Besides case distinctions the older Aryan languages have a rather complicated system of gender distinctions, which in many instances agrees with, but in many others is totally independent of, and even may be completely at war with, the natural distinction between male beings, female beings and things without sex. This grammatical gender is sometimes looked upon as something valuable for a language to possess; thus Schroeder (Die formale Unterscheidung 87) says: “The formal distinction of genders is decidedly an enormous advantage which the Aryan, Semitic and Egyptian languages have before all other languages.” Aasen (Norsk Grammatik 123) finds that the preservation of the old genders gives vividness and variety to a language; he therefore, in constructing his artificial Norwegian ‘landsmaal,’ based it on those dialects which made a formal distinction between the masculine and feminine article. But other scholars have recognized the disadvantages accruing from such distinctions; thus Tegnér (SM 50) regrets the fact that in Swedish it is impossible to give such a form to the sentence ‘sin make må man ej svika’ as to make it clear that the admonition is applicable to both husband and wife, because make, ‘mate,’ is masculine, and maka feminine. In Danish, where mage is common to both sexes, no such difficulty arises. Gabelentz (Spr 234) says: “Das grammatische geschlecht bringt es weiter mit sich dass wir deutschen nie eine frauensperson als einen menschen und nicht leicht einen mann als eine person bezeichnen.”
As a matter of fact, German gender is responsible for many difficulties, not only when it is in conflict with natural sex, as when one may hesitate whether to use the pronoun es or sie in reference to a person just mentioned as das mädchen or das weib, or er or sie in reference to die schildwache, but also when sexless things are concerned, and er might be taken as either referring to the man or to der stuhl or to der wald just mentioned, etc. In France, grammarians have disputed without end as to the propriety or not of referring to the (feminine) word personnes by means of the pronoun ils (see Nyrop, Kongruens 24, and Gr. iii. § 712): “Les personnes que vous attendiez sont tous logés ici.” As a negative pronoun personne is now frankly masculine: ‘personne n’est malheureux.’ With gens the old feminine gender is still kept up when an adjective precedes, as in les bonnes gens, thus also toutes les bonnes gens, but when the adjective has no separate feminine form, schoolmasters prefer to say tous les honnêtes gens, and the masculine generally prevails when the adjective is at some distance from gens, as in the old school-example, Instruits par l’expérience, toutes les vieilles gens sont soupçonneux. There is a good deal of artificiality in the strict rules of grammarians on this point, and it is therefore good that the Arrêté ministériel of 1901 tolerates greater liberty; but conflicts are unavoidable, and will rise quite naturally, in any language that has not arrived at the perfect stage of complete genderlessness (which, of course, is not identical with inability to express sex-differences).
Most English pronouns make no distinction of sex: I, you, we, they, who, each, somebody, etc. Yet, when we hear that Finnic and Magyar, and indeed the vast majority of languages outside the Aryan and Semitic world, have no separate forms for he and she, our first thought is one of astonishment; we fail to see how it is possible to do without this distinction. But if we look more closely we shall see that it is at times an inconvenience to have to specify the sex of the person spoken about. Coleridge (Anima Poetæ 190) regretted the lack of a pronoun to refer to the word person, as it necessitated some stiff and strange construction like ‘not letting the person be aware wherein offence had been given,’ instead of ‘wherein he or she has offended.’ It has been said that if a genderless pronoun could be substituted for he in such a proposition as this: ‘It would be interesting if each of the leading poets would tell us what he considers his best work,’ ladies would be spared the disparaging implication that the leading poets were all men. Similarly there is something incongruous in the following sentence found in a German review of a book: “Was Maria und Fritz so zueinander zog, war, dass jeder von ihnen am anderen sah, wie er unglücklich war.” Anyone who has written much in Ido will have often felt how convenient it is to have the common-sex pronouns lu (he or she), singlu, altru, etc. It is interesting to see the different ways out of the difficulty resorted to in actual language. First the cumbrous use of he or she, as in Fielding TJ 1. 174, the reader’s heart (if he or she have any) | Miss Muloch H. 2. 128, each one made his or her comment.[85] Secondly, the use of he alone: If anybody behaves in such and such a manner, he will be punished (cf. the wholly unobjectionable, but not always applicable, formula: Whoever behaves in such and such a manner will be punished). This use of he has been legalized by the Act 13 and 14 Vict., cap. 21. 4: “That in all acts words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females.” Third, the sexless but plural form they may be used. If you try to put the phrase, ‘Does anybody prevent you?’ in another way, beginning with ‘Nobody prevents you,’ and then adding the interrogatory formula, you will perceive that ‘does he’ is too definite, and ‘does he or she’ too clumsy; and you will therefore naturally say (as Thackeray does, P 2. 260), “Nobody prevents you, do they?” In the same manner Shakespeare writes (Lucr. 125): “Everybody to rest themselves betake.” The substitution of the plural for the singular is not wholly illogical; for everybody is much the same thing as ‘all men,’ and nobody is the negation of ‘all men’; but the phenomenon is extended to cases where this explanation will not hold good, as in G. Eliot, M. 2. 304, I shouldn’t like to punish any one, even if they’d done me wrong. (For many examples from good writers see my MEG. ii. 5, 56.)
The English interrogative who is not, like the quis or quæ of the Romans, limited to one sex and one number, so that our question ‘Who did it?’ to be rendered exactly in Latin, would require a combination of the four: Quis hoc fecit? Quæ hoc fecit? Qui hoc fecerunt? Quæ hoc fecerunt? or rather, the abstract nature of who (and of did) makes it possible to express such a question much more indefinitely in English than in any highly flexional language; and indefiniteness in many cases means greater precision, or a closer correspondence between thought and expression.
XVIII.—§ 7. Nominal Concord.
We have seen in the case of the verbs how widely diffused in all the old Aryan languages is the phenomenon of Concord. It is the same with the nouns. Here, as there, it consists in secondary words (here chiefly adjectives) being made to agree with principal words, but while with the verbs the agreement was in number and person, here it is in number, case and gender. This is well known in Greek and Latin; as examples from Gothic may here be given Luk. 1. 72, gamunan triggwos weihaizos seinaizos, ‘to remember His holy covenant,’ and 1. 75, allans dagans unsarans, ‘all our days.’ The English translation shows how English has discarded this trait, for there is nothing in the forms of (his), holy, all and our, as in the Gothic forms, to indicate what substantive they belong to.
Wherever the same adjectival idea is to be joined to two substantives, the concordless junction is an obvious advantage, as seen from a comparison of the English ‘my wife and children’ with the French ‘ma femme et mes enfants,’ or of ‘the local press and committees’ with ‘la presse locale et les comités locaux.’ Try to translate exactly into French or Latin such a sentence as this: “What are the present state and wants of mankind?” (Ruskin). Cf. also the expression ‘a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown,’ where some and unknown belong to the singular as well as to the plural forms; Fielding writes (TJ 3. 65): “Some particular chapter, or perhaps chapters, may be obnoxious.” Where an English editor of a text will write: “Some (indifferently singular and plural) word or words wanting here,” a Dane will write: “Et (sg.) eller flere (pl.) ord (indifferent) mangler her.” These last examples may be taken as proof that it might even in some cases be advantageous to have forms in the substantives that did not show number; still, it must be recognized that the distinction between one and more than one rightly belongs to substantival notions, but logically it has as little to do with adjectival as with verbal notions (cf. above, Ch. XVII § 11). In ‘black spots’ it is the spots, but not the qualities of black, that we count. And in ‘two black spots’ it is of course quite superfluous to add a dual or plural ending (as in Latin duo, duæ) in order to indicate once more what the word two denotes sufficiently, namely, that we have not to do with a singular. Compare, finally, E. to the father and mother, Fr. au père et à la mère, G. zu dem vater und der mutter (zum vater und zur mutter).
If it is admitted that it is an inconvenience whenever you want to use an adjective to have to put it in the form corresponding in case, number and gender to its substantive, it may be thought a redeeming feature of the language which makes this demand that, on the other hand, it allows you to place the adjective at some distance from the substantive, and yet the hearer or reader will at once connect the two together. But here, as elsewhere in ‘energetics,’ the question is whether the advantage counter-balances the disadvantage; in other words, whether the fact that you are free to place your adjective where you will is worth the price you pay for it in being always saddled with the heavy apparatus of adjectival flexions. Why should you want to remove the adjective from the substantive, which naturally must be in your thought when you are thinking of the adjective? There is one natural employment of the adjective in which it has very often to stand at some distance from the substantive, namely, when it is predicative; but then the example of German shows the needlessness of concord in that case, for while the adjunct adjective is inflected (ein guter mensch, eine gute frau, ein gutes buch, gute bücher) the predicative is invariable like the adverb (der mensch ist gut, die frau ist gut, das buch ist gut, die bücher sind gut). It is chiefly in poetry that a Latin adjective is placed far from its substantive, as in Vergil: “Et bene apud memores veteris stat gratia facti” (Æn. IV. 539), where the form shows that veteris is to be taken with facti (but then, where does bene belong? it might be taken with memores, stat or facti). In Horace’s well-known aphorism: “Æquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem,” the flexional form of æquam allows him to place it first, far from mentem, and thus facilitates for him the task of building up a perfect metrical line; but for the reader it would certainly be preferable to have had æquam mentem together at once, instead of having to hold his attention in suspense for five words, till finally he comes upon a word with which to connect the adjective. There is therefore no economizing of the energy of reader or hearer. Extreme examples may be found in Icelandic skaldic poetry, in which the poets, to fulfil the requirements of a highly complicated metrical system, entailing initial and medial rimes, very often place the words in what logically must be considered the worst disorder, thereby making their poem as difficult to understand as an intricate chess-problem is to solve—and certainly coming short of the highest poetical form.
XVIII.—§ 8. The English Genitive.
If we compare a group of Latin words, such as opera virorum omnium bonorum veterum, with a corresponding group in a few other languages of a less flexional type: OE. ealra godra ealdra manna weorc; Danish alle gode gamle mænds værker; Modern English all good old men’s works, we perceive by analyzing the ideas expressed by the several words that the Romans said really: ‘work,’ plural, nominative or accusative + ‘man,’ plural, masculine, genitive + ‘all,’ plural, genitive + ‘good,’ plural, masculine, genitive + ‘old,’ plural, masculine, genitive. Leaving opera out of consideration, we find that plural number is expressed four times, genitive case also four times, and masculine gender twice;[86] in Old English the signs of number and case are found four times each, while there is no indication of gender; in Danish the plural number is marked four times and the case once. And finally, in Modern English, we find each idea expressed once only; and as nothing is lost in clearness, this method, as being the easiest and shortest, must be considered the best. Mathematically the different ways of rendering the same thing might be represented by the formulas: anx + bnx + cnx = (an + bn + cn)x = (a + b + c)nx.