American Language Supplement 2 (73 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
Attackted
or
attacted
as the preterite and perfect participle of
to attack
is very widespread in the United States, but Wright indicates in his “English Dialect Dictionary”
2
that it is confined to relatively few regional dialects in England,
e.g
., those of Essex, Somerset, Devonshire and the town of Newcastle. In Warwickshire, he says, it “is used by the uneducated above the lowest class, such as small tradespeople.” The DAE traces it to 1689 in American use, and John Witherspoon denounced it in 1781 as “a vulgarism in America only.”
3
The corresponding noun,
attackt
, has been traced to 1706, when it appeared in the Virginia state papers. John Pickering, in 1816, said that
attackted
was then confined, in the American seaports, to “the most illiterate people,” but that in the interior it was “sometimes heard among persons of a somewhat higher class.” He added that it was “used by the vulgar in London as well as in this country.”
4
Oma Stanley notes it in “The Speech of East Texas,”
5
and Wentworth finds records of it in central New York, Tennessee, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Long Island, and the southern mountains. In October, 1937, the Hon. Alf M. Landon used it in a radio speech, and was held up to contumely therefor in
Newsweek
. A few weeks later he was defended by a fan who said that it had been used by “an Easterner,” presumably of learning, “only a few hours before.”
6
The analogous form
drownded
was used by Shaftesbury in his “Characteristics,” 1711, and by Swift in his “Polite Conversation,” 1738, but
the DAE says that it is “now vulgar.” Witherspoon listed it as “a vulgarism in England and America” in 1781,
1
and Thomas G. Fessenden frowned upon it in “The Ladies’ Monitor,” 1818.
2
Wentworth finds it in use in all parts of the country, from Maine to Georgia and from New York to California. It is accompanied by
to drownd
, as in “He was scared of
drowndin
’.”
3
Wentworth lists many other curious forms,
e.g., foalded, swoonded, tossted, ailded, belongded, bornded, deceaseded
and
pawnded
, some of them confined to relatively narrow areas or classes,
e.g
., Appalachia or the Southern Negroes, but others in use in all parts of the country.
To the same general class, more or less, belong such reinforced verbs as
to loaden, to quieten
and
to unloosen
. The NED shows that
to loose
, which is traced to
c
. 1225, had become
to loosen
in England by 1382, and
to unloosen
by
c
. 1450. The first has disappeared from the American common speech, and the third has pretty well displaced the second. In England
to unloosen
seems to be rare, but
to unloose
is preferred to
to loose
by respectable authorities.
4
To loaden
is traced by the NED to a letter of Queen Elizabeth, 1568, and
to unloaden
to 1567. Wentworth finds the former in use in the hill country of Virginia, and a writer in
American Speech
offers evidence that it was in vogue during the high days of the Western expansion, 1830–60.
5
When
to quieten
first appeared in England, in 1828, it was denounced as “not English,” but by 1852, the year of “Cranford,” it was used by Mrs. Gaskell. The DAE does not list it, but Wentworth finds it in use in the Ozarks, Appalachia and Newfoundland, often with
down
following. Other such forms to be found in the records are
to shapen
,
6
mistakened
for
mistaken, awestrickened,
ladened
,
1
to pinken
,
2
soddened
,
3
dampened, to safen
,
4
to thinnen
,
5
to rotten
,
6
to smoothen
,
7
stallded
,
8
underminded
,
9
confinded
, and even
misted
(
misseded
).
10
The impulse lying behind such inventions is plain enough. They are suggested by the countless accepted words that follow the same plan. Thus
to thicken
produces
to thinnen, to unbend
produces
to unloose
, which becomes
to unloosen
, and so on.
11
The movement among verbs in English is apparently away from the so-called strong or irregular conjugation,
i.e., sing, sang, sung
, and toward the weak and regular,
i.e., wish, wished, wished; mean, meant, meant
. Charles C. Fries says in his “American English Grammar”
12
that there were 312 strong verbs, including those unchanged for tense, in Old English,
13
but that of the 195 which still survive at all 129, or 65%, have gone over to the weak category. In recent years the old strong verbs show a marked tendency to take refuge in the vulgar speech. Chaucer used
clombe
as the preterite of
to limb
without challenge, but by Shakespeare’s time
climbed
had begun to supplant it, and today
clomb, clum
and the like must be
sought among the lowly. Similarly,
dove
, which once had plenty of authority behind it, is now vulgar, though of late it seems to be creeping back into more or less cultured use.
1
John Earle, in “The Philology of the English Tongue,”
2
gave a list of strong verbs that have become weak since Middle English days,
e.g., bow, beah, bowne; carve, carf, corfen; delve, dalfe, dolven; glide, glod, glode; gnaw, gnew, gnawn; help, holp, holpen; melt, malt, molten;
3
wash, wush, washen;
4
and George P. Marsh, in his “Lectures on the English Language,”
5
predicted that the strong conjugations would disappear altogether. “Every new English dictionary,” he said, “diminishes the number of irregular verbs.” But he saw that the popular speech tended to preserve “many old preterites and participles which are no longer employed in written English.”
This partiality for the old is opposed, however, by the plain fact that the weak conjugations are more logical than the strong, and hence easier to contrive and remember, and as a result there is a contrary movement toward them in the popular speech as well as on higher levels. Sometimes it goes to the length of providing regular inflections for verbs that are historically invariable in all situations,
e.g., to slit
and
to cast;
6
sometimes it turns inflected verbs into invariable ones,
e.g., to sweat;
7
and in many more cases it transfers a regular past participle to the place of an inflected preterite,
e.g., I taken
8
and
I written
. In the latter event, as often happens, the admonitions of the schoolma’am sometimes have a greater effect
than she intends, and the discarded preterite is often used as the participle,
e.g., I have took
and
I was broke
. This last change seems to be rare in the English dialects, but it has become very widespread in vulgar American, as readers of Ring Lardner, Will Rogers and other such reporters of it are well aware. Sometimes there are competing forms,
e.g., I knowed
and
I known; I wish
and
I wisht
, both in the present tense;
I ate, I et
and
I eat
, all in the past;
1
I sang
and
I sung;
2
he ran
and
he run
, in the past;
he did
and
he done
,
3
he said
and
he sez; I win
and
I wan
, both in the past;
I give, I given
and
I guv
, again in the past;
I drag
and
I drug
, yet again;
4
I got
and
I gotten; I brung
,
5
I brang
and
I bring; they beat, they beaten
and
they bet;
6
they taken, they tuck, they takened
and
they tooken;
7
he shut
and
he shet; lay, laid
and
lain;
1
bought
and
boughten;
2
crep
and
crope; sat, set
and
sot;
3
wake, waked
and
woken;
4
pleaded
and
pled;
5
lent
and
lended;
6
drank
and
drunk;
7
drew
and
drawed;
8
leaped
and
lep;
9
braked
and
broke;
10
treaded
and
trod
,
11
and
heated, heat
and
het
.
12
It would be hard to disentangle the conflicting tendencies
visible here. Language, in fact, is very far from logical. Its development is determined, not by neat and obvious rules, but by a polyhedron of disparate and often sharply conflicting forces – the influence of the schoolma’am, imitation (often involving misunderstanding), the lazy desire for simplicity and ease, and sheer wantonness and imbecility.
1
Mark Twain, in one of his philological moods, ventured the opinion that
got
is used as an auxiliary more frequently in England than in the United States, as in “I haven’t
got
any money,”
2
but most other observers seem to believe that the reverse is really the case. When it comes, however, to
gotten
there is no difference of opinion, for all authorities agree that it is now one of the hallmarks of American speech. Says George O. Curme:
The English colonists brought
gotten
along with them to their new American home. It wasn’t after all an American blemish. It was good English.
3
But a great ocean lay between the English colonists and the mother country. English in England went on developing as in earlier times, and
gotten
became
got
, but in America
gotten
retained its original form.
Gotten
evidently belongs to the long list of American things.
4
Today it is so firmly lodged that in some parts of the South, as Wentworth notes,
got
has come to be considered improper in the past tense. But in the present it flourishes lushly in the form of
gotta
, and in that form has completely obliterated
have
.
5
Other characteristics of vulgar American are the heavy use of
used to
as a general indicator of the past tense, and the use of
do
and
done
as
auxiliaries. The former is always given the unvoiced
s
without a final
d
, and may be used also in the negative, as in “He
use to didn’t
like it.” For the following interesting observations upon it I am indebted to Mr. W. S. Hamilton, of Louisville:
1
I hyphenate the
to
because I believe it is felt to belong to
use
rather than to the following infinitive. In fact, the most striking thing about its employment throughout the South is that
use-to
is not always followed by the infinitive. For example:
1. He
use-to
wouldn’t take a drink; now he drinks like a fish.
2. He
use-to
didn’t care how he looked.
3. He
use-to
was always gambling, but he saves his money now.
Now let’s take a case in which the infinitive follows:
4. She
use-to
help me with my lessons.
What can be made of all this? It seems that we are dealing with a handy past tense auxiliary which gives an habitual or continuing signification to the past action, somewhat as does the Latin imperfect as opposed to the perfect preterite. Greek, Latin, the Romance languages and German all possess, while English lacks, a tense form to express this shade of meaning. “She
helped
me,” etc., would not have exactly the meaning of No. 4, and certainly the deletion of
use-to
would somewhat change the meaning of Nos. 1 and 2. No. 3 points to his reform better than it would if
use-to
were deleted.
In the mouths of the vulgar it seems to distinguish itself from the old verb
to use
in four ways:
1. It is pronounced, not like the verb, but like the noun
use
.
2. It is uninflected.
3. It has acquired an inseparable suffix,
to
, which obviates the use of a preposition before a following infinitive. (In this power it is not unique.
Cf. dare-say
and
helped eat
.)
4. It is not limited to helping an infinitive. It may directly help to habituate (if the expression be admissible) the past tense of such modal auxiliaries as
could
and
would
and the negative intensive auxiliary
didn’t
. It has been pointed out that the vulgar shy away from the subjunctive
be
. The very vulgar seem to shy away from even the infinitive
be
in the merely vulgar’s
use-to-be
. And so, as in No. 3, they employ
use-to-was
as the habitual past tense of
to be
.
2
