A recent pretentious work on the English language and English grammar (by Samuel Ramsey) would afford an example of loose thinking from almost any of its 568 pages. A few only need be given here. As to Danish influence on early English speech, it is said that “the general effect ... was to shorten and simplify words that were long or of different utterance, and dropping or shortening grammatical forms.” It should have been easy for the author to perceive that this sentence was not well constructed; and what can be worse in a book on grammar than an ungrammatical sentence? We are told that a feature of English construction due to French influence is “the placing of the adjective after the noun, or giving it a plural form--_sign manual, Knights Templars_.” No English adjective ever has the plural form, and _Templars_ is rightly pluralized simply because it is a noun. “No grammar will help us to distinguish the _lumbar_ region from the _lumber_ region,” Mr. Ramsey says. But grammar does help us by teaching us that _lumbar_ is an adjective and _lumber_ a noun. In careful speech accent would indicate the difference, which should be indicated in writing by joining the elements of the second term as a compound--_lumber-region_. In a chapter of “Suggestions to Young Writers,” the advice is given, “Let all your words be English, sound reliable English, and nothing but English; and when you speak of a spade call it by its name, and when you mean _hyperæsthesia_, say so.” If a young writer “says so” by using the word instanced, will he use “nothing but English”?
Lord Tennyson is reported to have said: “I do not understand English grammar. Take _sea-change_. Is _sea_ here a substantive used adjectively, or what? What is the logic of a phrase like _Catholic Disabilities Annulling Bill_? Does _invalid chair maker_ mean that the chair-maker is a sickly fellow?” But Tennyson showed plainly in his writing, by making compounds of such terms as _sea-change_, that he felt, at least, that _sea_ is not used adjectively, as “adjectively” is commonly understood. He must have thought that the phrase whose logic he asked for is wholly illogical and bad English, for he never wrote one like it. His own writing would never have contained the three separate words “invalid chair maker”; he would have made it “invalid chair-maker” (or chairmaker) for the sense he mentions, and “invalid-chair maker” if he meant “a maker of chairs for invalids.” Tennyson certainly used English words well enough to justify the assumption that he knew English grammar passing well.