I am speaking, I was reading.—There was a stage in the Gothic languages when these forms were either inadmissible, or rare. Instead thereof, we had the present tense, I speak, and the past, I spoke. The same is the case with the classical languages in the classical stage. To determine the difference in idea between these pairs of forms is a matter of metaphysics. To determine at what period each idea came to have a separate mode of expression is a matter of the history of language. For example, vas láisands appears in Ulphilas (Matt. vii. 29). There, it appears as a rare form, and as a literal translation of the Greek ἦν διδασκών (was teaching). The Greek form itself was, however, an unclassical expression for ἐδίδασκε. In Anglo-Saxon this mode of speaking became common, and in English it is commoner still.—Deutsche Grammatik, iv. 5. This is a point of idiom involved with one of history.
Swear by your sword—swear on your sword.—Which of these two expressions is right? This depends on what the speaker means. If he mean make your oath in the full remembrance of the trust you put in your sword, and with the imprecation, therein implied, that it shall fail you, or turn against you if you speak falsely, the former expression is the right one. But, if he mean swear with your hand upon your sword, it is the latter which expresses his meaning. To take a different view of this question, and to write as a rule that
verbs of swearing are followed by the preposition on (or by) is to mistake the province of the grammar. Grammar tells no one what he should wish to say. It only tells him how what he wishes to say should be said.
Much of the criticism on the use of will and shall is faulty in this respect. Will expresses one idea of futurity, shall another. The syntax of the two words is very nearly that of any other two. That one of the words is oftenest used with a first person, and the other with a second, is a fact, as will be seen hereafter, connected with the nature of things, not of words.
[§ 469]. The following question now occurs. If the history of forms of speech be one thing, and the history of idioms another; if this question be a part of logic, and that question a part of rhetoric; and if such truly grammatical facts as government and concord are, as matters of common sense, to be left uninvestigated and unexplained, what remains as syntax? This is answered by the following distinction. There are two sorts of syntax; theoretical and practical, scientific and historical, pure and mixed. Of these, the first consists in the analysis and proof of those rules which common practice applies without investigation, and common sense appreciates, in a rough and gross manner, from an appreciation of the results. This is the syntax of government and concord, or of those points which find no place in the present work, for the following reason—they are either too easy or too hard for it. If explained scientifically they are matters of close and minute reasoning; if exhibited empirically they are mere rules for the memory. Besides this they are universal facts of languages in general, and not the particular facts of any one language. Like other universal facts they are capable of being expressed symbolically. That the verb (A) agrees with its pronoun (B) is an immutable fact: or, changing the mode of expression, we may say that language can only fulfil its great primary object of intelligibility when A = B. And so on throughout. A formal syntax thus exhibited, and even devised à priori, is a philological possibility. And it is also the measure of philological anomalies.
[§ 470]. Pure syntax.—So much for one sort of syntax; viz., that portion of grammar which bears the same relation to the practice of language, that the investigation of the syllogism bears to the practice of reasoning. The positions concerning it are by no means invalidated by such phrases as I speaks (for I speak), &c. In cases like these there is no contradiction; since the peculiarity of the expression consists not in joining two incompatible persons, but in mistaking a third person for a first—and as far as the speaker is concerned, actually making it so. I must here anticipate some objections that may be raised to these views, by stating that I am perfectly aware that they lead to a conclusion which to most readers must appear startling and to some monstrous, viz., to the conclusion that there is no such thing as bad grammar at all; that everything is what the speaker chooses to make it; that a speaker may choose to make any expression whatever, provided it answer the purpose of language, and be intelligible; that, in short, whatever is is right. Notwithstanding this view of the consequence I still am satisfied with the truth of the premises. I may also add that the terms pure and mixed, themselves suggestive of much thought on the subject which they express, are not mine but Professor Sylvester's.
[§ 471]. Mixed syntax.—That, notwithstanding the previous limitations, there is still a considerable amount of syntax in the English, as in all other languages, may be seen from the sequel. If I undertook to indicate the essentials of mixed syntax, I should say that they consisted in the explanation of combinations apparently ungrammatical; in other words, that they ascertained the results of those causes which disturb the regularity of the pure syntax; that they measured the extent of the deviation; and that they referred it to some principle of the human mind—so accounting for it.
I am going.—Pure syntax explains this.
I have gone.—Pure syntax will not explain this. Nevertheless, the expression is good English. The power, however, of both have and gone is different from the usual power of those words. This difference mixed syntax explains.