Things and Time-takings
Timing of time-takings is the marking of their times, as now, heretofore, or hereafter.
Time.
Now or hereat.
I am, or I love, or am loved.
Heretofore done.
I was, or I loved, or was loved.
Heretofore ongoing.
I was, or I was a-loving or I did love.
Now ended.
I have been, or I have loved, or have been loved.
Heretofore ended.
I had been, or I had loved, or had been loved.
Heretofore ongoing, ended.
I had been a-loving.
Hereafter doing.
I shall be, or I shall love, or shall be loved.
Hereafter ongoing.
I shall be a-loving.
Hereafter ended.
I shall have been, or shall have loved, or shall have been loved.
Hereafter ended, ongoing.
I shall have been a-loving.
Single and stringly time-takings of the same name, as ‘Mary sold me some apples yesterday.’ There was a single selling; but under the wording ‘Mary formerly sold apples in the market,’ it is clear that under the same word sold is meant a string of sellings.
So under the wording ‘Write your name’ is understood a single writing; but under the wording ‘If you would write readily, write every day,’ the same word write implies a string of writings.
Some tongues (as the Greek and Russian) have two shapes of the time-words for these two cases of time-taking; as, Greek —
‘Take thy bill and write fifty’ (γράψον, aorist). – Luke xvi. 6.
‘Jesus, stooping down, wrote on the ground’ (ἔγραφεν, imperfect, ondoing shape, wrote on).
See the Greek text of the 3rd Epistle of John v. 13 – ‘I had many (things or many times?) to write (γράφειν, ondoing shape), but I will not with pen and ink write (γράψαι) to thee’ (aorist, offdoing form).
An understanding of the difference between the aorist and ondoing shapes is of weight in the reading of the Gospel. ‘To make intercession, to intercede for them.’ – Heb. vii. 25. To intercede once for all, at the doom-day? No. To intercede on always; for the word is not in the aorist shape, but in the present ondoing form, to be interceding.
Historic Time-wording.
A time-shape of a time-word used in an unwonted way for the telling of a string of deeds, as, in English, the present time-shape is so used for deeds of foretime, as ‘He opens the door, walks in, coolly takes a chair, sits down, and tells the maid he wishes to see me.’
So ‘Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him,’ &c. – John i. 45.
The Moods of Time-takings.
Mood.
The wording of the time-taking may be; as,
(1) Now or heretofore true, or hereafter sure, as ‘He is, or was, or will be’; ‘He sings, or sang, or will sing.’ The Truth Mood.
(2) That it may or can, or could or might be so taken, as ‘He may or can go.’ The Mayly Mood.
(3) Or that it is to be wished that it may or might be taken, as ‘I wish,’ or ‘Oh that I could go.’ The Wish Mood.
Or that it is a hinge time-taking on which another hangs, as ‘If you ask (hinge), you will receive (on-hang).’
Or as bidden to be taken, as ‘Go thy way.’
Stead-marks and Way-marks of Time-takings.
Case.
Things named in speech, so as to mark the stead of the beginning or end, or of the way of the time-taking at any point of its length or outreach in time or room, are Case-things.
There are, however, two cases which are speech-cases and not stead-marks or way-marks: —
(1) That of the of-spoken thing (nominative), the thing of which the speech speaks, as ‘The bird flies’; and
(2) The to-spoken thing (vocative), as ‘O sing, sweet bird.’
Cases are marked by shapes of thing-names or by case-words, or by the setting of the case-word either after or before the time-word, as ‘The dog drove out the cat,’ where the dog is the beginning of the time-taking; or ‘The cat drove out the dog,’ where the dog is the end of it, and is shown to be so by the setting of its name after the time-word.
Source.
‘The bird flew from, or off, or out of the tree.’
‘He died of or from intemperance.’
The tree and intemperance are source-marks of flew and died.
End or Aim.
‘John loved George.’
‘He went to or towards London.’
‘Edwin worked for wages, or strolled along by the stream.’
The Stead Case.
‘John was in the field or at the church.’
The Tool.
‘Alfred wrote with a pen.’
‘The bird flew before, behind, over, under, above, below, by, around, or through the gate-turret,’ which is the way-mark of flew.
There is a Source-mark which is a source of the time-taking, not as being only that thing, but as being a thing then in some shape or kind of time-taking.
‘(a) The wind being against us, (b) we made but little way.’ a is the source of b, ‘we made but little way,’ not from the wind simply as wind, but as also being against us.
‘You being my leader, I shall overcome.’
This is commonly called the absolute case (allfree case); though the wind is not free of a time-taking (being against us). It may be called the ‘thing-so-being’ case.
Some tongues mark many of the cases by sundry endings of the thing-name, but we have in common names only one ending for case, the possessive, as ‘the horse’s mane,’ ‘John’s house.’
In name-tokens we have three case-forms, as thou, thy, thee—thy for the possessive, and thee for all the other cases.
‘The bird flew from the apple-tree in the corner of the garden, through the archway, and under the elm by the barn, round the hayrick, and on over the stream just below the willow, and above the bridge, and then to the stall, and on towards the wood, and into an ivy-bush.’
Here the sundry named things are way-marks which mark the place of the flying in its beginning and end, and at sundry points of its length.
Such stead-marks or way-marks may be taken as in either of one or two or three cases, as they may be either stead-marks or way-marks, and as their beholdingness to the time-taking may be reckoned to it or from it to themselves.
‘The bird flew over or under or by the tree.’ The flying at first reached on nearer towards the tree, and then reached off again farther from it, so that the tree was at first in the case of a toness, and then in the case of a fromness, with the flying.
But under the wording ‘the roof is over the floor,’ or ‘the floor is under the roof,’ the time-taking is is a staid and not an ongoing one, and either the roof or the floor may be in the fromness or toness case, as the height may be reckoned from it to the other, or to it from the other.
A housemother may say ‘We live near (to) Fairton’ (toness case); yet an hour afterwards she may say ‘We live too far from Fairton (fromness case) to step in readily for errands.’
Her abode may be four miles from Fairton, so that the time-taking live is as far from Fairton in one case as the other; and yet it puts it in two sundry cases.
‘If Alfred gave to Edred a field,’ the time-taking gave ended in the mid-thing, the field (the endingness case), but it put the field to Edred, as his, in the toness case.
The place of a time-taking may be shown by one place-mark, or by two or three, of which a latter may mark the place of a former, as ‘The rooks build in the elms, above the house,’ where the elms mark the place of the building, and the house marks that of the place-mark (the elms).
But some case-words are made up of a smaller case-word and a thing-name, as ‘Alfred sat beside the wall.’ Beside being ‘by the side,’ and the side of the wall (whereof case).
The figure for case-shifting, or the changing of the case-tokens, is called in Gr. enallage as
‘I have ten sovereigns in my purse’; ‘My purse contains ten sovereigns.’
‘The pump has a new handle’; ‘There is a new handle to the pump.’
‘The carpet in the hall’; ‘The carpet of the hall.’
‘The brother of or to that lady.’
‘John likes cricket or is fond of cricket.’
‘Greedy of gain or for gain.’
‘Think of me or on me.’
‘He was killed by a blow of a club or with a club.’
‘He spoke in the balcony or from the balcony.’
THOUGHT-WORDING, SPEECH-WORDING,
is the setting of words or a bewording of thought or speech (syntax).
A thought-wording (proposition) is a bewording of the case of a thing with its time-taking. ‘The boy is good’ or ‘the boy plays.’
A thought-wording may have more thing-names and time-words, as ‘The boys and girls read and play.’
Thought-wordings (propositions) may be linked together in sundry ways, though mostly by Link-words (conjunctions). ‘Men walk and birds fly’; ‘I sought him, but I found him not’; ‘I waited at the door while Alfred went into the house.’
Twin Time-takings.
The Hinge Time-taking, on which the other hangs, and the Hank Time-taking which hangs on the Hinge one, as ‘If ye ask (hinge), ye shall receive (hank).’
There are sundry kinds of hinge time-takings, as one or the other or both of the time-takings may or may not be trowed or true or sure.
(1) Hinge and hank, trowed – ‘As ye ask (as I trow you do), so ye receive (I trow).’
(2) Hinge, untrowed; hank, trowed – ‘If ye ask (I trow not whether ye will or no), then ye will receive (I trow).’
The hinge-word put down as trowedly untrue, and the hank one trowed, as ‘If ye asked (as I trow you do not), ye would receive (I trow)’; or ‘If ye had asked (ye have not), ye would have received (I trow).’
The hinge time-taking trowed, and the other untrowed, as ‘Ye ask (I trow), that ye may receive (I trow not that ye will).’
Speech-trimming.
The putting of speech into trim; trim being a truly good form or state. To trim a shrub, a bonnet, or a boat, is to put it into trim.
1. The first care in speech-trimming is that we should use words which give most clearly the meanings and thoughts of our mind, though it is not likely that unclear thought will find a clear outwording; and either of the two, as clear or unclear, helps to clearen or bemuddle the other.
With most English minds, and with all who have not learned the building of Latin and Greek words, English ones may be used with fewer mistakes of meaning than would words from those tongues; though Englishmen should get a clearer insight into English word-building ere they could hope to keep English words to their true sundriness of meaning.
The so-seeming miswordings (solœcisms) of writers in the Latinised and Greekish speech-trimming are not uncommon or unmarkworthy.
One man writes of something which necessitates another, though Latin itself has no necessito to back ‘necessitate’; another gives eliminate as meaning elicit, or outdraw; a third calls a failure of a rule an exception from it. There is no EXCEPTION to a rule but that which is excepted from it at and in the downlaying of it. If a man gives a simple rule ‘that if it rains on St. Swithin’s day it rains forty days after it,’ and it did not so rain last year, the case is a breach or failure of the rule, and not an exception to it. He gave no exception.
Some say ‘Mrs. A. has had twins’ or ‘Alfred was one of twins.’ A twin is a twain, a two, or a couple of things of the same name or kind; and twins of children must be at least four. I should say ‘Alfred was one of a twin.’ In the latter case it would be correct to say ‘There IS one or a twain of fat men,’ &c., in which is would match both.
One has written ‘ideas are manufactured.’ By whose hands? Another talks of ‘a dilapidated dress’; and a third has ‘found the stomach of a big fish dilapidated.’ What are lapides? and what means delapido?
A man has written of an old Tartar that he was ‘a tameless gorilla’ – a gorilla without a tame! as if tame were a thing-name.
Another says ‘It imposed absolute limits upon the choice of positions.’ What are absolute limits if absolute (from absolvo, to offloosen) means offloosened from all check and all limits?
A man writes of ‘a photograph reproduced by a new permanent process.’ Is it the process or the sunprint that is permanent?
Preposterous, foreaft, as when what should be præ, foremost, is put post or behind; whereas a writer gives a structure as ‘preposterously overgrown,’ as if ‘preposterous’ meant only very much, vastly.
One takes irretrievable as nohow amended. If ‘retrieve’ is the French retrouver (to find again), ‘irretrievable’ would mean not to be found again; and ‘the irretrievable defeat of the whole nation’ would be one which they could not find again, as most likely they would not wish to find it.
Twy-meanings.
From want of words in English, or of care, our wording may seem to bear two meanings, as ‘John played with Edwin, and broke his bat.’ The bat of which boy?
‘One Robert Bone of Antony shot at a little bird sitting upon his cow’s back, and killed it – the bird (I mean), not the cowe.’ —Carew.
Word-sameness (Synonyms).
Words of the same meaning are less often so than they are so called; and we sometimes give lists of synonyms showing the differences of their meanings.
A twin of words of one very same meaning is rather evil than good; and if they are not of one very same meaning they should not be given as such.
It may be that from a misunderstanding of the word tautology, as the name of a bad kind of speech-trimming, men have often shunned the good use of words.
The bad tautology from which speakers have been so frayed seems to be the giving twice or many times, within one scope of thought-wording, the same matter of speech in the same words.
It is true that it would not be good wording to say ‘John has sold John’s horse’ for ‘his horse’ since the name-tokens are shapen to stand for foregiven names.
But where the same foreused word would give a very clear – if not the clearest – meaning, there seems to be little ground against the use of it.
‘I bought a horse on Monday and a donkey on Tuesday, and sold the horse again at a gain on Thursday.’ Why should not the word horse take the latter place as well as the word steed, or equine animal, or ‘more worthy beast’ – or why should I not as well say, ‘An ass I want, and an ass I will buy,’ as ‘An ass I want, and a donkey, or it or him, I will buy’?
It seems that much wrong is done to the Greek of the Gospel by the putting, for the same Greek word, sundry English ones at sundry passages; and by what right do we try an Evangelist’s or an Apostle’s wisdom in the use of the same word, by which he must have meant to give the same meaning? or why should we make him to mean by κρίσις, at one time, a trying of a soul, and at another time a fordooming of him?
It is not any tautology to use near to each other a thing-name and a mark-word which are only fellow stem-words, as ‘As free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness.’
2. Another care in speech-trimming is the choice of words for their sound-sweetness (Gr. euphony) or well-soundingness, or for speech-readiness.
Past, with the hissing s with t, is less sound-good than after; and aqueduct, with ct, is less well-sounding than waterlode; nor is cataract softer than waterfall.
The hereunder given wordings were lately heard in a law court: —
‘I can give you one or two instances of remarkable intelligence in the cases of fat men’; and
A Juror – ‘There are one or two fat men on the jury (laughter).’
Dr. K. – ‘I don’t think there are.’
How should these cases be treated? In the first case, ‘one instances’ is a breach of word-matching, as would be ‘two instance’; and in the latter, the word one calls for man, and two for men. May we not better say, ‘I can give you at least one instance,’ or ‘I believe more instances than one’?
‘A man who has already, and will still, render such services will be,’ &c. Rendered is understood after has; but how may the thought be worded without the two puttings of the word render? Thus: ‘a man who will still be, as he has already been, found to render,’ &c.
Penetrate means insink, inpierce. M. Gambetta writes, ‘After the heroic examples given by open towns, and by villages only guarded by their firemen, it is absolutely necessary that each town, each commune, shall pay its debt to the national defence, and that all alike be penetrated by the task which is imposed upon France.’ It seems a queer speech-wording to take a task as a thing that penetrates, though it might be undertaken.
A bad wording is often found with mark-words of the higher pitch, as ‘Alfred was more clever, but not so good, as John.’ ‘Not so good’ is an inwedged word-cluster, but the word-setting is bad, as ‘more clever’ calls for the word than, not as; and ‘so good’ wants as, not than. It would be better to say ‘Alfred was more clever, but less good, than John.’ To try the word-setting take out the wedge-words (‘but not so good’), and you will have ‘Alfred was more clever as John.’
Dislike seems a bad word-shape. Mislike is the old and true English one. Like is from lic, a shape, as lich, the body of a dead man. ‘It liketh (licað) me well’ is ‘it shapes itself (looketh) to me well.’ ‘It misliketh me’ is ‘it misshapes itself to me’ (looks bad).
To seem is from the thing-name —sam, seam, seem, body or mass – and ‘it seems to me’ is ‘it bodies itself to me.’ ‘That ship seems to be a French one,’ or ‘that man seems to be ill,’ bodies itself or himself to be a French one or ill.
‘The house and the goods were burnt’; but ‘the house with the goods was (not were) burnt,’ since it is only the house that is in the speech-case, as the goods are in the mate-case. ‘The house was burnt with the goods.’
‘One of the children are come.’ No —is come. The one only is come.
We may often hear a man who is careful to speak good English say ‘This rose smells very sweetly,’ for sweet. The rose smells (gives out smell) as being itself very sweet, not as smelling (taking in smell) in a sweet way. To find which to use, the thing-markword or the under-markword, put ‘as being’ after the time-word, as ‘This rose smells (as being itself) sweet,’ not sweetly.
‘Can you smell now? you had, the other day, lost your smelling?’ ‘Yes, I smell very nicely.’ Not I smell as being myself very nice. A rose cannot smell any other thing, and so cannot smell it nicely.
‘Mary sings very charmingly,’ but ‘Mary looks very charming.’
‘John looks pale,’ but ‘John looks very narrowly into that gold-work.’
‘I can taste well,’ ‘That peach tastes good.’
To have seen a man at a bygone time would mean that the seeing was before that bygone time; but we sometimes hear a man say, ‘I should (yesterday) have been very glad to have seen you (if you had called yesterday).’ That is, by wording, ‘I should have been very glad (yesterday) to have seen you (at a time before yesterday),’ not to see you yesterday; and yet that is what the speaker means. ‘I should have been very glad (yesterday) to see you (yesterday),’ or ‘I should be very glad to-day to have seen you yesterday.’
3. Odd word-shapes are not in the main choice-worthy.
Our time-word go is of unwontsome conjugation, as its foretime shape went is not shapen from go, but is a shape of another word, wend.
So the forlessening name, leveret for a hareling, and cygnet for a swanling, are unwontsome, as being words of another speech.
4. There is a greater or less freedom of word-shifting (Gr. anastrophe, up-shifting or back-shifting), as up in ‘Fasten it up well,’ ‘fasten it well up’; or back in ‘He brought back the saw,’ or ‘he brought the saw back’; ‘There is none to dispute my right,’ or ‘my right there is none to dispute.’