496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



fractory people, as may be seen in the case of Prussian Poland. I 

 quote further from Superintendent Jones : 



The best way of describing the language of the partially educated deaf child 

 is to say that it is mixed. The order of words has always been a bugbear to 

 them. The various verb-forms have given them much labor and worry. They 

 are liable to use one part of speech for another, using nouns, adjectives, adverbs, 

 etc., as verbs. A most striking illustration of that came to my notice a short 

 time ago. One little boy was seen to strike another in the class. His teacher 

 reproved him. His defense was " I whyed him and he wouldn't because me." 

 A teacher had taken her class to see the seventeenth regiment leave for the 

 Philippine Islands. She desired to use the occasion for journal writing and as 

 a language drill. On their return the pupils were to write what they had seen. 

 One boy wrote: "Many men were banding, but I did not see them horn." 

 Evidently he was impressed with the great number of men in the band, but 

 noticed that they were not playing when they passed him. A girl in describing 

 sheep-shearing said: "The farmer washed and nicely the sheep." 



The last quotation throws considerable light on one aspect of our 

 vocabulary. It is generally held by philologists that the ultimate ele- 

 ments into which all languages can be resolved consist of two sets of 

 radicles, verbs and nouns, all other parts of speech being derived from 

 these. That our grammatical nomenclature is mainly artificial is not 

 to be doubted. Persons without education are unable to see any dif- 

 ference in the functions of words; often, in fact, these are very indis- 

 tinct. It is a dictum of Homeric Grammar that all propositions were 

 originally adverbs. In English, as in most other languages, almost any 

 part of speech can be used as a verb. I have heard such expressions as : 

 " I don't want anybody to thee-and-thou me." " No if-ing, if you 

 please." The French have a verb tutoyer, meaning, " to address 

 another with thee and thou." " If " is probably the instrumental case 

 of a word expressing doubt. Whether, neither and either are plainly 

 comparatives. It is an utter waste of time to discuss the grammatical 

 classification of words. In Greek and Latin the infinitive of the verb 

 and the dative case of the noun have the same sign. The same state- 

 ment is true in a modified form of the English, as we may see in such 

 phrases as to me, to town, to go, to walk. " To walk makes me tired," 

 hardly differs from " Walking makes me tired." In German any infin- 

 itive can be used as a noun, as also in Greek. 



The imperfection of language allows the writer to reveal himself. 

 It is because language displays but a part of this subjective world that 

 there exists an art of writing. James Darmesteter in his "Life of 

 Words " says : 



If language were the expression of thought and not a more or less happy 

 attempt at such expression, there would be no art in good phraseology; lan- 

 guage would be a natural fact like breathing and the circulation of the blood, 

 or like the association of ideas. But owing to that imperfection, we make an 

 effort to get a grip of our thought in all its turnings, in its inmost folds, and 

 to render it better, and hence arises the work of the writer. 



