Vulgar American, like all the higher forms of American and all save the most precise form of written English, has abandoned the old inflections of here, there and where, to wit, hither and hence, thither and thence, whither and whence. These fossil remains of dead cases are fast disappearing from the language. In the case of hither (to here) even the preposition has been abandoned. One says, not “I came to here,” but simply “I came here” In the case of hence, however, from here is still used, and so with from there and from where. Finally, it goes without saying that the common American tendency to add s to such adverbs as towards is carried to full length in the vulgar language. One constantly hears, not only some-wheres and forwards, but even noways and anyways, where’bouts and here’bouts. Here we have but one more example of the movement toward uniformity and simplicity. Anyways is obviously fully supported by sideways and always. As for the dropping of the a of about in here’bouts and where’bouts, it is supported by the analogous dropping of the al in almost, when the word precedes all, anyone or everybody. One seldom hears “Almost anyone can do that”; the common form is “most anyone.”151
7. THE DOUBLE NEGATIVE
In Vulgar American the double negative is so freely used that the simple negative appears to be almost abandoned. Such phrases as “I see nobody,” “I could hardly walk,” “I know nothing about it” are heard so seldom among the masses of the people that they appear to be affectations when encountered; the well-nigh universal forms are “I don’t see nobody,” “I couldn’t hardly walk,” and “I don’t know nothing about it.” Charters lists some very typical examples, among them, “He ain’t never coming back no more,” “You don’t care for nobody but yourself,” “Couldn’t be no more happier” and “I can’t see nothing.” In Lardner there are innumerable others: “They was not no team,” “I have not never thought of that,” “I can’t write no more,” “No chance to get no money from nowhere,” “We can’t have nothing to do,” and so on. Some of his specimens show a considerable complexity, for example, “Matthewson was not only going as far as the coast,” meaning, as the context shows, that he was going as far as the coast and no farther. Many other curious specimens are in my collectanea, among them: “One swaller don’t make no Summer,” “I never seen nothing I would of rather saw,” and “Once a child gets burnt once it won’t never stick its hand in no fire no more,” and so on. The last embodies a triple negative. In “You don’t know nobody what don’t want nobody to do nothing for ’em, do you? there is a quadruplet, and in “I ain’t never done no dirt of no kind to nobody” reported from the Ozarks by Vance Randolph, there is a quintuplet.
Like most other examples of “bad grammar” encountered in American, the compound negative is of great antiquity and was once quite respectable. The student of Old English encounters it constantly. In that language the negative of the verb was formed by prefixing a particle, ne. Thus, singan (to sing) became ne singan (not to sing). In case the verb began with a vowel the ne dropped its e and was combined with the verb; in case it began with an h or a w followed by a vowel, the h or w of the verb and the e of ne were both dropped, as in nœfth(has not), from ne-hcejth (not has), and nolde (would not), from ne-wolde. Finally, in case the vowel following a w was i, it changed to y, as in nyste (knew not), from ne-wiste. But inasmuch as Old English was a fully inflected language the inflections for the negative did not stop with the verbs; the indefinite article, the indefinite pronoun and even some of the nouns were also inflected, and survivors of those forms appear to this day in such words as none and nothing. Moreover, when an actual inflection was impossible it was the practice to insert this ne before a word, in the sense of our no or not. Still more, it came to be the practice to reinforce ne, before a vowel, with na (not) or naht (nothing), which later degenerated to not and not. As a result, there were fearful and wonderful combinations of negatives, some of them fully matching the best efforts of Lardner’s baseball players. Sweet gives several curious examples.152 “Nan ne dorste nan thing ascian,” translated literally, becomes “No one dares not ask nothing.” “Thæt hus na ne feoll” becomes “The house did not fall not.” As for the Middle English “He never nadde nothing,” it has too modern and familiar a ring to need translating at all. Chaucer, at the beginning of the period of transition to Modern English, used the double negative with the utmost freedom. In the prologue to “The Knight’s Tale” is this:
Ne nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde
In al his lyf unto no maner wight.
By the time of Shakespeare this license was already much restricted, but a good many double negatives are nevertheless to be found in his plays, and he was particularly shaky in the use of nor. In “Richard III” one finds “I never was nor never will be”; in “Measure for Measure,” “Harp not on that nor do not banish treason”; and in “Romeo and Juliet,” “I will not budge for no man’s pleasure.” Most of these have been expunged by ticklish editors, but the double negative continues to flourish, not only in the vulgar speech but also on higher levels. I turn to the Congressional Record and at once find “without hardly the batting of an eye.”153 Indeed, even such careful writers of English as T. H. Huxley, Robert Louis Stevenson and Leslie Stephen have occasionally succumbed.154 The double negative is perfectly allowable in the Romance languages, and now and then some anarchistic English grammarian boldly defends and even advocates it. A long time ago a writer in the London Review155 argued that its abandonment had worked “great injury to strength of expression.” Obviously, “I won’t take nothing” is stronger than either “I will take nothing” or “I won’t take anything” And equally without doubt there is a picturesque charm, if not really any extra vigor in the vulgar American “He ain’t only got but one leg,” “I ain’t scarcely got practically nothing,” “She never goes hardly nowhere,” “Time is what we ain’t got nothing but” and “Ain’t nobody there,” the last, of course, being understood to mean “There is no one there.” “I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t rain” is almost Standard American. So is the somewhat equivocal form represented by “I have never been able to find but a single copy.”156 In the Southern mountains the double negative flourishes lushly. Here are some specimens submitted to a candid world by Dr. Josiah Combs:157
He ain’t got nary none.
Fotch-on [i.e., educated] preachers ain’t never a-goin’ to do nothiri nohow.
I hain’t never seen no men-folks of no kind do no washin’ [of clothes].
To which may be added the title of a once-popular song: “I ain’t never done nothing to nobody no time.” And the following contribution by Will Rogers: “Neither don’t put anybody to work.”158 And the inquiry of a storekeeper in Washington county, Virginia, supplied by Mr. Carl Zeisberg, of Glenside, Pa.: “There wouldn’t be nothing I couldn’t show you, you don’t think?” Says Mr. Zeisberg: “I think I know the reason for these complex negatives: their genesis lies in an innate consideration for the customer’s wishes, an excessive timidity.”
8. OTHER SYNTACTICAL PECULIARITIES
“Language begins,” says Sayce, “with sentences, not with single words.” In a speech in process of rapid development, unrestrained by critical analysis, the tendency to sacrifice the integrity of words to the needs of the complete sentence is especially marked. One finds it clearly in vulgar American. Already we have examined various assimilation and composition forms: that’n, use’to, woulda, them’ere, and so on. Many others are observable. Off’n is a good example; it comes from off of or off from and shows a preposition decaying to the form of a mere inflectional particle. One constantly hears “I bought it off’n John.” Sorta, kinda, coupla, outa and their like follow in the footsteps of woulda. Usen’t follows the analogy of don’t and wouldn’t, as in “I didn’t usen’t to be.” Would’ve and should’ve are widely used; Lardner commonly heard them as would of and should of. The neutral a-particle also appears in other situations, especially before way, as in that-a way, this-a way and atta-boy. It is found again in a t
all, a liaison form of at all.159 It most often represents of or have, but sometimes it represents to, as in orta and gonta (going to). There are philologians who believe that the appearance of such particles indicates that English, having shed most of its old inflections, is now entering upon a new inflected stage. “Form,” says George O. Curme,160 “is now playing a greater role than in early Modern English. The simplification of our English, our most precious heritage, was carried a little too far in older English, and it was later found necessary to add more forms, and in the present interesting period of development still more are being created.” “The articulatory words of a purely positional language,” adds George Kingsley Zipf,161 “will tend in time to become agglutinized to the words they modify, and through agglutinization become inflectional affixes.… As they become more firmly agglutinized they become more formally inflections which modify the meaning of the word to which they are appended. The use of the affix is extended to other words to modify their meaning in the same direction. The language thus becomes more and more inflected.” Dr. Zipf calls this “the grand cycle in linguistic development,” and believes that English is now on the up-curve. A study of liaison in spoken American — for example, the use of farzino for as far as I know, noted by David Humphreys in his glossary so long ago as 1815 — should throw some light upon this process, but that study still lags.162
Many of the forms that the grammatical pedants rail against most vehemently — for example, the split infinitive, the use of between, either and neither with more than one, the use of than after different, the use of like for as, and so on — are so firmly established in the American vulgate that the schoolmarm’s attempts to put them down are plainly hopeless. Most of them, in fact, have crept into more or less elegant usage, and such reformers as Robert C. Pooley and Janet Rankin Aiken argue boldly that the war upon them should be abandoned. So long ago as 1872, the peppery Fitzedward Hall demonstrated, in his “Recent Exemplifications of False Philology,” that different than had been used by Addison, Steele, Defoe, Richardson, Miss Burney, Coleridge, De Quincey, Thackeray and Newman, yet most of the current textbooks of “correct” English continue to denounce it. In September, 1922, the novelist, Meredith Nicholson, joined in the jehad against it in a letter to the New York Herald:
Within a few years the abominable phrase different than has spread through the country like a pestilence. In my own Indiana, where the wells of English undefiled are jealously guarded, the infection has awakened general alarm.
To which the New York Sun, a few days later, replied sensibly:
The excellent tribe of grammarians, the precisians and all others who strive to be correct and correctors, have as much power to prohibit a single word or phrase as a gray squirrel has to put out Orion with a flicker of its tail.
The error of Mr. Nicholson, and of all such unhappy viewers with alarm, is in assuming that there is enough magic in pedagogy to teach “correct” English to the plain people. There is, in fact, far too little; even the fearsome abracadabra of Teachers’ College, Columbia, will never suffice for the purpose. The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it. Their lives would be more comfortable if they ceased to repine over it, and instead gave it some hard study. It is very amusing, and not a little instructive.
1 See The Verbs of the Vulgate, by Robert J. Menner, American Speech, Jan., 1926, p. 239, and The Verbs of the Vulgate in Their Historical Relations, by Henry Alexander, the same, April, 1929.
2 An excellent account of the contents of these books is to be found in Grammar and Usage in Textbooks on English, by Robert C. Pooley; Madison, Wis., 1933. The bad ones recall a dictum of Noah Webster in his Dissertations on the English Language; Boston, 1789, pref., p. vii: “Our modern grammars have done much more hurt than good. The authors have labored to prove, what is obviously absurd, viz., that our language is not made right; and in pursuance of this idea, have tried to make it over again, and persuade the English to speak by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own. Hence they have rejected many phrases of pure English, and substituted those which are neither English nor sense.”
3 If there were a Pulitzer Prize for such works it would undoubtedly go to Dr. Morris Swadesh’s monograph, The Phonetics of Chitimacha, Language, Dec., 1934, p. 345 ff. Chitimacha is an Indian tongue that is now spoken by but two people, and “they employ slightly different phonemic systems.” Thus Dr. Swadesh was forced to deal with one form as the standard language, and the other as a dialect. His immensely patient and exhaustive inquiry was carried on during the Summers of 1932 and 1933 on a grant from the Committee on Research in American Native Languages. His report occupies no less than eighteen pages in Language.
4 The pioneer study seems to have been a brief investigation of the oral errors made by public-school children in Connersville, Ind. It was undertaken by G. M. Wilson, and his observations were printed in the report of the Connersville School Board for 1908. Unluckily, I am informed by Mr. Edwin C. Dodson, superintendent of schools at Connersville, that a fire destroyed the board’s copy of this report, and I have been unable to find one elsewhere. But in Dec., 1909, Mr. Wilson printed a paper on Errors in the Language of Grade-Pupils, based upon the Connersville material, in the Educator-Journal.
5 Dr. Charters’s report appears as Vol. XVI, No. 2, University of Missouri Bulletin, Education Series No. 9, Jan., 1915. He was aided in his inquiry by Edith Miller, teacher of English in one of the St. Louis high-schools.
6 The Verbs of the Vulgate, above cited, p. 231.
7 The report of Dr. O’Rourke is summarized in English Use and Misuse, by Paul S. Schilles, New York Times, July 10, 1934. A more extensive account of the investigation is in Rebuilding the English-Usage Curriculum to Insure Greater Mastery of Essentials, by Dr. O’Rourke himself; Washington, 1934. It was made on a grant from the Psychological Corporation, with aid from the Carnegie Corporation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and among its sponsors were Dr. Charles H. Judd of the University of Chicago and Dr. Edward L. Thorndike of Teachers College, Columbia.
8 In O’Rourke and Leonard, by Janet Rankin Aiken, American Speech, Dec., 1934, Dr. O’Rourke is criticized sharply for assuming that the “bad grammar” he unearthed is really bad. “The more people make a given mistake,” she says, “the less it should be corrected. This fundamental principle, recognized by lexicographers and the more liberal grammarians, must be the basis of our thinking on the subject. Unlike arithmetic, where the more frequent an error is, the more attention it needs, the linguist must insist that speech errors proved to be very frequent are thereby proved to be not errors at all.” As an example, Dr. Aiken cites the use of who in “Do you know who they were waiting for this morning?” See also the preface to George O. Curme’s Syntax; Boston, 1931, p. vi.
9 Logan Pearsall Smith, in Words and Idioms; London, 1925, p. 149, points out that there are no less than four distinct varieties of Standard English. The first is “the language of colloquial talk, with its expletives, easy idioms, and a varying amount of slang.” Second comes “the vernacular of good conversation, more correct, more dignified, and entirely, or almost entirely, free from slang.” Then comes written prose, “which is richer in vocabulary and somewhat more old-fashioned in construction than the spoken language,” and finally there is the language of poetry. “If we examine this linguistic ladder,” says Mr. Smith, “we will find that its lowest rung is fixed close to the soil of popular and vulgar speech.” The vulgar speech has like varieties. Its written form differs considerably from its spoken form, and the latter ranges from an almost simian gabble to something closely approximating ordinary colloquial American.
10 Menner, p. 232.
11 A bibliography of the very meager literature of the subject from 1908 to 1930, running to but 33 items, is to be found in The Most Common Grammatical Errors, by Henry Harap, E
nglish Journal, June, 1930. Mr. Harap lists the errors usually observed, but makes no attempt to estimate either their relative or their absolute frequency. He avoids the question, he says, because “of the lack of uniformity in recording them by various investigators.” Some later studies are summarized in A Critical Summary of Selective Research in Elementary School Composition, Language, and Grammar, by W. S. Guiler and E. A. Betts, Elementary English Review, March–June, 1934. Of these, the most interesting is Studies in the Learning of English Expression; No. V: Grammar, by Percival M. Symonds and Eugene M. Hinton, Teachers College Record, Feb., 1932.
12 Saturday Evening Post, July 11, 1914. Reprinted in You Know Me, Al; Garden City, L. I., 1915.
13 Lardner died on Sept. 25, 1933, at the early age of 48. My own debt to him was very large. The first edition of the present work, published in 1919, brought me into contact with him, and for the second edition, published in 1921, he prepared two amusing specimens of the common speech in action. At that time, and almost until his death, he made penetrating and valuable suggestions. His ear for the minor peculiarities of vulgar American was extraordinarily keen. Once, sitting with him, I used the word feller. “Where and when,” he demanded, “did you ever hear anyone say feller?” I had to admit, on reflection, that the true form was fella, though it is almost always written feller by authors. But never by Lardner. So far as I can make out, there is not a single error in the whole canon of his writings. His first book of stories, You Know Me, Al, was published in 1915. He had many imitators, notably Edward Streeter, author of Dere Mable; New York, 1918; H. C. Witwer, who published more than a dozen books between 1918 and his death in 1929; and Will Rogers, who contributed a daily dispatch to a syndicate of newspapers, written partly in Standard English but partly in the vulgate, from 1930 to 1935. He also provided inspiration for the writers of popular songs and of captions for comic-strips. See Stabilizing the Language Through Popular Songs, by Sigmund Spaeth, New Yorker, July 7, 1934, and The English of the Comic Cartoons, by Helen Trace Tysell, American Speech, Feb., 1935. But these disciples never attained to Lardner’s virtuosity.
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