The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

which Mr. Murray has employed to exhibit the passive conjugation of the present tense, may much more feasibly represent past than present time."—See Wright's Philosophical Gram., p. 99. Accordingly, in his own paradigm of the passive verb, he has formed this tense solely from what he calls the participle present, thus: "I am being smitten, Thou art being smitten," &c.—Ib., p. 98. His "Passed Tense," too, for some reason which I do not discover, he distinguishes above the rest by a double form, thus: "I was smitten, or being smitten; Thou wast smitten, or being smitten;" &c.—P. 99. In his opinion, "Few will object to the propriety of the more familiar phraseology, 'I am in the ACT,—or, suffering the ACTION of BEING SMITTEN;' and yet," says he, "in substance and effect, it is wholly the same as, 'I am being smitten,' which is THE TRUE FORM of the verb in the present tense of the passive voice!"—Ibid. Had we not met with some similar expressions of English or American blunderers, "the act or action of being smitten," would be accounted a downright Irish bull; and as to this ultra notion of neologizing all our passive verbs, by the addition of "being,"—with the author's cool talk of "the presentation of this theory, and [the] consequent suppression of that hitherto employed,"—there is a transcendency in it, worthy of the most sublime aspirant among grammatical newfanglers.

OBS. 13.—But, with all its boldness of innovation, Wright's Philosophical Grammar is not a little self-contradictory in its treatment of the passive verb. The entire "suppression" of the usual form of its present tense, did not always appear, even to this author, quite so easy and reasonable a matter, as the foregoing citations would seem to represent it. The passive use of the participle in ing, he has easily disposed of: despite innumerable authorities for it, one false assertion, of seven syllables, suffices to make it quite impossible.[269] But the usual passive form, which, with some show of truth, is accused of not having always precisely the same meaning as the progressive used passively,—that is, of not always denoting continuance in the state of receiving continued action,—and which is, for that remarkable reason, judged worthy of rejection, is nevertheless admitted to have, in very many instances, a conformity to this idea, and therefore to "belong [thus far] to the present tense."—P. 103. This contradicts to an indefinite extent, the proposition for its rejection. It is observable also, that the same examples, 'I am loved' and 'I am smitten,'—the same "tolerated, but erroneous forms," (so called on page 103,) that are given as specimens of what he would reject,—though at first pronounced "equivalent in grammatical construction," censured for the same pretended error, and proposed to be changed alike to "the true form" by the insertion of "being,"—are subsequently declared to "belong to" different classes and different tenses. "I am loved," is referred to that "numerous" class of verbs, which "detail ACTION of prior, but retained, endured, and continued existence; and therefore, in this sense, belong to the present tense." But "I am smitten," is idly reckoned of an opposite class, (said by Dr. Bullions to be "perhaps the greater number,") whose "ACTIONS described are neither continuous in their nature, nor progressive in their duration; but, on the contrary, completed and perfected; and [which] are consequently descriptive of passed time and ACTION."—Wright's Gram., p. 103. Again: "In what instance soever this latter form and signification can be introduced, their import should be, and, indeed, ought to be, supplied by the perfect tense construction:—for example, 'I am smitten,' [should] be, 'I have been smitten.'"—Ib. Here is self-contradiction indefinitely extended in an other way. Many a good phrase, if not every one, that the author's first suggestion would turn to the unco-passive form, his present "remedy" would about as absurdly convert into "the perfect tense."

OBS. 14.—But Wright's inconsistency, about this matter, ends not here: it runs through all he says of it; for, in this instance, error and inconsistency constitute his whole story. In one place, he anticipates and answers a question thus: "To what tense do the constructions, 'I am pleased;' 'He is expected;' 'I am smitten;' 'He is bound;' belong?" "We answer:—So far as these and like constructions are applicable to the delineation of continuous and retained ACTION, they express present time; and must be treated accordingly."—P. 103. This seems to intimate that even, "I am smitten," and its likes, as they stand, may have some good claim to be of the present tense; which suggestion is contrary to several others made by the author. To expound this, or any other passive term, passively, never enters his mind: with him, as with sundry others, "ACTION," "finished ACTION," or "progressive ACTION," is all any passive verb or participle ever means! No marvel, that awkward perversions of the forms of utterance and the principles of grammar should follow such interpretation. In Wright's syntax a very queer distinction is apparently made between a passive verb, and the participle chiefly constituting it; and here, too, through a fancied ellipsis of "being" before the latter, most, if not all, of his other positions concerning passives, are again disastrously overthrown by something worse—a word "imperceptibly understood." "'I am smitten;' 'I was smitten;' &c., are," he says, "the universally acknowledged forms of the VERBS in these tenses, in the passive voice:—not of the PARTICIPLE. In all verbal constructions of the character of which we have hitherto treated, (see page 103) and, where the ACTIONS described are continuous in their operations,—the participle BEING is imperceptibly omitted, by ellipsis."—P. 144.

OBS. 15.—Dr. Bullions has stated, that, "The present participle active, and the present participle passive, are not counterparts to each other in signification; [,] the one signifying the present doing, and the other the present suffering of an action, [;] for the latter always intimates the present being of an ACT, not in progress, but completed."—Prin. of Eng. Gram., p. 58. In this, he errs no less grossly than in his idea of the "action or the suffering" expressed by "a perfect participle," as cited in OBS. 5th above; namely, that it must have ceased. Worse interpretation, or balder absurdity, is scarcely to be met with; and yet the reverend Doctor, great linguist as he should be, was here only trying to think and tell the common import of a very common sort of English participles; such as, "being loved" and "being seen." In grammar, "an act," that has "present being," can be nothing else than an act now doing, or "in progress;" and if, "the present being of an ACT not in progress," were here a possible thought, it surely could not be intimated by any such participle. In Acts, i, 3 and 4, it is stated, that our Saviour showed himself to the apostles, "alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; and, being assembled together with them commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem." Now, of these misnamed "present participles," we have here one "active," one "passive," and two others—(one in each form—) that are neuter; but no present time, except what is in the indefinite date of "pertaining." The events are past, and were so in the days of St. Luke. Yet each of the participles denotes continuance: not, indeed, in or to the present time, but for a time. "Being seen" means continuing to be seen; and, in this instance, the period of the continuance was "forty days" of time past. But, according to the above-cited "principle of English Grammar," so long and so widely inculcated by "the Rev. Peter Bullions, D. D., Professor of Languages," &c.,—a central principle of interpretation, presumed by him to hold "always"—this participle must intimate "the present being of an act, not in progress, but completed;"—that is, "the present being of" the apostles' act in formerly seeing the risen Saviour!

OBS. 16.—This grammarian has lately taken a deal of needless pains to sustain, by a studied division of verbs into two classes, similar to those which are mentioned in OBS. 13th above, a part of the philosophy of J. W. Wright, concerning our usual form of passives in the present tense. But, as he now will have it, that the two voices sometimes tally as counterparts, it is plain that he adheres but partially to his former erroneous conception of a perfect or "past" participle, and the terms which hold it "in any connexion." The awkward substitutes proposed by the Irish critic, he does not indeed countenance; but argues against them still, and, in some respects, very justly. The doctrine now common to these authors, on this point, is the highly important one, that, in respect to half our verbs, what we commonly take for the passive present, is not such—that, in "the second class, (perhaps the greater number,) the present-passive implies that the act expressed by the active voice has ceased. Thus, 'The house is built.' * * * Strictly speaking, then," says the Doctor, "the PAST PARTICIPLE with the verb TO BE is not the present tense in the passive voice of verbs thus used; that is, this form does not express passively the doing of the act."—Bullions's Analyt. and Pract. Grammar, Ed. of 1849, p. 235. Thus far these two authors agree; except that Wright seems to have avoided the incongruity of calling that "the present-passive" which he denies to be such. But the Doctor, approving none of this practitioner's "remedies," and being less solicitous to provide other treatment than expulsion for the thousands of present passives which both deem spurious, adds, as from the chair, this verdict: "These verbs either have no present-passive, or it is made by annexing the participle in ing, in its passive sense, to the verb to be; as, 'The house is building.'"—Ib., p. 236.

OBS. 17.—It would seem, that Dr. Bullions thinks, and in reality Wright also, that nothing can be a present passive, but what "expresses passively the DOING of the act." This is about as wise, as to try to imagine every active verb to express actively the receiving of an act! It borders exceedingly hard upon absurdity; it very much resembles the nonsense of "expressing receptively the giving of something!" Besides, the word "DOING," being used substantively, does not determine well what is here meant; which is, I suppose, continuance, or an unfinished state of the act received—an idea which seems adapted to the participle in ing, but which it is certainly no fault of a participle ending in d, t, or n, not to suggest. To "express passively the doing of the act," if the language means any thing rational, may be, simply to say, that the act is or was done. For "doings" are, as often as any-wise, "things done," as buildings are fabrics built; and "is built," and "am smitten," the gentlemen's choice examples of false passives, and of "actions finished,"—though neither of them necessarily intimates either continuance or cessation of the act suffered, or, if it did, would be the less or the more passive or present,—may, in such a sense, "express the doing of the act," if any passives can:—nay, the "finished act" has such completion as may be stated with degrees of progress or of frequency; as, "The house is partly built."—"I am oftener smitten." There is, undoubtedly, some difference between the assertions, "The house is building,"—and, "The house is partly built;" though, for practical purposes, perhaps, we need not always be very nice in choosing between them. For the sake of variety, however, if for nothing else, it is to be hoped, the doctrine above-cited, which limits half our passive verbs of the present tense, to the progressive form only, will not soon be generally approved. It impairs the language more than unco-passives are likely ever to corrupt it.

OBS. 18.—"No startling novelties have been introduced," says the preface to the "Analytical and Practical Grammar of the English Language." To have shunned all shocking innovations, is only to have exercised common prudence. It is not pretended, that any of the Doctor's errors here remarked upon, or elsewhere in this treatise, will startle any body; but, if errors exist, even in plausible guise, it may not be amiss, if I tell of them. To suppose every verb or participle to be either "transitive" or "intransitive," setting all passives with the former sort, all neuters with the latter; (p. 59;)—to define the transitive verb or participle as expressing always "an act DONE by one person or thing to another;" (p. 60;)—to say, after making passive verbs transitive, "The object of a transitive verb is in the objective case," and, "A verb that does not make sense with an objective after it, is intransitive;" (p. 60;)—to insist upon a precise and almost universal identity of "meaning" in terms so obviously contrasted as are the two voices, "active" and "passive;" (pp. 95 and 235;)—to allege, as a general principle, "that whether we use the active, or the passive voice,