Modern English Syntax

C.T. Onions

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781136898594
• Edition: 7
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This standard introductory textbook presents in systematic form an account of current English practice. The introduction provides a full scheme of sentence analysis. Part I contains a treatment of syntactical phenomena based on the analysis of sentences; Part II classifies the uses of forms. Cross-references indicate how the two parts supplement one another.

Part 1

Sentence construction

The subject

29 1 As in other languages:—

1. (a) the subject is a noun or a noun-equivalent (§17);
2. (b) if the subject is a declinable word, its function is shown by the nominative case.

In modern English, pronouns are the only words that have a distinct form for the nominative case.

I am here. Thou art the man. There he lies.

We could hardly believe it. Who is at the door?

Man is mortal.

For the use of it as a formal and as a vague subject (‘It is no good crying’; ‘Wasn’t it odd, the way the baby stared at us?’), see §7.

In sentences like ‘There was a great calm’, ‘There rose a mighty shout’, there belongs theoretically to the predicate (cf. §7), but it stands in the position generally occupied by the subject and announces inversion of subject and verb. In French and German we have a formal subject, il, es, in such circumstances: Es regierte ein König ‘there reigned a king’; il sortit trois messieurs ‘there came out three gentlemen’. With formal there the verb agrees in number with the noun: There are many difficulties; For the first time there are introduced two foreign elements.

Modern English has nothing analogous to the impersonal passive construction with a vague subject which is so common in Latin and German; e.g. Latin ītur ‘it is gone’, i.e. ‘there is a going’, ‘someone is going’, pugnatum est ‘it was fought’, ‘there was fighting’, mihi parcitur ‘it is spared to me’, i.e. ‘I am spared’; German es wird getanzt ‘it is danced’, ‘there is dancing’.

2 The subject is ordinarily omitted in commands and prohibitions:

Let the cat alone. Do not go yet.

Stand still.

Compare, however:

You go; I can’t. Mind you …

Notice also the omission of the subject ‘I’ in common expressions such as ‘Thank you’, ‘Pray’ (compare German danke, bitte ‘thank you’, ‘please’), and in familiar speech: ‘Who do you think has come?’—‘Haven’t the remotest idea’; ‘Got him!’; ‘Never heard of him’; ‘See those black clouds?’

The predicate

The verb

30 Agreement of the verb with the subject

As in other languages, the finite verb agrees with the subject in number and in person. In modern English, this agreement is not now shown by difference of form except in the third person singular present indicative (–es, –s, or in archaic style sometimes –eth), and the second person singular present and past indicative (–est, –st; these forms are liturgical and poetical).

The boy shout–s (is shouting). The boys shout (are shouting).

I teach. Thou teach–est. He teach–es. We teach.

He com–eth.

In a few verbs the forms differ considerably:

is:are; has:have; does:do; was:were.

It requires care to observe the rule of agreement in longer sentences, where the wrong number is often used (especially where the subject is singular and a plural noun comes between it and the verb); e.g. ‘The appearance of many things in the country, in the villages one passed through, and in this town, reminds [not remind] me of Dutch pictures’; ‘Nothing but dreary dykes occurs [not occur] to break the monotony of the landscape’.

31 Construction according to sense

A singular noun of multitude (or collective singular) may take either a singular or a plural verb according to whether collective or individual action is to be indicated. Thus:

Parliament is now sitting.

The crowd has dispersed.

Our army was in a sad plight.

The majority is thus resolved.

Three shillings is an excessive price.

Two-thirds of the city lies in ruins.

Altogether nine inches of rain has fallen.

In each case the ‘multitude’ is conceived of in the mass, as a unit. But in the following each individual of the ‘multitude’ is regarded as acting separately, hence the plural verb:

A majority of members were in favour of the plan.

A variety of suggestions have been made.

A number are going to take the risk.

The greater part of them come under a different head.

Youth are the trustees of posterity.—DISRAELI

Note also:

The military [= the soldiers] were called out.

The poultry [= the fowls, ducks, &c.] are being fed.

Note the contrast between:

There is heaps of jam (= much jam); and

There are heaps of plates (= many plates).

32 Compound subject

A compound subject is a subject made up of two or more nouns or noun-equivalents linked together by the conjunction ‘and’, or united in thought without a conjunction.

Number of the verb

His father and his mother are dead.

Fire and water do not agree.

The buyer and seller soon come to an understanding.

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given.

Rule: When the subject is compound, the verb is plural.

2 Person of the verb

His son and I are friends.

You and they would agree on that point.

He and his brother were to have come.

Reason: ‘His son and I’ cannot be spoken of together except as ‘we’; similarly ‘you and they’ = ‘you’; ‘he and his brother’ = ‘they’.

The verb may agree with the part of the subject which stands nearest to it, especially if that part serves as a climax to the whole of the subject:

One whose voice, whose look dispens...