Founding Grammars (3 page)

Most famously, Lowth ruled against stranding prepositions at the end of a question or relative clause, giving the example
Horace is an author whom I am much delighted with.
He admitted, “This is an idiom which our language is strongly inclined to,” but felt that “the placing of the preposition before the relative is more graceful … and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated style.” (Ending the first of these sentences with the preposition
to
instead of saying
to which our language is strongly inclined
might have been a mistake, but also could be a subtle way of demonstrating his point.)
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The preposition-stranding rule offers a good example of how one grammarian's style judgments can gradually harden into absolutes. Lowth meant his principle to apply mainly to “the solemn and elevated style.” He admitted that the sentence-final preposition “prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style.” In other words, it was fine for everyday speech. This nuanced statement was lost in later grammar and usage guides. Over the years, the ban on sentence-final prepositions expanded until it covered every situation, including prepositions that form part of complex verbs like
sit down
and
stand up.
Lowth never proposed such an extreme restriction.

Not only sentence-final prepositions, but most of the structures Lowth rejected, had prevailed in “common conversation” for centuries. They had also appeared in the work of famous authors. Lowth often illustrated what he saw as incorrect usages by quoting examples from writers such as Pope, Swift, Shakespeare, and the authors of the King James Bible. His example of too many negatives comes from Milton's
Paradise Lost—
“
Nor
did they
not
perceive the evil plight / In which they were, or the fierce pains
not
feel.”
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The fact that great writers had made use of certain grammatical constructions did not persuade Lowth of their acceptability. On the contrary, he thought that it underlined the necessity of studying grammar as a separate subject. He writes, “Our best authors have committed gross mistakes, for want of a due knowledge of English grammar, or at least of a proper attention to the rules of it.”
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This point of view led to the teaching technique known as false syntax. Lowth describes it in his preface as teaching “what is right, by showing what is wrong.” For nearly half a century after Lowth, grammar books would routinely include examples of false syntax, using the literary greats to show students what not to do.

A Short Introduction to English Grammar
permanently changed the landscape of standard English. Lowth presented his strictures more as style advice than a set of rigid rules—distinguishing, for instance, between elevated and casual speech—but future grammar book authors would treat his pronouncements as articles of faith. In spite of recurrent attempts to dislodge them, starting with Webster's, Lowth's guidelines would remain part of the grammatical orthodoxy until modern times. Although these rules no longer appear in up-to-date style guides, they are still what people think of first when they hear the word “grammar.”

*   *   *

Usage prescriptions were only a small part of any late-eighteenth-century grammar book, including Dilworth's and Lowth's. Many taught reading and spelling as well as sentence structure. Dilworth's book was one of these. It's divided into five sections, with the first two devoted to the alphabet and spelling and the final two to reading practice. Only the third section deals with grammar.

Even grammar itself was not primarily about usage. Its main purpose, at least theoretically, was to describe current English in its most elegant form. At the beginning of
A Short Introduction to Grammar,
Lowth defines grammar as a set of “principles which are common to all languages” and explains that the purpose of English grammar (or the grammar of any particular language) is to apply those common principles “according to the established usage or custom” of the language.
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Later grammar books would typically adopt a similar definition. In practice, grammar book authors didn't confine themselves to describing an accurate version of the best current English. They often followed their personal tastes or the pronouncements of earlier grammarians to rule out widespread, previously accepted usages.

Some of the books' content strikes modern readers as stilted and odd. For instance,
thou
and
thee
appear as second-person singular, as in
thou hast
and
thou wilt. Ye
as well as
you
is a possible second-person plural. Unfamiliar verb forms are listed, too—
speak
/
spake, chide
/
chid, thrive
/
throve, work
/
wrought.
The writing seems overelaborate, especially for books aimed at teaching children. Lowth's explanation of natural gender in English begins with this convoluted sentence: “The English language, with singular propriety, following nature alone, applies the distinction of masculine and feminine, only to the names of animals.” Such vocabulary today would probably be considered too challenging even for older students.

Grammar books also talk about issues that are unknown to modern English speakers. For example, they include detailed rules for the uses of
shall
and
will.
To express simple future tense,
shall
was used with first person—
I shall arrive tomorrow
—and
will
went with second and third person—
they will arrive by noon.
However, their use could be reversed to give a different spin to the meaning.
Shall
used with second or third person—
you shall go—
implied insistence or a threat. That is, the speaker plans to make you go.
I will go,
on the other hand, suggests determination—the speaker plans to go in spite of opposition. These uses were already becoming less common two hundred years ago. Today they are obsolete. Americans seldom use
shall
at all, and it's usually in the form of a question—
Shall we go?

All these features, which make eighteenth-century grammar books sound arcane to modern readers, would have seemed unremarkable to grammar students of that day. They expected lesson books to be written in what Lowth calls the elevated style. That meant including
thee
and
thou,
which were no longer much used in speaking but were still fairly common in written language. It also meant an ornate style and a formal tone. And of course it meant exploring subtle usage details, as in the case of
shall
and
will.

Grammar books were typically organized to present information in memorizable chunks, taking students from the smaller pieces of language—the alphabet in some cases—to larger chunks, such as sentences, poems, and short essays. Students eventually memorized and recited all the book's lessons, the idea being that when they had thoroughly absorbed all the material, they could apply it to their own speech with ease.

Grammar study usually encompassed orthography (spelling), prosody (pronunciation), and etymology (parts of speech), as well as syntax (sentence grammar). The parts of speech were the same ones found in modern grammar books—nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles. Authors defined each part of speech and then discussed how it worked. Definitions didn't change much from book to book. In fact, later grammar book authors frequently lifted definitions word for word from older volumes. Dilworth defines a noun, or “substantive,” as “the name of any being or thing, perceivable either by the senses or the understanding.” Lowth describes it in a more convoluted but essentially similar way as “the name of a thing; of whatever we conceive in any way to subsist, or of which we have any notion.”
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(The now-common formula “person, place, or thing” wasn't used until the early nineteenth century.)

After defining a part of speech, grammarians demonstrated its features. Here is where Latin comes into play. Latin was a high-status language in the eighteenth century, normally studied only by the educated upper classes. Considered excellent mental training, it formed a major part of the curriculum at private boys' schools and was a requirement for college admission. For these reasons, many grammar book writers adopted Latin as a template for English. Not only was it thought to be a superior organizing tool for English, using it as a model was meant to prepare students for the eventual study of Latin itself.

In fact Latin is not that helpful for studying English—the structures of the two languages are very different. In Latin, a word's exact form varies according to its relationship to other words in the sentence. Nouns, for example, feature various endings, depending on their “case,” or what part they play in the sentence. Subjects are in nominative case, direct objects in objective case (also called accusative), possessives in genitive case, and objects of prepositions in a variety of cases, depending on the preposition. Students learned the language by memorizing lists of the different forms. This practice was called noun declension. The declension of
liber,
the Latin word for “book,” is nominative
liber,
genitive
libri,
dative
libro,
accusative
librum,
vocative
liber,
ablative
libro.

Dilworth and most other grammar book writers used the same system for English, even though English nouns don't change their form no matter what role they play in a sentence. Whether
a book
is the subject of the sentence or the object, it's still
a book.
That meant students spent their time “declining” pointless lists of identical nouns—nominative
a book,
genitive
of a book,
dative
to a book,
accusative
a book,
vocative
O book,
ablative
from a book.

Verbs were typically organized according to mood and tense. Classifications differed, but were again based on Latin. Most authors included indicative mood (statements), imperative mood (commands), subjunctive mood (conditional or contrary to fact), and potential mood (combining with
may, can, might, ought, could,
and similar words). Tenses included past, present, and future, as well as occasional subcategories, such as pluperfect (
had loved
). As with nouns, students memorized mostly unchanging lists of verb forms—
I love, thou lovest, he loves, we love, ye love, they love
—an exercise known as verb conjugation.

When Webster attacked grammarians who “lay down certain rules … drawn from the principles of other languages,” he was thinking of these lists. In the preface to
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part II
—the grammar volume—he makes his view even clearer, calling Dilworth's book “a mere Latin grammar, very indifferently translated.”
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Lowth's grammar is unusual in not providing lists of Latin-based noun declensions. Instead he notes that English has only two noun forms—the noun itself, which he labels nominative, and possessive, which uses
's.
He adds an objective case for pronouns that follow a verb or preposition. Lowth does, however, provide the usual lists of verb moods and tenses for students to memorize.

Lowth also invented a form of mental exercise called “grammatical resolution,” or sentence parsing. In sentence parsing, a sentence is broken down word by word and each word defined by its place in the sentence. For his parsing exercise, Lowth chose a passage from the Gospel of Luke that begins, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.”

First Lowth sets out the passage. Then he analyzes each word—“
In
is a preposition;
the
the definite article;
fifteenth
an adjective;
year
a substantive, or noun in the objective case;
of
a preposition;
the reign
a noun, objective case;
of Tiberius Caesar,
both substantives, proper names”; and so on through the entire passage.
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This laborious method of teaching sentence structure remained a feature of most grammar textbooks until the end of the nineteenth century. (Sentence diagramming, a way of representing the parts of the sentence visually, came into vogue around that time, as shown in chapter 6.)

Lowth's parsing exercise illustrates another feature of grammar books in early America. Reading and grammar exercises were nearly always religious or morally improving. Dilworth's first practice sentence, for words of one syllable, is “No man may put off the law of God.” His practice verses bear such sobering titles as “Life is short and miserable” and “The duty of man.” Books often included fables that taught a lesson—“He that will not help himself shall have help from nobody”—or prayers thought to be suitable for schoolchildren. Dilworth's suggested prayer for wisdom and knowledge begins, “O Almighty Lord and merciful Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, who of thy free Liberality givest Wisdom abundantly to all who with Faith and full Assurance ask it of Thee: Beautify by the Light of thy Heavenly Grace the Towardness of my Wit.”
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Before the widespread availability of grammar books, American children practiced their language skills by reading from the Psalter or the New Testament. Grammars carried on the tradition of giving students moral instruction along with their parsing practice. For early American students, virtue and grammar would have been tightly connected.