and Latin, but often little or no opportunity is given to the student for acquiring Anglo-Saxon. The defense of Greek and Latin is often made that these languages introduce the student to a body of literature that ranks with the world's best, whereas Anglo-Saxon literature in comparison is both meager and insignificant. But it remains to be proved that Greek and Latin, as they are ordinarily read, really do beget in the students who pursue these subjects a genuine appreciation of the literary qualities of classical literature. What students usually get is a little Latin and very much less Greek, a mere smattering of information that is as likely to be a hindrance as it is to be a help to them. So far as Latin is concerned, its usefulness for the student of English lies almost entirely in the field of etymology, in the study of the meanings of words. But etymology is only one of the aspects of language, and, on the whole, not the most significant for the student who wishes to know how language in its general structure changes and grows. There seems to be no valid reason, moreover, why the foreign traditions which have attached themselves to the English language should be studied and the more fundamental native tradition be neglected. The student who has Latin, French, and Greek will frequently find them useful in his study of English, but his knowledge of English is bound to remain incomplete and fragmentary if he has no acquaintance with those basic traditions of the language which are preserved for us in the records that date from the periods before and immediately after the Conquest.

The mere reading of texts will not in itself provide the student with a systematized and organized view of the

development of the language. To secure such a view it is necessary to arrange and classify the phenomena of language as they appear in texts under general heads and principles. A pioneer would do this by taking the texts, observing the facts for himself, and then arranging these facts under the principles which in his judgment best explained them. But this would manifestly be a long and laborious undertaking, and fortunately it is not now necessary for every historical student thus to take a fresh and independent start. The pioneering work in the history of the English language has long been done, and the results of it have been set forth in the many admirable histories of the language now available. With the histories as aids, the student should be able to organize his information under several clearly defined heads. First and easiest of all would come the study of words or vocabulary as the body of linguistic detail offering the least resistance. Words are readily detachable from their context, and as meaning in words is a part of general experience, changes or developments in meaning can usually be followed without the application of any highly technical methods. After words the student would turn his attention to form or structure, and here he would have under observation details not quite as obvious or simple, but nevertheless susceptible of definite organization. After structure would come the sounds of the language. The systematic study of English sounds is not work for novices, and in fact it can be carried on satisfactorily only by the student who is willing to discipline himself in a somewhat technical method of procedure. Nevertheless it is the most rewarding of all the ways of approach to the study of the language, and neither the study of vocabulary

nor the study of structure can be prosecuted to its end without calling in the aid of the student of sounds.

Background, vocabulary, structure, and sounds will provide an abundant body of material in the history of the English language with which the student may occupy himself, but whether he will or not, the student is sure to find that he cannot keep entirely within the limits of the English language. Inevitably he will be led to raise questions which have to do with the relations of English to other languages. These questions might lead him very far and might suggest to him the advisability of becoming acquainted with many different languages that in the beginning of his studies seemed very remote from the interest of one concerned primarily with the English language. The implications of this comparative study and of the other kinds of historical study of English that have been briefly indicated in this chapter will be set forth in somewhat fuller detail in the chapters that follow. The topic may be left for the moment with the observation that though the remote associations of English cannot be disregarded, it is not necessarily the aim of all historical study of language to carry words back to Indo-European or other very early origins. The historical student need not wait to begin his investigations until he has command of Gothic, of Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit. History lies at his very doors. What happened yesterday is no less historical than what happened three thousand years ago, and this contemporary kind of history is often more convincing than ancient history because the details of it are more directly under control. A good deal is to be said in favor of the principle of proceeding from the better known to the less known. The student who observes

that the word lord is now obsolescent, surviving mainly in religious use and in titles, although the corresponding feminine lady still maintains a vigorous existence, has here an interesting theme for research and speculation which may be carried on without venturing into those hazy theories of the lord as the bread keeper and the lady as the bread kneader. Science, business, politics, all the interests of the day are influences which continually modify the character of the language, occasionally by introducing new words, more often by changing the content of old words. And a competent understanding of what takes place in the language more immediately under our observation would seem to be one of the safest guards against misapprehension of what may have taken place in times and circumstances which can be reconstructed only through processes of remoter inference.

XVI

WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

EVERYBODY has studied English grammar and therefore anybody ought to be able to say what it is all about. But these practical experiences, not always happy, do not necessarily imply an intelligent understanding of the nature of the subject. The truth is that English grammar, in spite of the fact that it has been taught to successive generations of English speaking youth for nearly three centuries, is still a much debated and uncertain matter, as to its proper content, as to its purpose, and as to the manner in which it should be presented.

The traditional school-book definitions of grammar do not get very far. Some of them define grammar as the science of language - a broad and comprehensive but vague description. Or English grammar is often said to be the science which tells how to speak and write the English language correctly. But this definition is manifestly too narrow. It assumes that any English which is not correct has no grammar. On the strength of this assumption, the assertion is sometimes made that it is improper to attach the adjectives good or bad to the words "English grammar," for when a form of English is grammatical, it is by that fact good and correct. The phrase "bad grammar," by the same reasoning, would be a contradiction in terms, for if English is bad, it cannot be grammatical.

The word "grammar "has had so many and so varied