24 BROOMAI.L : 



uneducated conlinually use the wrong form of pronoun, me 

 for / and / for vu\ her for she, and the like, but the position 

 of the pronoun as to the verb is always correct. A few hun- 

 dred years ago you Jiit him was as bad as )uc hit him is now, 

 because then the pronoun of the second person plural had dis- 

 tinct case forms, subjective ye and objective you. It would 

 seem, therefore, as if pronouns were in the process of discard- 

 ing these changes of form, unnecessary to the sense, just as 

 occurred in the case of nouns. 



Similar processes in the development of English have 

 brought its verb nearly to the same simple form. Where, for- 

 merly, mood, tense, number and person were indicated by appro- 

 priate terminations, making the verb and its relations apparent 

 by its form, there are now left only the terminal s of the third 

 person singular present indicative, the past ed, the participial 

 ing and numerous irregular forms such as is and are, ivas and 

 7V£re, has and have. The uneducated speaker stumbles over 

 these distinctions of verbal person and number as he does 

 with pronouns ; but, as with pronouns, the verb is always in 

 the right place in the phrase to act as a verb. In short, the 

 Knglish speaker expresses the grammatical structure of the 

 sentence by placing verb, subject and object in a certain 

 order, formulated in his mind when he was acquiring his 

 native tongue. This order varies to suit interrogation, nega- 

 tion and exclamation, but each variation is definite and clear. 



liut position as a means of indicating the relations of 

 words has its limitations. As long as verb, subject and 

 object consist of one word each, the means is perfect. Rut 

 where there are more words, the mind is taxed to group them 

 ([uickly under these essential divisions of the sentence. The 

 full ]X)wer or import of each word is not realized unlil it is 

 ajiprehended as whole or part of verb, subject or oljject. A 

 current newspaper says " Taft plans " — and at this point 

 the mind vacillates. If the two words are to be groupeil as 

 making the subject, then we expect something like "have 

 been made" for some purpose. Hut if plans is a verb, then 



