Parts of Speech

As a schoolboy I struggled to remember the names of parts of speech and which was what and why. After I left school and when I started writing I found it a simple task. I recently discussed this with someone and, as I did so, began wondering if an etymologist's view would have helped. Let's see:

Verb, always said to be a 'doing word', came to English from France where the word verbe was used in the sense of 'word' and also 'word of God'. This is derived from the Proto-Indo-European were meaning 'to speak', which has also given us Avestan urvata 'command'; Sanskrit vrata 'command, vow'; Greek rhetor 'public speaker'; Hittite weriga 'call, summon'; Lithuanian vardas 'name'; and both the Gothic and English words for 'word'.

Noun is another from French, where nom has long meant 'name'. Interestingly, Old English name was used to mean 'name'. All can be traced back to Latin nomen and Proto-Indo-European no-men both meaning 'name'.

Adjective, as I recall it said to be the 'describing word', it also comes from French, where adjectif came from Latin adjectivum, the latter meaning 'added' - in this sense added to the noun. Note from around 1851 'adjective' was used as a euphemism for the mild oath 'bloody'.

Preposition is from the Latin praepositionem 'a putting before, a prefixing', and a fairly accurate description of how a preposition is used.

Conjunction is from French, where conjonction not only meant 'union, joining' but was also used in the sense of 'sexual intercourse', as was the Latin root of coniunctionem.

Pronoun has the same etymology as 'noun' but with the addition of the prefix 'pro' to mean 'in place of'.

Adverb also shares an etymology, this time with 'verb', with the prefix 'ad' meaning 'to'.

Lichfield Gallows

June 1st 1810 and on the western side of London Road at its junction with Shortbutts Lane, gallows were used for the last time to hang three forgers.

John Neve, William Wightman and James Jackson were found guilty of having uttered forged bank notes, these they attempted to pass to Mr Marshall, a Lichfield draper. Led by the Sheriff of Lichfield, the cavalcade departed the Guildhall, with the three men in an open cart. Along Boar Street and St John’s Street they came to the aptly named Gallows Wharf by the canal bridge on London Road. Each was permitted to say his last piece before being ‘despatched to eternity’. Emphasising the morbid fascination surrounding executions at this time, these speeches from the condemned men were quickly committed to print and published in a broadsheet from the printing works at the corner of Bird Street and Market Street, the property of a Mr Lomax – who charged one penny for each copy.

Parts of Speech

At school one of my most loathed lessons was English Grammar when learning parts of speech and tenses. Having written for some years I suppose I should be more interested in usage, yet it is the etymology of the terms themselves which I find of more interest and look at such below. If nothing else it may help me remember something I should probably have learned forty-odd years ago.

Noun – came into our language from Middle English which, as with most words which did not appear in the earlier Old English, has Norman French influences and can be traced to Latin nomen meaning ‘name’.

Pronoun – as above but with the additional ‘pro’ meaning ‘substitute’ and ultimately from the Latin pronomen via French pronom.

Adjective – and again from Latin, also via Old French where adjectif came from adjicere meaning ‘add, attribute’.

Verb – another Middle English term from Old French verbe and Latin verbum originally meaning simply ‘word’.

Adverb – as above, where Old French adverbe and Latin adverbium saw the addition from ‘added’.

Preposition – a Middle English word from Latin praeposito and ultimately prae-ponere ‘place before’.

Conjunction – another Old French word (conjunction) and Latin (conjunctio) meaning ‘connect’.

Interjection – ultimately from Latin interjectio meaning ‘interrupt’.

Not only do these eight lexical categories (to give the correct term) share a common theme but, in the main, are fairly self-explanatory. In the case of tenses, itself from Latin tempus or ‘time’ and via the earlier French tens with the same meaning, the basic past, present and future speak for themselves. Less obvious is the ‘perfect’ tense, from Latin perficere ‘complete’; ‘pluperfect’ is Latin plusperfectum ‘more than perfect’.

What may not be particularly well known is that while many languages have three tenses, English is actually a two-tense language (Japanese is another), where there is only the past and non-past, the latter covering both the present and future in a single verb form. Similarly Greenlandic and Quechua (South American native language from around the Andes) have only future and non-future. There are also languages with no tenses, in a grammatical sense, including Chinese, Burmese and Dyirbal, the latter restricted to a small part of Queensland and, as at the census of 2006, restricted to just 29 speakers. Strange as it sounds there are languages with four tenses, where past is separated into recent past and remote past. I could find none with five tenses but did find one with six. The Kalaw Lagaw Ya tongue of Australia (native to some parts of Queensland) has the remote past, recent past, today past, present, today or near future, and remote future.