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XIV.—The Harmonizing of Grammatical Nomenclature, with Especial Reference to Mood–Syntax
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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It probably does not often happen that a worker in Latin and Greek addresses a body of workers in the modern languages, or the converse. But there is nothing unnatural in such a proceeding, and it ought indeed to be a common thing. We of the classics and you of the modern languages have the same convictions to maintain in the scheme of education,—first the conviction of the charm and civilizing power of great literature, and, second, the conviction of the interest and educational efficiency of literary-historical and linguistic science. The difference between us is purely one of chronology. We proceed by identical methods. We cultivate the same great field, and our respective holdings in that field overlap. We are natural friends, if either party has a friend. Our interests, in their large and final bearings, are identical. Classical studies cannot really flourish in a university in which they are looked upon with hostility 'by the teachers of modern languages. But neither will the study of modern languages, beyond the strictly vocational ideal, flourish permanently in any atmosphere in which, for any reason, classical studies are asphyxiated.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1911
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page 379 note 1 The opportunity to do this was given me at the meeting of the Modern Language Association in New York, December, 1910.
By an error, the last sentence of the first paragraph was assigned in the New York Evening Post of Jan. 5 to the Hon. Edwin M. Shepard, who spoke to the same effect, but with the greater authority of an unprejudiced man of affairs, on the evening following.
page 381 note 1 It may here be added that a French Committee of Fifteen began work upon the nomenclature of French grammar in 1906, making reports in 1907 and 1909 (discussed by M. Félix Weill in the Bull. Officiel de la Société Nationale des Professeurs Français en Amerique, May, 1910). The Minister of Public Instruction, M. Gaston Doumergue, published an Arrêté July 25, 1910, and an official Nouvelle Nomenclature Grammaticale September 28. An English Joint Committee upon Grammatical Terminology, appointed in Oct., 1908, reported in 1910 upon a terminology for English, German, French, Latin, and Greek. I gave a paper on Conflicting Terminology for Identical Conceptions in the Grammar of Indo-European Languages at the Christmas meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1909, and another in the same week before the American Philological Association (the latter printed in abstract in Vol. 40 of the Proceedings). These two papers dwelt upon the root of the matter, doubtless felt, but not spoken of, by the writers of the English Report, namely the large amount of common inheritance in the languages of our family. I also offered a paper entitled The Waste Involved in the Use of a Conflicting Terminology in School Grammars of Various Languages, for the meeting of the Superintendence Section of the National Education Association in February, 1910, but too late to have room found for it upon the programme. In May, 1910, Professor Dörr, of Frankfurt a. M., read a paper on Vereinfachung der grammatischen Terminologie at the XIV. Tagung des allgemeinen deutschen Neuphilologen-Verbandes in Zürich (published in the Bericht, 1911, Carl Meyer, Hannover). In June, 1910, Professor C. R. Rounds, of the State Normal School in Whitewater, Wis., published in the Educational Review a paper on The Varying Systems of Nomenclature in Use in our Texts in English Grammar. There thus appears to be a wide-spread sense of the need of reform.
page 391 note 1 So in Hanssen's Spanische Grammatik, 1910.
page 391 note 2 So in Haas's Neufranzösische Syntax, 1909.
page 391 note 3 “Contingency” as an explanation of the subjunctive fits in with “conditionality,” but historically has come down from an earlier scheme, based similarly on metaphysics, namely the notions of Possibility, Contingency, and Necessity in Wolff's Ontology. Thus Meiner, in his Philosophische und allgemeine Sprachlehre, 1781, makes the indicative express Necessity, the subjunctive Possibility and Contingency. Note how differently the indicative fares at the hands of Wolffian and Kantian grammarians.—In point of fact, Hermann misunderstood what Kant meant by subjective and objective, and by necessity. By necessity, Kant meant that which always and inevitably is, while by objective he meant that which lies beyond our impressions, forever inaccessible to us.
page 391 note 4 Thus Thiersch, 1812, recognized the two forces of Will and Futurity in the Homeric verb. Delbrück, 1871, made these the bases of his treatment of the subjunctive in his Conjunctiv und Optativ im Sanskrit und Griechischen.
page 393 note 1 For convenience, I use the better-known name “subjunctive” for English and German, and not the name “optative”
page 400 note 1 As by Delbrück, and occasionally by Brugmann. The latter, however, ordinarily uses the word “ voluntative,” adopted by him in his Greek Grammar, 1885.
page 405 note 1 The future indicative also occasionally occurs with antequam or priusquam, as in si minus, non antequam necesse erit, Cic. Att., 13, 48, l. An occasional usage, however, while it may convey a sound hint, does not necessarily do so (as a fixed alternative does), since it may indicate a variant conception. But in Cato's De Agricultura there are four cases of the future indicative to ten of the subjunctive (I am relying on Keil's list, ad 134, 1, which purports to be complete); and this number constitutes so respectable a proportion as to point strongly toward the practical equivalency of the two constructions.
page 406 note 1 Professor Sonnenschein published in 1893, I in 1894. But my doctrine already clearly appears, though briefly touched upon, in my Cum-Constructions, Cornell University Studies in Class. Phil., I, 1887, p. 42 (p. 46 of the German translation). In dealing with antequam veniat, etc., I said that it was extremely probable that the construction was the same as that of the Greek “before” and “until” clauses, and that Delbrück's treatment of the latter (Conj. u. Opt. im Sanskrit u. Griechischen) was convincing. This, which was the first printed recognition of the existence of a Latin subjunctive of mere futurity, was before Rodenbusch's statement (not applied to these clauses, and mostly wrong in its details) in his dissertation De Temporum Usu Plautino Quaestiones Selectae, 1888, which I failed to know, and so to mention in the publications referred to above, because its title did not imply a treatment of the moods. I also, in my Sequence of Tenses, American Journal of Philology, used in 1887 the phrase “act in view” (which is like Sonnenschein's “act in prospect”) in dealing with “before” and “until” subjunctive clauses in Latin, and, in April, 1888, in the same journal, the phrase “act looked forward to from a certain time,” choosing them to be in accord with my theory of the origin of the constructions when I should expressly publish upon them. These are the phrases upon which I still especially rely. I speak thus of having anticipated Rodenbusch because I may have seemed to be using a suggestion of his without giving him credit.
page 407 note 1 Some of the French grammars speak of “ anteriority ” as the force of the subjunctive in these constructions. But this, while good as far as it goes, is a recognition of the force of the conjunctions, not of the force of the mood. There is equal “anteriority ” in the frequent indicative clause with jusqu'à ce que, expressing a past fact.
page 408 note 1 This explanation is repeated by Hullihen, “Antequam and Priusquam,” Johns Hopkins dissertation, 1903.
page 409 note 1 So do we, even as late as the fourth century, A. D., in the Gothic subjunctive (optative), as in Mark 10, 8, where the independent future indicative 
, “will be,” is translated by the independent optative sijaina.
page 410 note 1 We shall see in the second paper that the same particles enable us similarly to part the Greek optatives into two masses. Greek thus, when properly studied, practically distinguishes four moods for us, where Sanskrit, Old Persian and Avestan distinguish but two, and Latin, Germanic, etc., afford no distinction. Nowhere else, accordingly, can the behavior of the mind of any people in the building-up of its expression of mood-ideas be seen so clearly as in Greek. The fact makes Greek of paramount importance, on the side of the verb, to the student of comparative syntax.
page 413 note 1 It is quite conceivable that a volitive force might have become associated with the “until” clauses through such special cases, and ultimately have gained the upper hand. Compare “come in till I whip you,” which I once heard said by a mother to a child. But such examples are clearly secondary in English. Homeric Greek shows a few examples (five) where the idea might be purpose (in three cases, must be). But nothing came of the construction, since it does not appear anywhere later.
page 415 note 1 In “The Cum-Constructions: their History and Functions,” Cornell University Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. I (1887), p. 85 (p. 94 of the German translation).
The word determinative has been used of late in Germany and France, but in a looser sense, covering for example such a clause as that in, “ in a city where I wasn't known.”