Dr. Menner argues that any list of conjugations of the verbs of the vulgate should include a “liberal intersprinkling of normal principal parts, at least as alternatives.” But it must be manifest that this intersprinkling would be of little significance unless it were accompanied by statistical evidence as to the prevalence of the varying forms in a typical section of the general population. That evidence is still lacking, but meanwhile one may certainly give some credit to the testimony of one’s ears. The vulgar, to be sure, occasionally say I saw, but no one who has ever listened to their speech attentively can doubt that they usually say I seen, just as, at the other end of the scale the illuminati occasionally say I done,10 but usually say I did. If the study of dialects had to include the investigation of all shadings up to the purest form of the standard speech, then the study of dialects would be vain, and indeed absurd. As Dr. Menner himself says, there are verbs which the people of his lowest class conjugate improperly “without exception,” e.g., to come and to run. These, at least, need not be outfitted with alternatives. In the case of other verbs, usage among the humble is not fixed, and both the standard preterites and perfect participles and their vulgar variants are heard. In yet other cases, all persons not downright illiterate reveal a distaste for certain forms, e.g., brung, fit and druv, and seldom employ them save in conscious attempts at waggishness. But all these verbs, save only those of the third class, actually belong to the vulgate, though they may not be used invariably, and their grammatical and syntactical history and relations deserve a great deal more patient study than they have got so far. The same thing is true of the pronouns of the common speech, and of all its other contents. The theory that it is somehow infra dig to investigate them is one that American scholarship can hardly entertain much longer.11
Rather curiously, the sermo vulgus was for long as diligently neglected by the professional writers of the country as by the philologians. There are foreshadowings of it in “The Biglow Papers,” in “Huckleberry Finn” and in some of the frontier humor of the years before the Civil War, but the enormous dialect literature of the later Nineteenth Century left it almost untouched. Localisms in vocabulary and pronunciation were explored at length, but the general folk-speech went virtually unobserved. It is not to be found in “Chimmie Fadden”; it is not in “David Harum”; it is not even in the fables of George Ade. It began to appear in the stories of Helen Green during the first years of the century, but the business of reporting it with complete accuracy had to wait for Ring Lardner, a Chicago newspaper reporter, who began experimenting with it in 1908 or thereabout. In his grotesque but searching tales of baseball-players, pugilists, movie queens, song-writers and other such dismal persons he set down common American with the utmost precision, and yet with enough imagination to make his work a contribution of genuine and permanent value to the national literature. In any story of his taken at random it is possible to unearth almost every grammatical peculiarity of the vulgar speech, and he always resisted very stoutly the temptation to lay on its humors too thickly. Here, for example, are a few typical sentences from “The Busher’s Honeymoon”:12
I and Florrie was married the day before yesterday just like I told you we was going to be.… You was to get married in Bedford, where not nothing is nearly half so dear.… The sum of what I have wrote down is $29.40…. Allen told me I should ought to give the priest $5…. I never seen him before.… I didn’t used to eat no lunch in the playing season except when I knowed I was not going to work.… I guess the meals has cost me all together about $1.50, and I have eat very little myself.… I was willing to tell her all about them two poor girls.… They must not be no mistake about who is the boss in my house. Some men lets their wife run all over them.… Allen has went to a college foot-ball game. One of the reporters give him a pass.… He called up and said he hadn’t only the one pass, but he was not hurting my feelings none.… The flat across the hall from this here one is for rent.… If we should of boughten furniture it would cost us in the neighborhood of $100, even without no piano.… I consider myself lucky to of found out about this before it was too late and somebody else had of gotten the tip.… It will always be ourn, even when we move away.… Maybe you could of did better if you had of went at it in a different way.… Both her and you is welcome at my house.… I never seen so much wine drank in my life.…
Here are specimens to fit into most of Charters’s categories — verbs confused as to tense, pronouns confused as to case, double and even triple negatives, nouns and verbs disagreeing in number, have softened to of, n marking the possessive instead of s, like used in place of as, and so on. A study of the whole story would probably unearth all the remaining errors noted by Charters in Kansas City. Lardner’s baseball player, though he has pen in hand and is on his guard, and is thus very careful to write would not instead of wouldn’t and even am not instead of ain’t, provides us with a comprehensive and highly instructive panorama of popular linguistic habits. To him the forms of the subjunctive mood in the verb have no existence, so that shall has almost disappeared from his vocabulary, and adjectives and adverbs are indistinguishable, and the objective case in the pronoun is indicated only by word order. He uses the word that is simplest, the grammatical pattern that is handiest. And so he moves toward the philological millennium dreamed of by George T. Lanigan, when “the singular verb shall lie down with the plural noun, and a little conjunction shall lead them.”13 This vulgar American is a very fluent and even garrulous fellow, and he commonly pronounces his words distinctly, so that his grammatical felonies shine forth clearly. In the conversation of a London Cockney, a Yorkshire farm-laborer or a Scots hillman precisely similar attentats upon the canon are obscured by phonological muddiness, but the Americano gives his consonants their full values and is kind to his vowels. His vocabulary is much larger than his linguistic betters commonly assume. They labor under a tradition that the lowly manage to get through life with a few hundred or a few thousand words. That tradition, according to a recent writer on the subject,14 “originated with two English clergymen, one of whom stated that ‘some of the laborers in his parish had not three hundred words in their vocabulary,’ while the other, Archdeacon Farrar, said he ‘once listened for a long time together to the conversation of three peasants who were gathering apples among the boughs of an orchard, and as far as I could conjecture, the whole number of words they used did not exceed a hundred.’ ” The famous Max Müller gave imprudent support to this nonsense, and it was later propagated by Wilhelm Wundt, the psychologist, by Barrett Wendell, and by various other persons who should have known better. It has now been established by scientific inquiry that even children of five or six years have vocabularies of between 2000 and 3000 words, and that even the most stupid adults know at least 5000. The average American, indeed, probably knows nearly 5000 nouns. As for the educated, their vocabularies range from 30,000 words to maybe as many as 70,000.15
2. THE VERB
The chief grammatical peculiarities of vulgar American lie, as Charters shows, among the verbs and pronouns. The nouns in common use, in the main, are quite sound in form. Very often, of course, they do not belong to the vocabulary of English, but they at least belong to the vocabulary of American: the proletariat, setting aside transient slang, calls things by their proper names, and pronounces those names more or less correctly. The adjectives, too, are treated rather politely, and the adverbs, though commonly transformed into the forms of their corresponding adjectives, are not further mutilated. But the verbs and pronouns undergo changes which set off the common speech very sharply from both correct English and correct American. This process, of course, is only natural, for it is among the verbs and pronouns that nearly all the remaining inflections in English are to be found, and so they must bear the chief pressure of the influences that have been warring upon every sort of inflection since the earliest days. The hypothetical Indo-European language is assumed to have had eight cases of the noun; in Old English they fell to four, with a moribund
instrumental, identical in form with the dative, hanging in the air; in Middle English the dative and accusative began to decay; in Modern English they have disappeared altogether, save as ghosts to haunt grammarians. But we still have two plainly defined conjugations of the verb, and we still inflect it, in part at least, for number and person. And we yet retain an objective case of the pronoun, and inflect it for person, number and gender.
Following are paradigms showing the conjugation of some of the more interesting verbs of the vulgate, with notes on variants:
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
am16 was17 been18
attackt attackted19 attackted
beat beaten,20 or beat beat
become21 become became
begin begun22 began
bend bent bent
bet bet bet
bind bound bound
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
bite bitten23 bit
bleed bled bled
blow blowed, or blew, or blown24 blowed, or blown
break broke, or broken25 broken, or broke
bring brought, brung or brang26 brought, or brung
build built built
burn burnt27 burnt
bust28 busted, or bust29 busted
buy bought, or boughten bought, or boughten30
cast casted casted
catch caught, or catched31 caught, or catched
choose chose, or chosen chosen, or chose32
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
climb uclumb33 clumb
cling (to hold fast) clung, or clang clung
cling (to ring) clang clung, or clang
come come34 come, or came
creep crep, or crope
crow crope crowed
cuss35 crew cussed
cut cussed cut
dare cut dared
deal dared, or dast36 dealt
dig dole dug
dive dug dove37 dived
do done38 done, or did
drag drug drug
draw drawed drawed, or drew
dream drempt, or dremp39 drempt, or dremp
drink drunk, or drank40 drank
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
drive drove41 drove
drown drownded42 drownded
eat et, or eat43 eat, ate, or et44
fall fell, or fallen fell
feed fed fed
feel felt felt
fetch45 fetched fetched
fight fought46 fought
find found found
fine found47 found
fling flung, or flang flung
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
flow flew flowed
fly flew flew
forbid forbid forbid
forget forgot, or forgotten forgotten
forsake forsaken forsook
freeze frozen, or froze48 froze
get49 got, or gotten gotten,50 or got
give give, or given51 give, or gave
glide glode52 glode
go went went, or gone
grope grope53 grope
grow growed growed
hang hung54 hung
have had had, or hadden
hear heerd, or hern heerd, or hern
heat55 het, or heaten het, or heaten
heave hove hove
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
help helped, or help helped, or help
hide hidden56 hid
hist57 histed histed
hit hit hit
hold helt helt, or held
holler hollered hollered
hurt hurt hurt
keep kep kep, or kept
kneel kneeled kneeled, or knelt
know knowed knew, or knowed58
lay laid, or lain lain, or laid
lead led led
lean lent lent
leap lep lep
learn lernt lernt
lend59 loaned loaned
let left60 left
lie (to falsify) lied lied
lie (to recline)61 laid, or lain lain, or laid
light lit lit
loosen62 loosened loosened
lose lost lost
make made made
mean ment ment
meet met met
mow mown mowed
pay paid paid
plead pled pled
prove proven, or proved proven63
quit quit quit
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
raise raised64 raised
recognize65 recognize recognize
rench66 renched renched
ride ridden67 rode68
rile69 riled riled
ring rung rang
rise rose, or riz70 rose, or riz
run run ran
sass71 sassed, or sass sassed, or sass
say sez, said, or say said
see seen, see, or seed saw, or see72
set73 set sat
shake shaken, or shuck shook
shine (to polish) shined shined
shoe shoed shoed
show shown shown
shut74 shut shut
sing sung sang
sink sunk sank
skin skun, or skan skun
sleep slep slep, or slept
slide slid slid
sling slung, or slang slang, or slang
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
smell smelt smelt
sneak snuck snuck
speak spoke, or spoken spoke75
speed speeded speeded
spell spelt spelt
spill spilt spilt
spin span span, or spun
spit spit spit
spoil spoilt spoilt
spring sprung sprang
steal stole stole
sting stang stung
stink stank stunk, or stank
strike struck struck
sweat sweat76 sweat
sweep swep swep
swell swole swollen
swim swum swam
swing swang swung
take taken, or tuck took,77 or tuck
teach78 taught taught
tear torn tore
tell tole79 tole
tend80 tended, tend, or tent tended
think thought81 thought
throw throwed, or thrown throwed, or threw82
wake woke woken
Present Preterite Perfect Participle
wear wore wore
weep wep wep
wet wet wet
win won, wan, or win83 won, or wan
wish84 wished wished
wring wrung, or wrang wrang, or wrung
write written wrote85
A glance at these paradigms is enough to show several general tendencies, the most obvious of which is the transfer of verbs from the strong conjugation with vowel change to the weak without it, and vice versa. The former began before the Norman Conquest, and was marked during the Middle English period. Chaucer used growed for grew in the prologue to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and rised for rose and smited for smote are in John Purvey’s edition of the Bible, c. 1385. Many of these transformations were afterward abandoned, but a large number survived, for example, climbed for clomb as the preterite of to climb, and melted for molt as the preterite of to melt. Others showed themselves during the early part of the Modern English period. Comed as the perfect participle of to come, and digged as the preterite of to dig are both in Shakespeare, and the latter is also in Milton and in the Authorized Version of the Bible. This tendency went furthest, of course, in the vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects. I seen and I knowed, for example, are common to all of them. But during the Seventeenth Century, for some reason to me unknown, there arose a contrary tendency — that is, toward strong conjugations. The vulgar speech of Ireland, which preserves many Seventeenth Century forms, shows it plainly. Ped for paid, gother for gathered, and ruz for raised are still heard there, and
P. W. Joyce says flatly that the Irish, “retaining the old English custom [i.e., the custom of the period of Cromwell’s invasion, c. 1650], have a leaning toward the strong inflection.”86 Certain forms of the early American national period, now reduced to the estate of localisms, were also survivors of the Seventeenth Century.
“The three great causes of change in language,” says A. H. Sayce, “may be briefly described as (1) imitation or analogy, (2) a wish to be clear and emphatic, and (3) laziness. Indeed, if we choose to go deep enough we might reduce all three causes to the general one of laziness, since it is easier to imitate than to say something new.”87 This tendency to take well-worn paths, paradoxically enough, seems to be responsible both for the transfer of verbs from the strong to the weak declension, and for the transfer of certain others from the weak to the strong. A verb in everyday use tends almost inevitably to pull less familiar verbs with it, whether it be strong or weak. Thus, fed as the preterite of to feed and led as the preterite of to lead eased the way in the American vulgate for pled as the preterite of to plead; and rung as plainly performed the same office for brung, and drove for dove and hove, and stole for dole, and won for skun. Contrariwise, the same combination of laziness and imitativeness worked toward the regularization of certain verbs that were historically irregular. One sees the antagonistic pull of the two influences in the case of verbs ending in -ow. The analogy of knew and grew suggests snew as the preterite of to snow, and it is sometimes encountered in the American vulgate. But meanwhile knew and grew have been themselves succumbing to the greater regularity of knowed and growed. So snew, losing support, grows rare and is in palpable decay, but knowed and growed show great vigor, as do many of their analogues. The substitution of heerd for heard also presents a case of logic and convenience supporting analogy. The form is suggested by feared, cheered, cleared, etc., but its main advantage lies in the fact that it gets rid of a vowel change, always an impediment to easy speech.
American Language Page 60