective by its position in the sentence. But this rule is not consistently observed; there are cases in English where the adverb is inserted between the article and its substantive; as, on the hither-side, the above discourse, the then monarch, and more extensively in the vulgar that there mountain, this here book, where the adjectival adverbs are pleonastic.
Just as, e.g., in Latin, we find the adverb used in sic sum (‘so I am’), Ego hunc esse aliter credidi,[207] ‘I him to be otherwise believed’ = ‘I thought he was a different kind of man;’ so we find in English While this scene was passing in the cabin of the man, one quite otherwise (i.e. different) was passing in the halls of the master (Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, i. 43), in which, and other similar constructions, the adverb again has all the functions of an adjective.
Prepositions and conjunctions as link-words or connecting elements took their origin from independent words through a displacement of the distribution. Prepositions were once adverbs, serving to denote more closely the direction of the verbal action; as, ‘to go in,’ ‘to carry off,’ ‘to throw up,’ ‘to fall down.’ They then became displaced, i.e. detached from the verb, and came to belong to the noun, furthering the disappearance of its case-endings and assuming their office.
To stamp a word as ‘connecting word,’ this displacement must have become customary and general. For, in their occasional usage, the most various parts of speech may serve as connecting words. The functions of the adverb, as such, have been sufficiently illustrated. It is thus only where such adverbs are with a certain regularity, or preferably, used as link-words, that they begin to be felt as prepositions or conjunctions. But even then, notwithstanding such syntactical development, the word can still be used independently in its former function, and it remains impossible to definitely range it in any particular class. This only becomes rational and feasible when the word has become obsolete in its original usage.
We may accordingly define a preposition as a link-word which may be followed by any substantive in some of its case-forms where this combination is no longer syntactically parallel to that between noun or verb and the word in its original independent sense. Accepting this definition, we shall not explain considering, in such a sentence as considering everything he has done very well, as a preposition, because its construction is that of the verb to consider. When we come to instead of it is different. Stead, A.S. stede, meant ‘a place;’ and in the stead of the man would have been a perfectly natural construction, the genitive case showing the independence of the noun: but whether the genitive is still felt as a genitive depends on the question whether we think of instead as a compound of the preposition in with the noun stead. As soon as we cease to feel it as such, we do not think of the genitive as regularly depending on the preceding substantive, and the preposition is created. No doubt the instance which we have given proves that the instinct of language is vacillating; we still find in his stead looked upon as somewhat archaic indeed, but still current English. In some cases the isolation has become looser, and in others it has become absolute. The word nigh (A.S. neáh, M.E. neigh, as in ‘neighbour’) was originally an adverb, and identical in meaning with the word near (A.S. néar, the comparative degree of néah). But we do not think of nigh and near as connected. The word till is still more peculiar. It is, properly speaking, a case of A.S. tíli, a noun (cf. Germ. Ziel, Gothic tils) meaning ‘aim’ or ‘goal,’ whence the idea of towards developed. Off and of are not thought of as connected, and yet they are the same word. In this case the relationship becomes obscured, owing to divergency in the development of signification. In other cases the isolation of the word is due to the disappearance of the old method of construction in which it was used. Thus since, M.E. sithens, is from síððen = A.S. síððan, which is itself a construction for síððan, put for síððam, ‘after that.’ Here the ðam is the dative case masculine of the demonstrative pronoun used as a relative; it answers exactly to the N.H.G. seit dem; cf. ni ðanaseiðs (Ulphilas, Mark ii. 14) + ‘no more.’ In the same way, the word ere is a comparative form derived from A.S. ǽr, ‘soon.’
The origin and rise of the conjunctions may, like that of the prepositions, be followed historically. Many of them arise from adverbs or pronouns in their function as connective words, as we have discussed in the foregoing paragraphs. These words, then, are already connecting-words ere they become established as conjunctions pure and simple. All depends thus upon the linguistic consciousness of the speaker, whether he will consider them as still pronoun or adverb, or as real conjunction, and this consciousness, again, is largely dependent upon the degree to which the word in question has been etymologically obscured.
We have seen how the demonstrative that has become a conjunction, and can easily realise how to some extent in many others, such as because, in case, etc., though no demonstrative word proper has entered into their composition, the relation of the noun which forms their second part to what follows is of a demonstrative kind.