Chapter XVI · DISPLACEMENT OF THE SYNTACTICAL DISTRIBUTION.

The reader who remembers and fully apprehends the wider meaning, which in Chapter VI. we assigned to the terms (Psychological) ‘subject’ and ‘predicate,’ must realise how comparatively seldom the grammatical categories of the same name coincide with the corresponding parts of the thought to which the sentence is to give utterance. We defined the subject as the expression for that which the speaker presupposes known to the hearer, and the predicate as that which indicates what he wishes the hearer to think or learn about it. Hence, as we saw, the sentence theoretically consists of two parts; but, as each of these parts may be extended, we get—if we indicate subject and predicate by the letters S and P respectively, and the extensions by a, b, c, etc.—the following scheme for a simple sentence: Sabc + Pdef.

Now, in such a sentence, the grammatical subject, with all its extensions, will correspond with the psychological subject, and the grammatical predicate and its extensions with the psychological predicate, only in case the extensions of the subject are really no more than additions made in order to specify the known or presupposed, and if the predicate contains nothing which serves any further purpose than to convey the thought about that subject. But as soon as to the subject-noun, for instance, an adjective is added which conveys new thought about the subject; or, again, as soon as the object is indicated by a noun accompanied by a similar ‘additional’ qualification, then these additions or extensions become ipso facto psychological predicates, and the sentence, grammatically simple, becomes a psychologically complex one. Thus, suppose a good Charles and a wicked Charles have been spoken of, and the latter is known to have done something with his thick stick to the speaker; then, and then only, can a sentence like The wicked Charles has beaten me with his thick stick be a psychologically simple one. In this sentence then, The wicked Charles is subject, has beaten is predicate, and with his stick extension, and the psychological and grammatical divisions coincide completely. But suppose that it was known that the same person had beaten the speaker, but that the instrument was not known; or that the action and the instrument were known, but not the recipient of the blows: in this case the sentence, though remaining a simple one, would at once cease to correspond in its grammatical parts to the psychological divisions of (a) Charles has beaten me (subject) + with his stick (predicate), or, (b) Charles has beaten with his stick (subject) + me (predicate). In fact, if we wished to make the grammatical form correspond to the divisions of that psychologically simple statement, we should have to adopt a form grammatically complex; such as The instrument with which Charles has beaten me is his thick stick, or, The person whom Charles has beaten with his thick stick is I, according to the circumstances of the case.

In any of the cases enumerated above, the psychological subject and predicate were simple. But suppose that the hearer was not aware that anything had happened, nor could be supposed to have any predisposition to call the individual in question ‘wicked.’ Then, though the sentence remains grammatically a simple one, we really get the following complex PSYCHOLOGICAL analysis:— 1. Subject: Charles Predicate: is (in my opinion) wicked. 2. Subject: The wicked Charles Predicate: has beaten. 3. Subject: The object of that beating Predicate (with copula): is I. 4. Subject: The instrument with which that beating was inflicted upon me Predicate (with copula): is a stick. 5. Subject: That stick Predicate (with copula): is thick. While, therefore, the scheme could grammatically be symbolised aS + Pbc, we should have to symbolise the psychological analysis somewhat as follows:—

At first sight this may seem far-fetched and uselessly refined, but the student will find that it is desirable to force himself in some such manner to fully realise the absolute inadequacy of our grammatical terms and distinctions when we apply them to psychological questions: and to realise, also, the vagueness with which long habit has taught us to be satisfied in our modes of expression, and in our constructions for various thoughts, differing essentially, though perhaps not always widely.160 It is the full conception of the somewhat haphazard nature of our constructions which will help us to understand how uncertain and how different in various speakers must, on the one hand, be the correspondence between the grammatical and psychological subject and predicate; and, on the other, how vague must often be the distinctions between the parts of our sentences, and how varying the grouping of these parts, as we more or less consciously conceive of them as connected or as ‘belonging together.’ All is here fluctuating and indefinite. Thus, as a rule, the word is in sentences like He is king, He is subject, is mere copula, and king the real predicate; though, when we utter the same words in order to state that he and no one else occupies the throne, he becomes psychologically predicate, and king, or rather is king, becomes subject, whatever the grammatical form of the sentence may seem to prove to the contrary. Again, in He IS king (i.e. now, and not only going to be so), he as king is subject, is (now) predicate.

Psychologically, the idea of the copula as mere link between subject and predicate is far more extensive than ordinary grammar admits. Thus, in What is the matter with him? He has got the toothache, the predicate of the latter sentence is the toothache, has got is copula.

In Will he be quick, do you think? Oh yes, he was running very quickly, the words was running are a mere copula, unless, emphasised by stress of accent, they are made to convey the specially desired statement that the person spoken of ran, and did not walk slowly or ride, etc., in which case they are a true predicate.

We have here illustrated how one of the means for distinguishing the predicate from the other parts of the sentence is found in accent or stress.

But we do not invariably thus emphasise our predicate. An interrogative pronoun, for instance, is always a psychological predicate. If we ask Who has done this? we usually lay our stress on done or on this, though these words, being mere expressions for the observed and known fact, contain the psychological subject, and the unknown person indicated by who is the predicate sought for by the questioner.

There exist other elements of speech which are regularly subjects or predicates; for instance, a demonstrative referring back to a substantive previously expressed and commencing a sentence, is necessarily a psychological subject, or part of it: I know those men are my enemies: them I despise. A relative pronoun, of course, has the same function: there is a man whom I respect highly. Again, every element of a sentence whose connection with the rest is denied by means of a negative particle is generally a psychological predicate; as, Yield not me the praise (Tennyson) = ‘The person to whom praise is due is not I.’ But not to me returns day (Milton, Par. Lost, iii. 41) = ‘Day returns to many, but among those is161 not I.’

This, of course, includes any words expressing the contrast with the negatived element: Give not me but him the praise = ‘The person to whom praise is due is not I, (but) he.’

Besides emphasis, we have, in so-called inverted constructions, the means of characterising any part of a sentence as subject or predicate. Thus: One thing thou lackest (Mark x. 21) = ‘One thing there is which thou hast not.’ ‘No pause of dread Lord William knew’ (Scott, Harold, v. 15) = ‘Not a pause of dread existed which Lord William knew’ = ‘Not a pause of dread was made by Lord William.’

A means of establishing correspondence between the grammatical and psychological predicate has been incidentally illustrated in the foregoing discussion. It is the periphrastic construction with is, of which instances are very numerous. It is to you, young people, that I speak; What I most prize in woman, is her affections, not her intellect (Longfellow); It is thou that robbest me of my Lord (Shakespeare, 2 Hen. VI., IV. ii.); It was not you that sent me hither, but God (Gen. xlv. 8).

This construction is quite common in many other languages: French—C’est a vous que je m’adresse (= ‘It is to you that I myself address’); German—Christen sind es, die das getan haben (lit. ‘Christians are it, that that done have’ = ‘It is (the) Christians that have done this’).

In English, another construction often serves the same purpose: As to denying, he would scorn it; As for that fellow, we’ll see about him to-morrow. Or (with the psychological subject simply in the nominative, without any verbal indication of its connection with what follows), Husband and children, she saw them murdered before her very eyes; My life’s foul deed, my life’s fair end shall free it (Shakespeare, Rape of Lucr.); The prince ... they will slay him (Ben Jonson, Sejanus, III. iii.); That thing, I took it for a man (Lear, IV. vi. 77). Antipholus, my husband ... this ill day a most outrageous fit of madness took him (Com. of Errors, V. i. 138). When, in this construction, the words which head the sentence stand for the same thing as the subject pronoun of the following clause, the result, of course, is not a readjustment of the parts, but an (often useless) emphasis: cf. John, he said so; The king, he went, etc. When the psychological subject would, in the simpler constructions appear as a genitive, this is indicated by the pronoun standing, in that case, e.g., ’Tis certain every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his head (Henry V., IV. i. 197). That they who brought me in my master’s hate, I live to look upon their tragedy (Rich. III., III. ii. 57); And vows so born, in their nativity all truth appears (Mid. Night’s Dream, III. ii. 124).

In Chapter VI. we have discussed the point that in reality an adjective is psychologically a predicate: an expression like The good man containing, in fact, a statement that the man is good. There is a construction, however,—and one, too, not unfrequent,—in which the adjective contains the psychological and logical subjects; e.g., The short time at my disposal prevented me from calling upon him—‘The shortness of the time prevented,’ etc. Though this construction may perhaps be due to a contamination between, say, The shortness of the time prevented and The short time did not allow, it still remains certain that in the construction, as it stands, a displacement has occurred.

It might a priori be expected that all this uncertainty and vagueness would cause parts of a sentence which grammatically belong together to cohere but loosely, and eventually to get separated, whilst other grammatical connections, which at first did not exist, would thereby arise. It is clear, for instance, that in the sentence I sit on a chair, the preposition on is as closely connected with the verb to sit as with the noun a chair. Nay, it may be said that the ties which connect it with the noun in this and similar cases must once have been, and perhaps in the linguistic consciousness of some speakers still are, stronger than those between the preposition and the verb. This would appear from the fact that the various prepositions used to govern in English—as they still do in German, for instance—various cases, while these ties would be strengthened by the common occurrence of the preposition with a noun, unaccompanied by any verb; e.g., That book there on the chair; The man in the garden, etc. It is, however, evident in many constructions that the noun has separated from the preposition, and that the latter has entered into closer connection with the verb. We owe to this, e.g., the Latin and German ‘compound verbs,’ as excedere, ‘to go out from,’ anliegen, ‘to be incumbent on,’ etc., which used to govern, or still do govern the case which would have followed the preposition if used immediately before the noun and detached from the verb. In English, this or a similar displacement has given rise to such constructions as And this rich fair town we make him lord of (K. John, II. i. 553); a place which we have long heard of; Washes of all kinds I had an antipathy to (Goldsmith); Logic I made no account of (Smollett, Rod. Random, 6); This house I no more show my face in (She stoops to conquer, IV.); The false paiens stood he by (P. Langtoft).

A careful study of the above examples will show that in these and several of the following, the construction has the effect and is most likely due to a desire of bringing the psychological subject to the head of the sentence. It is at present chiefly employed in relative and interrogative clauses, and in sentences in the passive voice: The intended fire your city is ready to flame in (Coriolanus, V. 2); An idle dare-devil of a boy, whom his friends had been glad to get rid of (Green, Short History, p. 732); Stories of the lady, which he swore to the truth of (Tom Jones, bk. xv., ch. 9); He was such a lover, as a generous friend of the lady should not betray her to (ibid., xiii. 2); A pipe in his mouth, which, indeed, he seldom was without (ibid., ii. 2): The eclipse which the nominal seat of Christianity was under (Earle, Anglo-Saxon Liter., p. 25); Such scruple of conscience as the terrors of their late invented religion had let them into (Puttenham, Arte of Poesie, Arber’s reprint, p. 24); An outrage confessed to on a death-bed (Liv. Daily Post, Aug. 1, 1884, p. 5, col. a.); He was seldom talked of, etc. What humour is the prince of? (Hen. IV., II. iv).162

In the sentence I will never allow you to read this book, there is no doubt that every speaker feels this book as object of read, and read this book as object of allow. If, however, in order to make this book if it is psychological subject, appear also as the grammatical subject, we say This book I shall never allow you to read, we can very well understand how a speaker’s linguistic sense may come to connect this book directly as object with the entire group allow to read, nay more, with the verb allow; as if it stood for I will never allow you this book to read. This may arise all the more easily that, in a clause like I have to read this book, the words this book are historically the object of have and not of the infinitive to read, and that, in the form this book I have to read, the noun is in close proximity to its historical government I have. Hence, such transference of government from the infinitive to the group finite verb + infinitive and finally to the finite verb has occasionally really taken place, as can be shown by the way in which such clauses have sometimes been turned into the passive voice. A sentence like The judge allowed them to drop the prosecution can, strictly speaking, be turned into the passive only in one or other of the following ways: They were allowed to drop the prosecution, or, The judge allowed that the prosecution should be dropped; in each of which cases, the object of the verb has become the subject of the same verb in the passive voice. If, however, aided by such constructions as The prosecution which the judge allowed them to drop, the object (prosecution) of the verb to drop becomes, first, object of the syntactical combination allow to drop, and, finally, in the illogical thinker’s consciousness or linguistic sense, object of the verb to allow,—there may arise a passive construction something like the following: The prosecution which was allowed to be dropped. This construction is indeed incorrect in English, but its parallel may be occasionally heard from careless speakers, and a careful study of it will illustrate and make intelligible such phrases as the German, Hier ist sie zu spielen verboten, literally = ‘Here is she (i.e., Minna v. Barnhelm, i.e., the play of that name) to play forbidden’ = ‘Here it has been forbidden to play her (sc. it),’ as passive of ‘They have forbidden to play it here;’ Die stellung des fürsten Hohenlohe wird zu untergraben versucht = ‘The position of the Prince Hohenlohe is to undermine attempted’ = ‘An attempt is being made to undermine the position, etc.;’ or again, the Greek χιλίων δράχμων ἀπορρηθεισῶν λαβεῖν (Demosthenes), lit. ‘One thousand drachms having been agreed to receive’ = ‘It having been agreed that I should receive one thousand drachms.’ Similarly, the Latin Librum legere cœpi = (‘I begin to read the book’) is turned into the passive, Liber legi cœptus est = (‘The book to be read has been begun’), the perfect parallel of our somewhat fictitious English example.

In our examples, ‘He has got the toothache,’ etc., we saw that the grammatical predicate often has, in reality, no other psychological function than that of mere copula, or, as it is often called, connecting word. The regular and constant use of certain words in that manner has led some grammarians to group these together as a separate grammatical category, a grouping or distinction to which many others vigorously object. The view which one takes in this question is mainly influenced by (a) what we call a ‘connecting word,’ and (b) a clear distinction between the grammatical form and the function of a word. Now, a connecting word is a word which serves to indicate the connection between two ideas or conceptions, and which accordingly can neither stand alone, nor have any definite sense if placed with only one such conception. Such a connecting word between subject and predicate we have in the verb to be, the copula, in most of its uses. It is said by some that the word is never has any other function than that of true predicate, and that the predicatival adjective or noun is always to be considered a determinant of the predicate. This, whilst true as to grammatical form, is certainly incorrect as to function. In the first place, we have already discussed (Chap. VI.) how sentences like Borrowing is sorrowing, contains no less, but also no more than Borrow sorrow, in which the latter word contains the true psychologic predicate. Further, if we were to attribute to the word is in such sentences the same force as, for instance, in God is, i.e., God exists, we should necessarily have to explain a sentence, This is impossible, as ‘This exists as something impossible;’ which every one will at once perceive to be nonsense.

We must recognise in sentences like Borrow sorrow an original construction, by the side of which there sooner or later arose clauses truly denoting existence, such as God is, or even God is good, in which, at first, is had its full meaning of exists, and good had consequently such the function of an adverb. When once, in the latter and similar sentences, a displacement and redistribution of the function began to take place, and the adjective good (or, e.g., the noun king in He is king) acquired the force of a true logical predicate, the fuller construction with the copula is more and more frequently ousted the shorter one, which had no such link between subject and predicate. The reluctance of some grammarians to admit this is perhaps partially due, also, to the fact that the copula has always retained the full inflectional forms of a true predicatival verb. Hence they did not so easily realise the displacement which had occurred—a displacement which, in other sentences, where the part thereby affected is flectionless, is easier to demonstrate.

We shall first discuss one more instance of how a displacement affects inflected parts of speech, and then one or two in which the words concerned have no longer any inflection to connect them with other forms, and to protect them from isolation and change of function.

In the sentences I make him and I make a king, we have two accusatives of slightly different functions: the one indicating the OBJECT of the action (him), and the other indicating the RESULT of the action (a king). If the two statements be now combined, then, applied as they are to convey to the hearer the two distinct pieces of information as to the object and as to the results of the action, both of which were previously unknown to him, we have undoubtedly one verb with two distinct and equipoised accusatives. But assuming that either the object of the action or the result is already known, it is then only the other member of the pair which has the full predicatival force, whilst the former inevitably enters into a closer relationship with the verb. The member which retains the full force of a predicate becomes predicate to the group; nay, even—as in our example, where the verb cannot be taken in its literal meaning—the one noun becomes almost a predicate to the other, I make him king being very similar in meaning to He becomes king through my agency. If this is the correct explanation of the origin of similar constructions, we must perhaps consider the use of an adjective as second accusative as due to analogy with this use of the noun. We must not forget, however, that the line of demarcation between adjective and noun was once very much more vague and indefinite than it is now.

In a similar way, the sentence I teach him to speak and I declare him to be an honest man must be a combination, with consequent displacement of relation, of two independent clauses—the one with a noun, or the equivalent thereof, and the other with an infinite as object. It is thus we explain the origin of the Latin accusative with infinitive.

An example of displacement, or re-arrangement of relations, is next furnished by the origin and history of our correlatives either, or, both, and. Either means originally (A.S. ægðer, contracted from æghwæðer = á + ge + hwæðer) one of two, so that either he or you is really = one of the two; you or he, where the word either, as it were, sums up or comprehends the whole of the following enumeration. It stands, therefore, in syntactical relation to both the members of the clause which are connected (or contrasted) by or; but is now usually felt as connected with the first only, the sentence being divided as either he + or you. Similarly, both means two together. Hence both you and I originally had the full force of the two together, i.e., you and I. The word which stood in syntactical relation with the pair has therefore, as in the former case, become co-ordinate with the word and, which once formed part of the group it governed, and we now feel and explain expressions like our examples as consisting of the two groups, both you + and I.

In the last two examples the words are now flectionless, and have become, when used in such constructions, connecting words, a change entirely owing to such displacement of relationship between the parts of the sentence as we have been studying in this chapter.

In the discussion of our example on page 270 we noticed how even a grammatically simple clause might in reality be a logically complex one. Vice versâ, a clause logically simple may be expressed by a grammatically complex sentence. I asked him after his health, as an answer to What were you asking him? is a psychologically and grammatically simple sentence.163 The answer might, however, without in the least degree altering the thought expressed, have been cast in the form I asked him how he was—a grammatically complex sentence.

Again, logical independence and grammatical co-ordination do not by any means necessarily go together—a sentence like He first went to Paris, whence he proceeded to Rome, where he met his friend being in form complex with main and subordinate clauses; in meaning, however, equivalent to an aggregate of three co-ordinate ‘main’ clauses: He went + from there he proceeded + there he met.

Nay, it occasionally happens that syntactical form and logical function are in direct opposition. Thus, e.g., in Scarcely had he entered the house, when his mother exclaimed, There is John! what is logically the main clause has the grammatical or syntactical form of a subordinate one.

It cannot now, therefore, seem strange that in syntax we also meet with the parallel of the process which gave birth to such words as adder, orange, newt, and nickname. Adder, cf. Ger. natter, Icelandic naðr, was in Anglo-Saxon nædre. Similarly, orange, derived from the Persian nâranj, was originally preceded by an n. In the combination with the indefinite article a or an (the older form) this n was thought to belong to the article only, and the sound-groups anorange, anadder were wrongly split up into an + orange, an + adder. On the other hand, the groups anekename (really an + ekename) and anewt (really an + ewt) were erroneously broken up into a + newt, a + nickname.164

A precisely similar occurrence in syntax has given us our conjunction that. I know that (= ‘I know this thing’) + he can sing, when combined into the group of subject I, predicate know, object (double, the one part being explanatory of the other) that and he can sing, gradually became divided, or divisible for the linguistic consciousness, into I know + he can sing, with the conjunction that for connecting word.

In some cases the correspondence between psychological and grammatical distribution is so incomplete, the subordinate and main clauses are so interwoven in the grammatical form, that it becomes impossible to separate the parts in our ordinary analysis. This happens more especially when a part of the grammatically subordinate clause really contains the psychological subject, and when, consequently, that part, with a construction similar to that discussed on page 274 is put at the head of the clause. When, in the sentence I believe that something will make you smile, the word something expressed the psychological subject, Goldsmith emphasised this fact by writing, Something, that I believe will make you smile; cf. Milton’s Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat; With me I see not who partakes, etc. This arrangement, then, places the main clause between parts of what is grammatically the subordinate one. In not a few cases confusion or uncertainty may, then, arise as to whether the words which head the sentence must be considered as belonging to the subordinate clause or as governed by the verb of the main clause. If we say The place which he knew that he could not obtain, we may hesitate as to whether place is really object to knew or to obtain. We can, and often do, avoid this ambiguity and intermixture of main and subordinate clauses by a kind of double construction, like The place, of which he knew that he could not obtain it.