American Language (88 page)

In demotic American the pedantry which preserves such forms as
someone’s else
is always disregarded;
someone else’s
is invariably used. “I have heard “Who
else’s
wife was there?” and “If it ain’t his’n, it ain’t nobody here
else’s
.” I note, too, that
he’s
seems to be assimilating with
his
. In such sentences as “I hear
he’s
coming here to work,” the sound of
he’s
is already almost that of
his
. Finally, there is a curious substitution of the simple personal pronoun for the genitive among the Negroes of the South, noted by George O. Curme.
¹³⁰
Examples are in “He roll
he
eyeballs” and “
Who
dog is it?” But this substitution is not encountered in the general vulgate.

The only inflections of the noun remaining in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar American occur. The rule that, in forming the plurals of compound nouns or noun-phrases, the
-s
shall be attached to the principal noun is commonly disregarded, and it goes at the end. Thus, “I have two
sons-in-law
” is never heard among the plain people; one always hears “I have two
son-in-laws.
” So with the genitive. I once overheard this: “That umbrella is the
young lady I go with’s.
”
¹³¹
Often a false singular is formed from a singular ending in
s
, the latter being mistaken for a plural.
Chinee, Portugee
and
Japanee
are familiar: I have also encountered
trapee, specie
,
¹³²
tactic
¹³³
and
summon
(from
trapeze, species, tactics
and
summons
). A correspondent of
American Speech
once reported hearing
calv
and
hoov
as singulars in Nebraska,
¹³⁴
and Dr. Louise Pound has encountered
corp
and
appendic
in the same great
State.
¹³⁵
In the mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border
chee
is the singular of
cheese
,
¹³⁶
and in the Ozarks likewise
cheese
is treated as a plural, though it apparently has no singular.
Molasses
, too, according to Vance Randolph, is considered a plural in the Ozarks, and both there and in North Carolina
license
is its own plural.
¹³⁷
Throughout the South the Primitive Baptists use
Baptist
(pronounced
Baptiz
) as both singular and plural.
¹³⁸
On at least one occasion a Texas Congressman referred to a fellow member of the House as “a
Knights
of Columbus,”
¹³⁹
and I believe that this usage is not uncommon among the Catholic proletariat. I have also encountered
intelligentsia
in the singular,
¹⁴⁰
but here, of course, we go beyond the bounds of the vulgate. Dr. Pound has called attention to the facility with which plural nouns are treated as singulars,
e.g., woods, grounds, stairs, stockyards
, as in “The party reached a picnic
grounds
” and “We passed a
stockyards.” Incidence
, in my observation, is commonly misused for
incident
, as in “He told an
incidence
.” Here
incidence
(or
incident
) seems to be regarded as a synonym, not for
happening
, but for
story
. The general disregard of number often shows itself when the noun is used as object. I have already quoted Lardner’s “Some of the men has brung their
wife
along”; in a popular magazine I lately encountered “Those book ethnologists … can’t see what is before their
nose.
” The common indicators of quantity seldom add
s
for the plural in the vulgate. Especially when preceded by a numeral, such words as
mile, bushel, dozen, pound, pair, foot, inch, gallon
and
peck
retain their singular form.

The adjectives in English are inflected only for comparison, and the American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double comparative or superlative to ease his soul.
More better
is the commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man is reported today to be
better
. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is he to be reported
better
again, or
best?
The standard language gets around the difficulty by using
still better
. The American vulgate boldly employs
more better
. In the case of
worse, worser
is used, as Charters shows. He also reports
baddest, more queerer
and
beautifullest
, and from the Ozarks Vance Randolph reports
most Almighty God
.
¹⁴¹
The American of the folk freely compares adjectives that are incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports
most principal
, and I myself have heard
uniquer
and even
more uniquer
, as in “I have never saw nothing
more uniquer.
” I have also heard
more ultra, more worse, idealer, liver
(that is, more energetic, more alive),
perfectest
, and
wellest
, as in “He was the
wellest
man you ever seen.”
¹⁴²
In general, the
-er
and
-est
terminations are used instead of the
more
and
most
prefixes, as in
beautiful, beauti-fuller, beautifullest
. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never heard “the
better
of the two,” in the popular speech, but always “the
best
of the two.” Charters also reports “the
hardest
of the two” and “My brother and I measured and he was the
tallest.
” “It ain’t so
worse
” is in common use. Superlatives are sometimes made from present participles,
e.g., fightingest
. Vance Randolph reports
shootingest
and
dancingest
from the Ozarks, and Dr. Louise Pound has dredged
kissingest, leakingest, goingest, laughingest
and
high-steppingest
from the general speech.
¹⁴³
She adds
onliest, orphanest, womanishest, lunatickest, spindliest, unjustest, outlandishest
and
allrightest
, and the comparative
pathetiker
.

Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use
for that purpose is
-y
, as in
tony, classy, hefty, daffy, nutty, ritzy, dinky, snappy
,
¹⁴⁴
leery
, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix
super-
tends to be confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seldom use it.
¹⁴⁵
This relative paucity of adjectives appears to be common to the more primitive varieties of speech. E. C. Hills, in his elaborate study of the vocabulary of a child of two,
¹⁴⁶
found that it contained but 23 descriptive adjectives, of which six were the names of colors, as against 59 verbs and 173 common nouns. Moreover, most of the 23 minus six were adjectives of all work, such as
nasty, funny
and
nice
. Colloquial American uses the same rubber-stamps of speech.
Funny
connotes the whole range of the unusual;
hard
indicates every shade of difficulty;
nice
is everything satisfactory;
wonderful
is a superlative of almost limitless scope. The decay of
one
to a vague
n
-sound, as in
this’n
, is matched by a decay of
than
after comparatives.
Earlier than
is seldom if ever heard; composition reduces the two words to
earlier’n
. So with
better’n, faster’n, hotter’n, deader’n
, etc. Once I overheard the following dialogue: “I like a belt
more looser’n
what this one is.” “Well, then, why don’t you
unloosen
it
more’n
you got it
unloosened?
” That decay of the
-ed
termination which has substituted
damn
for
damned
has also clipped many other adjectives,
e.g., high-toned
. I never hear “a
high-toned
man”; it is always
high-tone
.

All the adverbial endings in English, save
-ly
, have gradually fallen into decay; it is the only one that is ever used to form new adverbs. At earlier stages of the language various other endings were used, and some of them survive in a few old words, though they are no longer employed in making new ones. The Old English endings were
-e
and
-lice
. The latter was, at first, merely an -
e
-ending to
adjectives in
-lic
, but after a time it attained to independence and was attached to adjectives not ending in
-lic
. In Middle English this
-lice
changed to
-li
and
-ly
. Meanwhile, the -
e
-ending, following the -e-endings of the nouns, adjectives and verbs, ceased to be pronounced, and so it gradually fell away. Thus a good many adverbs came to be indistinguishable from their ancestral adjectives, for example,
hard
in
to pull hard, loud
in
to speak loud
, and
deep
in
to bury deep
(Old English,
deop-e
). Worse, not a few adverbs actually became adjectives, for example,
wide
, which was originally the Old English adjective
wid
(
wide
) with the adverbial -e-ending, and
late
, which was originally the Old English adjective
læt
(slow) with the same ending.

The result of this movement toward identity in form was a confusion between the two classes of words, and from the time of Chaucer down to the Eighteenth Century one finds innumerable instances of the use of the simple adjective as an adverb. “He will answer
trewe
” is in Sir Thomas More; “and
soft
unto himself he sayd” in Chaucer; “the singers sang
loud
” in the Authorized Version of the Bible (Nehemiah
XII, 42
), and “
indifferent
well” in Shakespeare. Even after the purists of the Eighteenth Century began their corrective work this confusion continued. Thus one finds “The people are
miserable
poor” in Hume, “How
unworthy
you treated mankind” in the
Spectator
, and “
wonderful
silly” in Joseph Butler. To this day the grammarians battle against the amalgamation, still without complete success; every new volume of rules and regulations for those who would speak by the book is full of warnings against it. Among the great masses of the plain people, it goes without saying, it flourishes unimpeded. The cautions of the school-marm, in a matter so subtle and so plainly lacking in logic or necessary, are forgotten as quickly as her prohibition of the double negative, and thereafter the adjective and the adverb tend more and more to coalesce in a part of speech which serves the purposes of both, and is simple and intelligible and satisfying.

Charters gives a number of characteristic examples of its use: “wounded very
bad
,” “I
sure
was stiff,” “drank out of a cup
easy
,” “He looked up
quick.
” Many more are in Lardner: “a chance to see me work
regular
.” “I am glad I was lucky enough to marry
happy
.” “I beat them
easy
.” and so on. And others fall upon the ear every day: “He done it
proper
.” “He done himself
proud
.” “They
landed
safe
,” “She drove
careless
,” “They didn’t know no
different
” “She was dressed
neat
” “She was
awful
ugly,” “The horse ran
O.K.
,” “It
near
finished him,” “It sells
quick
,” “I like it
fine
,” “He et
hoggish
,” “Everyone will be treated
fair
,” “She acted
mean
,” “He loved her something
fierce
,” “They keep company
steady
,” not to forget “Don’t take it
serious
,” which appeared some years ago in a song crooned by the once celebrated Rudy Vallée. The bob-tailed adverb, indeed, enters into a large number of the commonest coins of speech, and in many situations is perfectly “correct,” though pedants may denounce it.
¹⁴⁷
On the level of the vulgate there is an almost incomplete incapacity to distinguish any useful difference between adverb and adjective, and beneath it, perhaps, lies the similar incapacity to distinguish between the grammatical effects and relations of the common verb of being and those of any other verb. If “It
is
bad” is correct, then why should “It
leaks
bad” be incorrect? It is just this disdain of purely grammatical reasons that is at the bottom of most of the phenomena visible in vulgar American, and the same impulse is observable in all other languages during periods of inflectional decay. During the highly inflected stage of a language the parts of speech are sharply distinct, but when inflections fall off they tend to disappear. The adverb, being at best the step-child of grammar — as the old Latin grammarians used to say,
Omnis pars orationis migrat in adverbium —
is one of the chief victims of this anarchy. John Home Tooke, despairing of bringing it to any order, even in the most careful English, called it, in his “Diversions of Purley,” “the common sink and repository of all heterogeneous and unknown corruptions.”