I. English grammars before 1900

(THE FIRST PERIOD)

1. Early (Prenormative) Grammars

Until the 17th century the term "grammar" in Eng­lish was applied only to the study of Latin. This usage was a result of the fact that Latin grammar was the only grammar learned in schools ("grammar" schools) and that until the end of the 16th century there were no grammars of English. One of the earliest and most popular Latin grammars written in English, by Wil­liam Lily, was published in the first half of the 16th century and went through many editions. This work was very important for English grammar as it set a standard for the arrangement of material and thus Latin paradigms with their English equivalents easily suggested the possibility of presenting English forms in a similar way, using the same terminology as in Latin grammar.² Lily's Latin grammar may be consid­ered the precursor of the earliest English grammars; in most grammars the arrangements of the material was similar to that of Lily's Latin grammar, though at no period was there a literal imitation of Latin gram­mar. Thus, in Bullokar's grammar there were 5 cases of nouns (cf. 6 cases in Latin) and 6 genders (this was the number of genders attributed to the Latin language in medieval grammars). But in spite of this adherence to the structure of Latin grammar, even early gramma­rians could not help noticing some typical features which made the structure of English different from that of such a highly inflectional language as Latin. Even Lily, translating the Latin inflectional forms, noticed the fact that some of their English equivalents were analytical forms, which included auxiliary' words, and spoke of them as "signs". W. Bullokar made free use of the theory of "signs", which he had found in Lily's grammar.¹ A striking example of the two approaches to the description of English is the divergence of views on the problem of English case system. Though Bullokar mentioned 5 cases and in a grammar published in 1749 and reprinted as late as 1819 (Th. Dilworth, A New Guide to the English Tongue) the number of cases both of nouns and adjectives is said to be 6 (as it is in Lily's grammar), in two grammars which appeared during the first half of the 17th century, Ben Jonson's and Ch. Butler's English grammars, the num­ber of cases is two, while in J. Wallis's Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653), which was written in Lat­in, in spite of the author's intention to break entirely with Latin tradition, the category of case is said to be non-existent and the s³ form is defined as a possessive adjective. This view was supported by an early 18th century grammar, attributed to John Brightland. The authors of the second half of the 18th century seemed to prefer the two-case system, which was revived at the end of the 19th century in scientific grammar. In 19th century school grammars a three-case system prevailed (see p. 16).

The treatment of the problem of case shows that even in the early period of the development of English grammars the views of grammarians were widely di­vergent, a fact which may be explained by two differ­ent approaches toward the description of English gram­matical structure. The grammarians who desired to break with Latin grammatical tradition were not al­ways consistent and still followed the Latin pattern in some of the chapters of their grammars.

By the middle of the 18th century the main results of the description of the English grammatical system, as it was presented in the prenormative grammars,⁴ were as follows:

Morphology. The Latin classification of the parts of speech, which included eight word-classes, differed from the system adopted by modern grammars in that the substantives and adjectives were grouped together as two kinds of nouns, while the participle was pre­sented as a separate part of speech. In the earliest Eng­lish grammars, where this system was reproduced, the parts of speech were also divided dichotomically into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech, just as in Lily's grammar (W. Bullokar), or words with number and words without number (Ben Jonson), or words with number and case and words without number and case (Ch. Butler). The first of these groups, declinable words, with number and case, included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participles, the second — indeclinables — adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and in­terjections. Ben Jonson increased the number of parts of speech in his classification, introducing the article as the ninth part of speech.

Later, at the beginning of the 18th century, another scheme of classification appeared in J. Brightland's grammar. This author reduced the number of parts of speech to four, rejecting the traditional terminology as well. The four parts of speech were: names (i. e. nouns), qualities (i. e. adjectives), affirmations (i. e. verbs) and particles, which included the four so-called indeclinable parts of speech. In this scheme the adjective was classed as a separate part of speech, owing to the influence of the philosophical or universal (logical) grammars of the age, which in their attempts to discover the universal jaws of the structure of languages pointed out the differ­ence between the syntactic functions of the two varie­ties of "nouns".

Brightland's system does not appear to have been very extensively adopted, though it was accepted by a few grammarians of the period, e. g. by Farro in his grammar. But since that time the adjective came to be viewed as a distinct part of speech in English.

Syntax. In Brightland's grammar we likewise find an important innovation in the study of English syntax — the introduction of the notion "sentence" into syntax. Latin grammar was not concerned with the structure of the sentence, the principal object of the syntax of modern grammar. Though definitions of the sentence, mostly logical (pointing to its function as an expression of a complete thought, a judgment or proposition), already existed in the ancient period, grammarians understood syntax etymologically as a study of the arrangement, i. e. the connection of words. Thus, Lily briefly stated the three concords of Latin: of the nominative and the verb, of the substantive and the adjective and of the relative pronoun and its an­tecedent.

Ben Jonson applied this analysis to English syntax and devoted a large part of his grammar to the de­scription of the "syntax" of a noun with a noun, of a noun with an adjective, with an article, with a verb, etc. As the rules of concord and government were few in English, the author paid much attention to a specif­ically English means of connection of words — word-order. The sentence was mentioned only in the chapter on punctuation, which was based on the theory of rhet­oric (i. e. stylistics) created by ancient authors. The principal unit of rhetoric was the period, which, like the sentence, was defined as an expression of a com­plete thought. The expression of a complete thought in rhetoric was not confined to the bounds of a single sen­tence. It could be expressed by a group of closely con­nected sentences, but early English grammarians iden­tified the period with the sentence, so that the marks of punctuation (named after the parts of the period, which they divided, such as the comma, the least part of the period, the colon, a member of the period, and the period itself, which denoted the mark of punctuation pointing to its completion) were at the same time in­tended to divide sentences and their parts, which as yet had no special names. As some colons were rather long, another mark of punctuation was added, the semi­colon (a half-member), which was so named by analogy with the already existing terms.

It was only in Brightland's grammar that the con­cept of the sentence was included in syntax proper. In Brightland's grammar sentences are divided dichotom­ically into simple and compound. The simple sentence is defined as containing one affirmation (verb) and one name, signifying the subject of the affirmation expressed or understood. The compound sentence consists of two or more simple sentences.

Brightland's precursors were two grammarians, whose works appeared during the second half of the 17th century: J. Wilkins and Ch. Cooper. J. Wilkins was the author of one of the earliest philosophical grammars in England. ⁵

Wilkins identified the grammatical notions of the "nominative case" and the verb with the logical subject and predicate. Thus the theory of the parts of the sen­tence began to develop under the influence of logic in the second half of the 17th century. Ch. Cooper in his Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1685) reproduced the ideas of Wilkins, though in his syntax he still followed the old pattern, describing the rules underlying the combinations of words. Cooper mentions three princi­pal parts of the sentence: the nominative case of the grammarians, as identical with the subject of the logi­cians; the predicate which affirms or denies something concerning the subject is the same as a verb (or a copula with an adjective or a nominative case) in grammar. The third principal part of the sentence is the "accu­sative", i. e. the noun affected by the action of the transitive verb. To these three parts of the sentence are added various dependent parts (which were not further differentiated syntactically).

Brightland's very short chapter on the sentence is based upon Cooper's rules (though the opposition of principal and dependent parts is not mentioned). In addition Brightland defines the sentence as an expres­sion of a sentiment or a thought.

Alongside the logical terms introduced into syntax, the term "object" (deriving from medieval scholastic phi­losophy) was added to denote the third "principal" part of the sentence. But morphological terms (such as the nominative case or word, the noun, etc.) continued to be used in the description of the parts of the sentence.

The concept of the compound sentence, which, judg­ing by Brightland's examples, denoted both complex and compound sentences, according to a classification introduced much later, was also due to logic, where propositions or judgments were divided into simple and compound. The second part of his syntax deals with the "construction of words" (as it does in older gram­mars). ⁶