21.

What class of verbs may be put into the passive voice? Change the verbs in the following sentence into the passive voice:

'The Persians attacked the Greeks again, but they did not make any impression on the little army.'

How have the subjects and objects been affected by the change?

22. Distinguish clearly between the meaning of 'It is destroyed,' 'He is deceived,' on the one hand, and that of 'It is fallen,' 'He is risen,' on the other. [See § 146.]

23. What does the infinitive mood express? Parse fully the verbs in the following:

'It is laughable to see beginners play.'

24. State the various ways in which the infinitive mood may be used. Give illustrative sentences.

25. Correct the mistakes in the following sentences:

'The lion, having laid down, roared loud.'

'As he lay down the weight, it slipped and has broke his arm.' 'A look of immovable endurance underlaid his expression.'

'He lay himself down.'

'Thou dashest him to earth-there let him lay.'

'I would not like to say that the pistol laid yesterday as it lies now.'

'Will you lose that knot for me?'

'Will you allow my brother and I to finish what we have began?' 'I had wrote to him the day before.'

'It was sang at the Philharmonic last year.'

Comment on any grammatical peculiarity in the lines

'And while his harp responsive rung,

'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung.'

'The sun had rose and gone to bed

Just as if Partridge were not dead.'

26. Name the several moods of a verb, and show, with examples, how each mood answers to its name.

27. Is any alteration required in the following sentence?' He says he isn't going to go for it.'

[There is nothing formally wrong in saying 'going to go,' but the use of 'going,' in the sense of 'about,' to signify an action on the point of commencement, is avoided with the verb 'go' itself, though its employment might be defended more logically in this context than in such expressions as 'to be going to sit still,' 'to be going to stay here,' for if we continue to 'sit' and to 'stay,' we do not 'go' at all, and in saying that we do there is a contradiction in terms.]

28. Is it correct to say that the Infinitive Mood does not mark differences in the time of the action? Consider the forms to write, to have written, to be going to write, in answering the question.

tense.

[With regard to the expression to be going to write, we may remark that the combination of the verb go with to write does not constitute a Other circumlocutions, or roundabout modes of expression, might be employed to convey the same meaning, and these circumlocutions would have as good a claim to recognition, as forms of the future infinitive, as the phrase to be going to write: e.g. to be about to write, to be on the point of writing, to have the intention of writing. See § 164, (2).

With regard to the form to have written, the case is different. This is a genuine tense of the infinitive mood. But the difference of meaning between to write and to have written is a difference of completeness, not of time. When we say 'He seems to have written the copy correctly,' 'I expect to have written the last chapter by to-morrow evening,' completed action, not past action, is expressed by the tense to have written.]

29. What inflexions of nouns and verbs survive in modern English? How is it that there are so few?

Point out traces of some which have been lost.

30. Give examples from modern English of traces of inflexions which have fallen into disuse. How has the place of these lost inflexions been supplied?

31. Comment on the inflexion of each of the following words:— geese, pence, brethren, vixen, whom, what, worse, eldest, could, did.

171

CHAPTER XVII.

AUXILIARY AND DEFECTIVE VERBS.

174. The Auxiliary Verbs, which supply the deficiencies. of inflexions and enable us to mark distinctions of Voice, Mood, and Tense, in the conjugation of a verb, are these:be, have, shall, will, may, and do.

Be is used (1) as a Voice Auxiliary, forming with the Past Participle of transitive verbs the Passive: 'I am beaten,' 'to be beaten': and (2) as a Tense Auxiliary, forming the Imperfect Tenses in both voices: 'I am beating,' 'I am being beaten.'

Notice that, with the Past Participle of certain Intransitive verbs, be forms the Perfect Active: 'I am come,' 'He is gone,' 'It is fallen.' See § 146.

Have is a Tense Auxiliary and forms the Perfect Tenses both Active and Passive: 'I have beaten,' 'I have been beaten,' 'I had beaten,' 'I shall have been beaten.'

Shall and will form the Future Tenses of the Indicative Mood, Active and Passive: 'I shall beat,' 'He will be beaten,' 'They will be beating,' 'We shall have been beaten.'

May and might, should and would, are used as signs of the Subjunctive: 'Strive that you may succeed,' 'He strove that he might succeed,' 'I should be glad,' 'This would seem to be the case.'

Do is used as an auxiliary in negative and interrogative sentences: 'I do not believe this,' 'Do you believe this?'

We shall briefly discuss these verbs in turn.

175. Be is a defective verb, and its conjugation contains forms derived from three roots which we see in am, was, be. Am is the only form of a verb in English that retains the sign of the first person, m, which stands for me. The t in art is the sign of the second person, as in shalt, wilt. Is has dropped its ending -th: compare German ist, Latin Are is a Danish word which has taken the place of the Old English form of the third person plural. The simple tenses of the indicative and subjunctive moods have been given on p. 146.

est.

Be is used as

I. A Notional Verb, with a meaning of its own, signifying 'to exist,' when we say, 'God is,' 'There was a Palmerston.'

2. A Copula, connecting the terms of a proposition: 'The boy is lazy,' 'A griffin is an imaginary beast.' This account of is belongs to logic rather than to grammar however: in the language of grammar we should describe is here as a verb of Incomplete Predication.

3. An Auxiliary of Voice and Tense: 'He is beaten,' 'He is beating,' 'He is come.'

176. Have shows contraction in some of its forms,— hast for havest, has for haves, had for haved. It is used as— I. A Notional Verb, meaning 'to possess,' and then admits of a passive use: This suggestion has long been had in mind.'

2. An Auxiliary of Tense to form the Perfects: 'He has written a letter,' 'He will have finished his work,' 'They had missed the train.' On this construction see § 160.

177. Shall was originally a past tense, meaning 'I have owed,' hence, 'I must pay,' 'I am under an obligation, or necessity.' The German word for 'debt,' Schuld, shows the same root. The idea of obligation is still conveyed in such expressions as 'You should do your duty,' 'He should not say so.' Shall acquired the sense of a present, and a weak past was then formed from it, but the absence of the ending -s from the third person singular shall is due to the fact that it was formerly a past tense. The same circumstance explains the forms can, may, will, must, in the third singular, instead of cans, mays, wills, musts. Compare these forms:1

Sing. 1, 3, Pl. 1, 2, 3.

Sing. 2.

178.

should(e)st would (e)st could (e)st might(e)st

Will as an auxiliary contains only the tenses given above. As an independent, notional verb it can be conjugated regularly throughout: 'I did this because you willed it so,' 'It has been willed by the authorities.' Old English had a negative form nill, meaning 'will not,' as Latin has volo and nolo. Nill survives in the adverb willynilly, i.e. will he, nill he,-' whether he will or won't.'

179. Shall and will express the contrast between doing a thing under compulsion from outside and doing a thing from one's own inclination. Used as auxiliaries they express (1) futurity, (2) determination. To express futurity, shall is the auxiliary of the first person, will of the second and third. To express determination, will is the auxiliary of the first

1 Low's English Language, p. 143.