SIGXIFICAXCK OF KRKORS IN SPKKCH. 39 



When the speaker reaches the third word there is nothing left 

 to express but the idea of being (and tense) and the more 

 familiar indicative form comes easiest to mind. This process 

 of differentiation is not yet fully dominant in the English 

 verb, and the transition causes many errors of confusion. In 

 / have run, I is the personal element, have the temporal and 

 run the name of the action. Have, so used, monopolizes the 

 tense idea, just as do and did are temporal signs in / do like 

 and / did like. Ru)i and like thus become simply nominal 

 terms, as the person and the doing in time are already ex- 

 pressed. Hence the n of seen in I have seen is becoming super- 

 fluous, and the speaker who has not been drilled in the imita- 

 tion of the useless sound says / have see or / have sazc. Change 

 of form for tense and mood is fast losing its significance in 

 English owing to the differentiative process by which its 

 speakers seek to express these several ideas by distinctive 

 words. 



By imitation, we say between two and among three. This 

 is giving grammatical number to these prepositions, making 

 beticeen a compound of ^rw/V/.s/ and duality and among oi amidst 

 and plurality above duality. So, the best of tivo is said to be 

 wrong because one of two can be only better. The eiTor in the 

 use of best as of two and betzveen as of more than two is a dif- 

 ferentiation that reminds us of Anglo-Saxon singular /V (I), 

 zi'it { we two ) , zve ( we more than two ) , where the dual form has 

 disappeared and ive assumed the plain idea of plurality. 



By this process, English adjectives have lost number. 

 Hence, when a noun is used as an adjective it tends to differ- 

 entiate the idea of number from that of qualifier. Thus we 

 hear two foot ride and twe)it_v foot alley. It is trae the purist 

 insists strenuously upon t-wo feet this or that, but even he 

 balks at tzeo horses carriage. 



English pronouns afford an interesting illustration of a dif- 

 ferentiative process which colloquial errors are trying to con- 

 tinue. In old English the expression of case was made by a 

 change of form., of which the genitive survives in our posses- 



