1. The distinction between the subjunctive and indicative mood is likely to pass away. We verify this by the very general tendency to say if it is, and if he speaks, rather than if it be, and if he speak.
2. The distinction between the participle passive and the past tense is likely to pass away. We verify this by the tendency to say it is broke, and he is smote, for it is broken and he is smitten.
3. Of the double forms, sung and sang, drank and drunk, &c., one only will be the permanent.
As stated above, these tendencies are but a few out of many, and have been adduced in order to indicate the subject rather than to exhaust it.
QUESTIONS.
1. Classify the Celtic elements of the English language.
2. Enumerate the chief periods during which words from the Latin were introduced into English, and classify the Latin elements accordingly.
3. What words were introduced directly by the Danes, Scandinavians, or Norsemen? What indirectly? Through what language did these latter come?
4. Give the dates of the Battle of Hastings, and of the reigns of Louis Outremer, Ethelred II, and Edward the Confessor. What was the amount of Norman-French elements in England anterior to the Conquest?
5. Give the languages from whence the following words were introduced into the English—flannel, jerked (as to beef), hammock, apparatus, waltz, Seraph, plaid, street, muslin.
6. Distinguish between the direct, indirect, and ultimate origin of introduced words. What words have we in English which are supposed to have originated in the Ancient Ægyptian, the Syrian, and the languages of Asia Minor?
7. Under what different forms do the following words appear in English—monasterium, πρεσβύτερος, ἐπίσκοπος. Account for these differences. Syrup, shrub, and sherbet, all originate from the same word. Explain the present difference.
8. Give the direct origin (i.e., the languages from which they were immediately introduced) of—Druid, epistle, chivalry, cyder, mæander. Give the indirect origin of the same.
9. Investigate the process by which a word like sparrow-grass, apparently of English origin, is, in reality, derived from the Latin word asparagus. Point out the incorrectness in the words frontispiece, colleague, and lanthorn.
10. To what extent may Norse, and to what extent may Celtic words, not found in the current language of English, be found in the provincial dialects?
11. What were the original names of the towns Whitby and Derby? From what language are the present names derived? Give the reason for your answer.
12. Show the extent to which the logical and historical analyses coincide in respect to the words introduced from the Roman of the second period, the Arabic, the Anglo-Norman, and the Celtic of the current English.
13. What are the plural forms of criterion, axis, genius, index, dogma? When is a word introduced from a foreign language perfectly, when imperfectly incorporated with the language into which it is imported? Is the following expression correct—the cherubim that singeth aloft? If not, why?
14. What is there exceptionable in the words semaphore (meaning a sort of telegraph), and witticism. Give the etymologies of the words icicle, radicle, and radical.
15. What are the singular forms of cantharides, phænomena, and data?
16. What are the stages of the English language? How does the present differ from the older ones?
17. Exhibit in detail the inflections of the Anglo-Saxon a) noun, and b) verb, which are not found in the present English. What is the import of the loss of inflections, and their replacement by separate words? What is the nature of such words in nouns? What in verbs?
18. Contrast the syntax of the Anglo-Saxon with the Modern English adjective. What is the English for the Anglo-Saxon words wit, unc, incer?
19. Express, in general terms, the chief points wherein a modern language differs from an ancient one: or, rather, the points wherein the different stages of the same language differ.
20. Investigate the influence of the Norman Conquest on the English. Explain the terms Semi-Saxon, Old English, and Middle English. Compare the stages of the English with those of the other Gothic tongues.
21. Give the Modern English for the following forms and expressions—munucas, steorran, to lufienne. What are the Anglo-Saxon forms of munucan, steorres, i-hotte, clepen? Translate the Latin word omnium (genitive plural of omnis) into Old English. Translate the Greek ὁ, ἡ, τὸ into Anglo-Saxon, Old English, and Modern English.
22. Investigate the extent to which the Anglo-Norman superseded the Anglo-Saxon subsequent to the Conquest. Is any further change in the grammatical structure of our language probable? If so, what do you consider will be the nature of it?