ABSTRACT
WHAT CATEGORIES TO RECOGNIZE 51 number' or 'no-number' or something equivalent 1 It might be said that cut in " I cut my finger every day" is not in the present tense, and cut in " I cut my finger yesterday " is not in the past tense (or preterit), because the form in both sentences is identical. Further, if we compare" our king's love for his subjects" and " our kings love their subjects," we see that the two forms are the same (apart from the purely conventional distinction made in writing, but not in speaking, by means of the apostrophe), and a strict formalist thus would not be entitled to state anything with regard to the case and number of kings. And what about love' There is nothing in the form to show us that it is a substantive in the singular in one phrase and a verb in the plural in the other, and we should have to invent a separate name for the strange category thus created. The true moral to be drawn from such examples is, however, I think, that it is wrong to treat each separate linguistio item on its own merits; we should rather look at the language as a whole. Sheep in many sheep is a plural, because in many lambs and hundreds of other similar cases the English language recognizes a plural in its substantives; cut in one sentence is in the present and in the other in the past tense, because a difference at once arises if we substitute he for 1 (he cuts, he cut), or another verb for cut (1 tear, 1 tore); kings in one instance is a genitive singular and in the other a nominative plural, as seen in "the man's love for his subjects" and" the men love their subjects," and finally love is a substantive and a verb respectively as shown by the form in such collocations as "our king's admiration for his subjects " and" our kings admire their subjects." In other words, while we should be careful to keep out of the grammar of any language such distinctions or categories as are found in other languages, but are not formally expressed in the language in question, we should be no less averse to deny in a particular case the existence of distinctions elsewhere made in the same language, because they happen there to have no outward sign. The question, how many and what grammatical categories a language distinguishes, must be settled for the whole of that language, or at any rate for whole classes of words, by considering what grammatical functions find expression in form, even if they do not find such expression in all and every case where it might be expected: the categories thus established are then to be applied to the more or less exceptional cases where there is no external form to guide us. In English, for instance, we shall have to recognize a plural in substantives, pronouns, and verbs, but not in adjectives any more than in adverbs; in Danish, on the other hand, a plural in substantives, adjectives, and pronouns, but no longer in verbs. There will be a special reason to remember this principle when we eome
The principle laid down in the last few paragraphs is not unfrequently sinned against in grammatical literature. Many writers will discourse on the facility with which English can turn substantives into verbs, and vice versa-but English never confounds the two classes of words, even if it uses the same form now as a substantive, and now as a verb; a .finger and a find are substantives, and finger and find in you finger this and find that are verbs, in flexion and in function and everything. An annotator on the passage in Hamlet, where the ghost is said to go " slow and stately" says with regard to slow: "Adjectives are often used for adverbs "-no, slow really is an adverb, just as long in " he stayed long" is an adverb, even if the form is the same as in "a long stay," where it is an adjective. The substantive in five snipe or a few antelope or tU'enty sail is often called a singular (sometimes a " collective singular "), although it is no more a singular than sheep in five sheep; a form which is always recognized as a plural, probably because grammarians know that this word has had an unchanged plural from Old English times. But history really has nothing to do with our question. Snipe is now one form of the plural of that word (" the unchanged plural "), and the fact that there exists another form, snipes, should not make us blind to the real value of the form ,nipe.
