THE CERdNDIAL CONSTRUCTION IN THE ROMANIC LANGUAGES. By Samuel Garner. /. INTRODUCTORY. He vvlio enters upon an investigation in philology, where the subject concerns the language of early writers, whose works have been preserved to us in manuscript form, is not infrequently met on the very threshold of his inquiry by a consideration which must in no small degree tend to dampen his ardor—I mean the uncertainty, in the event of his not having access to the manuscripts, of the value of the forms given by the editions he intends to follow, as conijrared with the actual forms which may have been used by the authors themselves. The notorious negligence of the middle-age copyists and their frequent tamper¬ ing with the te.xts of their authors, either to satisfy their own personal whims or through ignorance of the language or dialect of the writers whose j^roductions they essayed to multiply, are too well known to need much comment here. Add to this that even some of the men of the present day who undertake the editing of such manuscripts, are often as capricious and dishonest in making up their editions as the old copyists themselves, and the investigator may well have cause to doubt the value of his conclusions, even when most carefully drawn. Mr. L. Clddat hasjust given us a fine specimen of this cacoethes emendandi in his edition of the Chanson de Roland lately published. (Paris, Gamier, 1886.) Acting on the assumption that “ la majority des roman- istes ” consider the Roland of French origin, which, to say the least, is very cjuestionable, he proceeds to francisize the Oxford text on the model of the French of the eleventh cen¬ tury, from which modern French jrroper is derived. The result is not simply a “nouvelle Edition,” as he styles it, but likewise an “ Edi¬ tion neuve.” But this method of procedure is not confined to this species of writings ; it is a mania that has extended to more recent authors as well. Very few of the ordinary editions of modern classic authors, for in¬ stance, would be trustworthy for philological Reprinted from Modern LANr.DAGK Notes, Volume II. No. 3. im'estigation. We all know of Bentley’s un¬ happy attempt at emending the text of Milton. Some copyists and editors seem to have a- dopted the principle that any decided deviation in point of spelling or syntax, not current at their time, was an indication that the author did not know what was right and must needs be corrected by his more fortunate successors. In this way many of the most important works of early writers have been lost to us, as far as the original form is concerned, and their value for philological purposes is accordingly di¬ minished in proportion to the amount of mutila¬ tion suffered. As an additional instance of how one of the old F'rench authors has been treated by a modern editor, may be cited the case of the Roman de Ron, edited and pub¬ lished over fifty years ago by Pluquet. Wace’s poem is i^reserved in a manuscript known as the Duchesne MS. (because copied by Andrd Duchesne from an earlier MS.), which belongs to the “Biblioth&que Nationale ” at Paris. Pluquet professed to have made this MS. the basis of his edition; but a new edition has been, within the last decade, gotten out by a German savant (Hugo Andresen), who found, by a comparison of Pluquet's text with Du¬ chesne’s, that by no possibility could he have consulted (or at least followed) this MS. for the readings which he attributed to it, since many of these readings are not to be found there, even when he refers specially to Duchesne in his foot notes. A close examination showed that Pluquet had been guilty of the most unparalleled dis¬ honesty ; that instead of basing his edition on Duchesne’s text, he had followed in great measure the worst of the three existing copies, made from the Duchesne; and further that he had even taken the most unwarrantable liber¬ ties with this—changing words, phrases and whole sentences, leaving out and adding lines, just as it suited his fancy, and that too, where there was not the slightest excuse for it ; as neither the sense, the grammar nor the meter offered any difficulty. Observe now the bane¬ ful consequences resulting from this criminal proceeding of Pluquet. 'Phe Roman de Ron, being very characteristic from a linguistic standpoint, has played an important part in I The Gcriiudial Co 7 istriiction in the A’onianic Languages. determining man\' points of Old French syntax and morpliology. Perceiving the frequent occurrence in Pluquet’s text of certain forms of the present indicative, third person singular of verbs of the first conjugation (as acorci, inant, kuid and knit), Kaynouard accepted them as the normal forms w hereas the manuscript gives only acorde, niande, cuide. Error once en¬ gendered usually ]rropagates itself w'ith the same persistency as truth ; and so Diez, following in the wake of Raynouard in trust¬ ing to the fidelity of Pluquet, gave, in the first edition of his “ Gi'aniniatik dcr Roman- ischen Sprachen,” viand, pens, os, kuid, as abbreviated forms of the third singular, and he continued faithfully yet innocently to reproduce them in the two subsequently revised editions of his grammar, which he published during his life-time. (See the “ Dritte, neu bearbeitete nnd vermehrte Aufiage ” of 1872, vol. II, p. 232). It may be added that even the 5th edition (1882) con^ tains these forms originally cited by Diez from Raynouard. Little inaccuracies of this kind may be of trifling import, as far as the general results of F'rench philological research are concerned, but’they teach a lesson which it behooves every investigator to keep before his mind : namely, that philology is not, as some would have us believe, an exact science ; because its results are largely arrived at through channels subject to all the influences of human weak¬ ness and the ravages of time; and that the apparent facts of to-day may turn out to be errors in the brighter light of the dawn of the morrow. The reasoning in the following pages, w'here early works are cited, has been based, in the main, on examples drawn from texts that have passed through the mill of the canons of textual criticism. The correctness, therefore, of certain details and statements depends on the genuineness of the texts consulted, many of which have not always been found as satis¬ factory as could have been desired. Quotations from old authors have usually been accompanied by references, where this was convenient. In the case of modern writers, it was not thought necessary to give more than the name, since the correctness of the illustra¬ tive examples will be recognized by any one acquainted with the languages from which they have been taken. B. means Bartsch, and refers to his Chresto- mathies, unless it is otherwise stated. II. KOK.MS, THEIR DERIVATION, &C. The origin of the various forms of the gerund offers no difficult problem in point of |iho- netics. Most of the languages and their dia¬ lects kept very close to the Latin originals, the Italian (properly so-called) and the Portuguese probably differing less in details than the other members of the group. Only one of the four cases of the Latin gerund, how ever, has sur¬ vived in the Romanic tongues; and this, in view of its earliest syntatical relations, gram¬ marians have siqjposed to be the ablative, although no positive proof can be offered in favor of this ; as, excepting the geniti\ e, any of the other cases would give us the same forms. 'I'he fact though of the gerund’s usually ex¬ pressing causal, instrumental, temporal and other adverbial relations, must be a potent argument in fa\ or of its ablati\ e derivation. The Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and ^\'al- lachian all retained the terminal wa'of the par¬ ent speech. The first three likewise retained the final o of the Latin, if we accept the abla¬ tive as the original source; whereas the Wal- lachian gerund, through the general tendency of the end-vowels (especially o) to go over into u's appears as ndii. As this ti is always silent in pronunciation, except where the gerund is accompanied by a conjunctive pronoun, which is tacked on to the end and forms one word with it, it is common to drop it at the present day, and we have nd as the ending of all the conjugations. The vocal elements preceding the terminations ndo and ndii are sometimes determined by the Latin vowels, but more fre¬ quently by the vow'el preceding the r of the infiniti\-e in the respecti\e languages, this vowel being occasionally modified in accord¬ ance with certain regular phonetic changes observed under similar conditions. Examples; Ital. cantare, cantando; \ endere, vendendo; service, servendo: .Sp. cantar, cantando; vender, vendiendo; partir, partiendc: I Port, cantar, cantando; vender, vendiendo; 2 The Cicrnndial Construction in the Romanic Laitguagcs. partir, partindo; p6r, i^ondo: Wal. a caiitfi, cantandu; a tace, tacendii; a alege, alegendil; a audi, audindii. These are tlie usual methods of formation for these four languages; sjrecial or exceptional cases vve need not stop here to can\ass. It may he parenthetically noticed in passing, that, like the French, some of the Italian dia¬ lects have taken as a model the first conjuga¬ tion in the formaticm of their gerunds, hut strange to say, and in this they dift'er from the French, as will he seen, they have observed the regular method for their present partici¬ ples. In the “Cronica deli Imperadori,” a X'enetian work of 1301, I have noted these forms : crezando, vezando, volgiando (volendo) ahiaiuhj, sai)iando, siando, condugando, tra- gando, digando, vignando, tegnando, fazando, metando, pcjrtando, avrando (aprendo), moran- do, (only zermendo 28®); but participles: res- plendente, continente, dormiente, reverente, ohediente. 'I'his same phenomenon is ohservahle in the Genoese dialect, as may he seen from the following forms taken from some “Rime geno- vese della fine del secolo XIII e del principio del XI\’.: fazando, temando, vegnando, digan¬ do, odando, scrivando, discorrando, shatando, respondando, prometando, sentaiulo, hevando, ferando; hut, ohediente, ardente, corrente, spuzente, and even parlente, instead of ])ar- lante. These gerunds in ndo and ndh remain in¬ variable for all genders and numhers. Accord¬ ing to Rarcianfl, however,, tlie W'^allachian gerund is susceptible of inllection to indicate gender and number, whenever treated as an adjective. “Wird aher das Mittelwort [gerun- dium] der gegenwiirtigen Zeit als ein Reiwort hetrachtet, claim ist es der Biegung unterwor- fen, wie jedes ideale Beiwort; z. B. gemend’a omenire trehue ajutata—omenirea, ce genre der leidenden Menschheit muss geholfen werden.” It may he cpiestioned whether it is corredt to treat these inflected forms as identi¬ cal with the gerund. 'I'here is no analogy for it in the other Romance languages, for the instances of inflected gerunds in the French were not brought about by a disirosition to in¬ flect this part of sireech, hut through confusion —that is, misuse of the present jrarticiple on account of the formal identity of the two. This could not have been the case in the Wal- lachian, as the participle and gerund were too clearly defined. It may be further remarked that the Wallachian presents but very few cases of the apparently inflected gerund, and I would venture the following suggestion as a possible explanation of the phenomenon : namely, that they are not gerunds but the remains of the Latin gerundive (or future jrarticiple in dus), which of course always agreed with the noun-subject in gender, num¬ ber, &c. Kiihner is of opinion that the gerundive first had the meaning of a present participle : “liber legendus=ein Buch das gelesen wird, in welcher Bedeutung das Gerundiv wirklich gebraucht wird.” It was not until later, he shows, that the idea of necessity was de\’eloped. Regarded from this standpoint they would not be peculiar to the Wallachian. Instances are quite common in Italian : E quante in pace hai sparte Opre ammirande. (Vincenza da Filicaja) Del memorando acquisto A te I'onor si serbe. , (I)itto) E non ardi il mio genio Sui venerandi avelli. ({lofFredi Mameli) Colpo meno esecrando La natia sede invadere. (Ales. Paerio). These are evidently the Latin participle in dus ; and similar words are to be met with in Spanish and Portuguese; but they are not essentially different from the verbal adjectives in : Acum o s&ptffmana doamna N.era trista si suferindS. (\’asilie Alecsandri) Si nu voiescti a-i demite fiamandi. (Math. X\', 32). The objection may be raised to this explan¬ ation, that it supposes in the Wallachian a change from a passive to an active meaning ; true, but in becoming inflected, it loses its power at once to govern a case, in other words it becomes intransitive. d'his implies the retention of a certain amount of its j^assivity, and would only be analogous to the passive jvarticiple assuming an active meaning, when constructed with the preposition .Yc: usor de 3 The Gcrundial Construction in the Romanic f.anguages. portat, easy to carry; casa aceasta este de vindut, this house is for sale, (to sell, like the Eiig. to let). In German we liave the rex'erse : ein zu verkaufendes haus. Moreover, the distinction between gerund and gerundive, active and passive, has not been settled beyond a peradventure; for while in the general outlines of their functions they may be pronounced, the one active and the other passive ; still individual instances arise, ! which point to a latent consciousness, as it were, of the identity of these two parts of speech. Kriiger, though maintaining the activity of the gerund, concedes that it may sometimes be passive in force (so finden sich auch die Gerundia in einer solchen [passiven] Bedentung gebraucht), and cites, among other examples: “spes restituendi nulla erat ” and “memoriaexcolendoaugetur.” This is.signifi¬ cant as showing the possible identity of gerund and participle in dus\ and efforts have been made to prove tliis, but not with com¬ plete success. The most that can be said is, that they both, at times, desert their proper provinces. A \ ery decided case of this is seen in Aeneid IX. 7; Turne, quod optanti divfim permittere nemcr Auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ultrb. Wax^votvcnda has the force of votvens and is analogous to the Wallachian usage. riiere is found likewise in Plautus a con¬ struction, imitated by \'arro (who affected an archaic style) and Lucretius, in which the neuter of the participle in dus is used actively, at least what amounts to the same, although the grammarians would account for it other¬ wise. Mihi hac nocte agitandum est vigilias. (Plautus, Trill. I\'. 2.27) Hos veteranos [boves] ex campestribus locis non emendum in dura ac montana. (\'arro, K. R. I. 20). Nunc ratio nulla est resiandi, nulla facultas, Aeternas quoniam poenas in inorie timendumst. {Lucretius, De Rer. Nat. I, no). W'e shall, too, see furtlier on, that, in Merov¬ ingian Latin, the particijile in dus was used actively and made to govern the same case as its verb. This may not prove my thesis with reference to the Wbdlachian gerund adjectively em¬ ployed, but it is strongly suggestive. It cer¬ tainly is not easy to see, how a word, which expressed only adverbial relations and which, moreover, was virtually a noun in an oblique case, could liave acquired an adjective use. In fact Diez, although ciuoting with approval from the jiassage of Barciantt above given, says somewhat inconsistently : “ Diese Casusform [Al.'lativ] erweiterte allmahlich ihren Bereich auf Kosten des Part, praes. aber nur des verbalen : die adjective Bedentung kommt ihr niclit zu, vielmelir lehnt sie sich wie der In- finitiv an ein \'erbum oder aucli apiiositicinell an ein Substantiv. Man sagt z. B. it. un fan- ciullo giuocante (die giuoca) aber un fanciullo si divertiva giuocando ; altsp. una virgen dur- miente, aberTuiste virgen durmiendot! velando (im schlafen und wachen) Flor. 1. 6; fr. une femme mourante, aber une femme parla en mourant.” This is a distinction wliich it behooves us to keep constantly before our minds, when sjieak- ing of the gerund. 'Phe real gerund is not an adjective modifier and conseciuently never changes its form. Wlien in Purgatorio IX. 38, we read : trafugo lui dormendo in le sue brac- cia, dormendo does not actually (though logic¬ ally it does) agree with tui; it is to be inter¬ preted : in sonno or 7 icl atto di dormire. Other cases may be analysed in the same way. As in the Cid : Rodrigo Diaz de \'ivar. Despues que gan6 fi Valencia Como bueno guerreando, \hvia 'a placer en ella, where we may translate: as a good warrior, while it is grammatically: as one good in warring. The present participles, where they exist in Italian, S]ianish, Portuguese and W'allacliian, all end in nte, the antecedent vowel generally depending on the same conditions as for the gerund. It is only the Italian, though, that is capable of creating ]iarticiples for all its verbs. The S[)anish, Portuguese and Wallachian have, for the most part, lost them. 'Phose that are left are used only as nouns, adjectives or prepositions. In no case do they perform anv of the functions of the verb. In the early .Spanish and Portuguese writers a few siioradic cases are found of participles retaining their verbal force ; but they are not sufiiciently numerous to establish any princi|)Ie, and they are hardly to be regarded as belonging to the 4 The Ger-undial Constr 7 iction m the Romanic Languages. syntax of these languages. Lusiads V. 22 is an undoubted Latinism. E pelo c^o chovendo em fim voou, Porque co’ a agua a jacente agua molhe. Tasso shows a great fondness for these Latinisms; and of writers of a recent day I believe it may be 'said that Silvio Pellico uses the present participle oftener with a verbal force than is customary in modern Italian. Like the Latin these participles have but one form for both masculine and feminine, the only inflexional change being to indicate num¬ ber. We have now to speak of the Provencal and French, which have been reserved for the last, because they belong to a special category, in that they have departed more widely from the parent speech than the others in their formal development, and hence have to be grouped by themselves. The Langue d’Oc preserved both the participle and the gerund of the Latin and, according to Diez’s table of inflexions, the regular forms are; gerund and en; participle an-s and en-s ; that is, the one being distinguished from the other only by the 5. This distinction, however, was not always heeded. In fact, two of the old Proven5al grammars, the “ Donatz Proensals,” and the “ Razos de Trobar” of Raimon Mdal, make no such division in denominating the parts of the verb. The former, in speaking of the case- endings of nouns and adjectives, says : “Si cum sun li particip que finissen in ans uel e^is, queu pos dire ‘ aquest chaual es presans, aquesta domna es presans, aquestz canals es avinens, aquesta domnaes avinens.’ Mas el nominatiu plural se camia daitan que conven a dire ‘aquelh chaual sun avinen, aquelas donas sun avinens’.” In two or three other places, reference is made to the participle but there is no mention, throughout the whole treatise, of the gerund. Mdal likewise observes complete silence in respect to the distinction between gerund and participle, and we may infer that the former was regarded merely as the participle minus the s. The early Provengal writers were evi¬ dently not aware of any difference of origin ; and there was no reason why they should have been, since the oldest documents present no forms with clearer outlines than those of a more recent date. Like the Italian dialects above illustrated, the French modeled all its gerunds on the first conjugation, but went even further than these dialects and treated the present participle in the same manner.* Burguy, who, with all his short-comings, must be admitted to have been a scholar, assigns, as it seems to me, a strange reason for this. He says in this con¬ nection : Le participe pr&ent des quatre conjugaisons a toujours eu la flexion ant\ on rejeta sans doute en (-ens) pour distinguer orthographi- quement le participe de la troisi^me pers. pi. prds. ind. et parce que la prononciation de Ve devant n est la meme que celle de I’rt.” This is making a statement in face of the fact that no such change of ^ to a was thought necessary, under like conditions, in Provencal. Moreover, it is not true, as is implied in the latter part of of his sentence, that the participle and the third person pi. of the verb w'ere pronounced alike. It is true that en{t) and an(t) assonate and rime with each other ; Femmes lui van detras seguen Ploran lo van et gaimentan. (La Passion, B. ii. i6j. Tel conseiller ne fut onques vivant Ne plus sages homme i mon escient. (Roman d’Aquin, 1 . 1612). But in the case of the participle and the verb, there was one thing which completely distin- *We must go to the oblique cases for all the forms of the participle—even for the sibilant forms arts, anz. Latin annuls would have given, not ainans, antanz, but atiies, as infans gave enfeSj while infantem produced enfant. So tak¬ ing the accusative amantem as the norm, we should obtain analogously amant (later but incorrectly When the flexional sibilant {s, z) was added, the dental dropped out. Ainando {-uni) appears in French only as amant (ainiant); there was probably, however, an intermediate form, amand, the sonant then going over into its corresponding surd at a time when the final consonants were still sounded, (quando= quand is nearly always quant in O. F.). This process of eu¬ phony (i, e. ease of utterance according to the present defini¬ tion), similar to the German, was the universal custom in early French and Provencal, and hence: b=p; g=c; d=t; v=f, (preserved in modern: grand homme, sang et eau, etc., which are pronounced : grant homme, sank et eau). These changes, as a general rule, took place, whether the sonants became final through the natural growth of the words out of the Latin or through inflexion. Only in the Passion and a few other poems do we observe a strong opposite dialectic tendency in respect to the final t’s\ leved, anned, aproismed conforted, defended, acusand. 0 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. guished the two forms to the ear, namely the tonic accent, w'hich must have influenced the quality of the final vowels, that is, in fimssent (verb) the last vowel would be either not heard at all or very obscurely, while in _finisshit{em), the e would be a full sonorous sound. If I may venture a suggestion myself, I would attribute the phenomenon to dialectic influence as seen in the Roman d’Aquin (trante, talant, plants, antrer, prandre, tandre, sanglant) and elsewhere, where the e of the syllable ens, en, ente, ent, has become a ; as laians (laiens) pre- sant, oriant, chasemant, povremant, and the numerals in a«/^(quarante, cinquante, soixante, septante, octante, nonante) which must have passed through ente in becoming ante. What¬ ever may have been the cause of this change, the fact remains indisputable : all gerunds and present participles had the same terminations (ant, ans, ant) and there are no traces of ent- forms even in the earliest monuments of the language; for, what Wilhelm Bruno says in a dissertation which he presented to the Univer¬ sity of Rostock, in 1871, has no bearing on the question whatever. After stating that the French “ adjectif verbal ” comes undoubtedly from the coijresponding Latin forms in ans and ens, he continues : “ Die Endung e 7 it ist von vornherein fast aufgegeben” and then gives do- lent, prisent, omnipote?it, as though they were genuine French particii^les, or verbal adjec¬ tives. The absurdity of this procedure is patent on the very face of it. In the case of the last two, there were no verbs on which to form them ; while doler gave dolant as its participle. He has made the mistake of confounding w'ords taken directly from the Latin with the cognate forms founded on French models. It seems to me it would be as reasonable to call dolent, omnipotent, obedient particijjles in English. Quite a number of these Latin participles came into French at an early date, and a few have been added from time to time (the six¬ teenth century was especially prolific in their introduction), but they have preserved in the majority of cases their distinctive Latin char¬ acteristics as far as form is concerned, while the French participles have all along coexisted side by side with them. The following partial list will make |)lain my meaning; FRENCH. LATIN. fatiguanc. fatigant. vaquant. vacant. excellant. excellent. intriguant. intrigant. pr^sidant. president. residant. resident. affluant. affluent. differant. different. ^quivalant. Equivalent influant. influent. n^gligeant. negligent. Having discussed the etymological phases, something should now be said about the ap¬ parently interminable dispute in which French grammarians have indulged regarding the terminology to be employed in speaking of the several syntactical functions discharged by these verbal forms in ant. The most common designation found in the grammars is present participle; but this ap¬ pellation seeming too general to express all the offices performed by these words, gram¬ marians began quite early to employ other names, such as, adjectif verbal, gerondif, &c.; but unfortunately they have not united on any term, or set of terms, to be used. The Academy thinks girondif a misnomer as ap¬ plied to French syntax. “Gerondif,” it says, se dit abusivement, dans notre langue, du participe actif, pr^cdd^ de la proposition e 7 i, exprimOe ou sousentendue.” Girault-Duvi- vier and Bescherelle distinguish between ad¬ jectif verbal, participe prise^it and glrotidif, according to their respective syntactical rela¬ tions ; while Diez (Grammatik III. pp. 256- 262) terms the inflected form participuan, the uninflected, gerundium. Matzner, on the other hand, differs a little from all these in his nomenclature: “SeineForm,” he says, “worin sich die lateinischen Formen auf ans, ens und andinn, endum verschmolzen finden, erscheint im Satze theils unveranderlich als gerundiv- isches participium, theils als reines Verbal- adjectif, welches fahig ist eine Feminin- und Plural-form anzunehmen.” This diversity of terminology is not of recent date; it began with the first grammarians and sprang out of the frequent confounding of the two parts of speech by the early wTiters, ow¬ ing to the similarity of form and signification. Instance the following, where, after verbs of 6 The Geruiidial Construction in the Romanic Languages. motion, the verbal ought to appear unchanged, as in the first example : Autresi m’en irai, ce crei. Cum jeo ving, tut murant de sei. (Marie de France, B. 238. 8). Au terme vient joians et li^s. (Flore et Blanceflor). E ele descirad sa gunele et jetad puldre sur son chief.si s’en alad criante e plurante. (Livre des Rois). The same cause brought about a like con¬ fusion in Proven5al: Als faitz conoicheras las gens, Que las paraulas van mentens. (Le Libre de Seneqiia). E la metia enans a son poder ab sas cansors e en comtans. (Bib. derTroub. XLII). Antoine Oudin, tutor in Italian of Louis XIV, observing the divergence of opinion among French grammarians relative to the variability or non-variability of the verbals in ant, pro¬ posed in the first edition of his grammar,which appeared in 1632, to treat them as “gerondifs,’ whenever they retained their full verbal force. In this case they should remain uninflected. This he sets forth in these words: Ce participe, exprimant le gerondif, ne se doit point obliger a suivre ny le genre ny le nombre du substantif antecedant: verbi gratia: la terre produisant des fruits, et non pas la terre produisante, etc.; les roys asseurent leurs estats, traitt.ant doucement leurs subjects, et non pas : traittans doucement, etc.; les femmes se fardant gastent leurs visages et jamais se fardans, etc. Mais s’il est pur participe relatif (c’est-a-dire adjectif verbal) ilfautqu’il suive le genre et le nombre dudit antecedant, comme les roys cherissants, les subjects obeyssans, les femmes attrayantes; car alors il prend la nature d’adjectif..Je trouve une excep¬ tion aux temps compos^z du participe estant, car on dit: ces hommes estans entrez, mais ce n’est que pour le masculin, car on ne diroit pas ; ces femmes estans entries.” It is curious to observe how Vaugelas, whose “Remarques sur la langue fran^oise ” came out fifteen years after the publication of Oudin’s grammar, attempts to compound with the matter. After stating that it would be “bar- bare et ridicule” to say: je les ai trouvdes ayantes le verre a la main and that ayans le verre a la main would not be more correct, he adds : il faut done necessairement avoir recours au gerondif quand il s’agit du feminin, soit au singulier, soit au pluriel, et dire en I’exemple que nous avons propose: je les ai trouvdes ayant le verre it la main.” And again : “ Don- nons un exemple des participes actifs aux au- tres verbes: je les ai trouv^es beuvantes et mangeantes. Qui a jamais oiiy parler comme cela ? 11 faut dire : je les ai trouvdes beuvant et mangeant, au gerondif.Il y en a pour- tant qui soustiennent que ce participe actif feminin ne doit pas estre banny de nostre lan¬ gue, quoy que neanmoins ils demeurent d’ac¬ cord que I’usage en est tres-rare et que le ge¬ rondif mis en sa place sera meilleur sans com- paraison.” He seems, however, not to have had a clear conscience after having delivered himself of these words, for he adds further : au moins, il est bien certain c\\\'estant participe n’a pas de feminin et que jamais on n’a dit estante non plus qu’ ayante, au feminin. In 1660, the Port-Royalist grammarians, Arnauld and Lancelot, following the example of Oudin and Vaugelas, declared that the present participle was never anything else but a “gerondif;” that it was consequently not susceptible of either gender or number and ought not to be declined. “Je dis ejue nos deux participes aimant et aimd, en tant qu’ils ont le m^me rdgime que le verbe, sont plutdt des gdrondifs que des participes ; car M. Vaugelas a d^ja remarqud que le participe en ant, lorsqu’ il a le rdgime du verbe, n’a point de fdminin et qu’on ne dit point par exemple: ‘j’ai vu une femme lis- ante I’Ecriture, mais lisant I’Ecriture.’ One si on le met quelquesfois au pluriel: ‘j’ai vu des hommes lisants I’Ecriture,’ je crois que cela est venu d’une faute dont on ne s’est pas apergu, a cause que le son de lisant et de li¬ sants est presque toujours le m^me, le tm le ^ ne se pronongant point d’ordinaire.” This principle first enunciated by Oudin was founded in reason and was theoretically cor¬ rect ; and had he gone back to the earliest writers, he would have found it pretty well substantiated and obtained better results than he did, as far as the history of the language The Gerimdial Construction hi the Romanic Languages. was concerned. As it was, his statement was not justified by the facts as he found them at his time ; and there is little doubt but that he was led to make it by the beautiful system of the Italian gerund and participle, whose clear¬ ness is such that it would not unlikely have in¬ duced him to wish to see it substituted for the chaotic condition of the analogous construc¬ tion in his mother-tongue. But as has been said, the usage of his time only partially legi¬ timated the principle he claimed to be estab¬ lished. For from the beginning of the four¬ teenth century the feminine e and fle.xional s began to invade the province of the gerund.f En la splendur de la tue fuildrante hanste. (Habakkuk, III. ti. (XI. century) E com pesante destinee. (Kenoit de Sainte More. XII. century) La chiere blanche plus que n'est flour de lis Et revelante comme rose de pris. (Roman d’Aquin, 1 . 310. XII. century.) L’espee a ^ainte tranchante a son coste. (Ditto 1 . 1202.) Parmi le cors li vait bruiante, De I’autre part fiert en la lande.J (Gormuud et Isembard, 1 . 75, XIII. cent.) The confusion having been once made, it went on increasing until 1679, when the Acade¬ my issued its famous decree: “La regie est faite, on ne d^clinera pas les participes actifs.” The reason which the members of that august body assigned for this decision, was that they were but following the example “ de nos anciens, pour lesquels nous devoirs avoir beau- coup de consideration; car ils ont toujours pose pour regie certaine que les verbes actifs n’ont pas de vrais participes mais seulement des gerondifs, qui tiennent lieu de participes, gardant le regime de leurs verbes et se joi- gnant avec les noms masculins et feminins singuliers et pluriels, sans etre dedinables et sans etre d’aucun genre, par exemirle; riromme craignant Dieu; les honrmes craignant Dieu ; la femme craignant Dieu ; les femnres craign¬ ant Dieu.” This seems a little like inspiration, unless t Sporadic instances of the feminine e with the participle made their appearance in the preceding centuries. I In this last example the e has also been added to the gerund, similarly to a case already noticed. The addition of this feminine e must have acted as a potent cause in helping to confound the two parts of speech, already no longer distin¬ guishable by their form. we are to take the words nos anciens and tou¬ jours as very limited in meaning and applica¬ tion ; for we have no reasons to believe that they had any very definite knowledge of Old French syntax. But what they did, although often contravened by practice, was in the main right; for they had the analogy of all the other Romance languages on their side. When we find the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Wal- lachian using the gerund in certain construc¬ tions such as: E in umil seggio, e in un vestire schietto Fra’ suoi duel sedendo il ritrovaro. (Tasso, Gerus. Lib. IL 6o). Llegd il cuadrillero, y como los halld ha- blando en tan sosegada conversacio quedd suspense. (Don Quijote, Part I. ch. XVII). E tornando, achou-os outra vez dormindo. (Marco, XIV. 40). Si a venitii, si i-S gasith dormindtt. (March, XIV. 37); that is, with the verb to find, there seems to be no plausible ground for regarding the French and Provencal construction as of different origin. Compare with the above the following : Sor une grant coute vermoille Troverent la dame seant. (Chevalier au Lyon, B. i6o. i8). E qand venc un dia, Raimons del Castel Rosillon trobet passan Guillem de Cabestaing. (Bib. der Troub. IX). As far as possible an effort will be made in the following pages to treat the subject from this standpoint—namely to show by citations from the co-related languages what construc¬ tions ought to be considered gerundial, when speaking of French and Provencal. This method of treatment has not been, as far as I know, proposed and no doubt will be objected to by some, especially by those who are not willing to admit the term “gerund” in P'rench grammar, but who maintain that, in¬ flected or uninllected, the verbal form ant is nothing but a participle. Little will be gained by it, I admit, as we can not now make the language over; but the distinction between gerund and jiarticiple once accepted, we see why the early authors considered themselves at liberty to add the s (z) or not. As has been said, they were probably not aware that the words in ant issued from more than one source 8 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. —nay, possibly did not think of the subject at all, but they knew that custom had sanctioned both the use and the omission of the sibilant. I find little relevancy in wliat has been so much insisted on with reference to the exigen¬ cies of the rime causing the violation of the rule ; for while it is true that the so-called rule for the participle is frequently violated in the rimes, we can not lay much stress on this fact, as the non-sibilated forms are met too often out of rime and in prose, to be regarded as mere orthographical blunders. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find the sibilant in the rimes where it is not called for and vice versa. And again, the argument would only hold good, in any case, for pure rime ; because the assonances did not depend on the consonants, but on the vowel-element of the final strong syllable. Take the following passage from Guillaume d’Orange, a clear specimen of rime : Li cuens Guillaumes fu iriez et dolanz, Vivien vil qui gisoit to sanglanz, Plus soef flere que basme ne pimens. Sor sa poitrine tenoit ses mains croisant; Li sans li ist par ambedeus les flans. Par mi le cors ot quinze plaies granz, De la menor fust mort uns amiranz. *Ni^s Vivien/ dit Guillaume li frans, 'Mar fu VO cors qui tant par iert vaillant. And another from the Chanson de Roland, an assonated poem : De mun osberc en sunt remput li pan; Plaies ai tantes es costez e es flancs De tutes parz en salt fors li clers sancs; Trestut le cors m’en vait afiebliant: Sempres murrai, par le mien esciant. Je suis vostre hum e vus tien ^ guarant; Ne me blasmez, se je m'en vai fuiant. Innumerable instances might be cited out of rime and in prose ; a few only are given ; II est issus del bos, vint el lairis, Galopant vait vers aus tou le cemin. (Aiol et Mirabel). Done vint edrant dreitement ^ la mer. Eist de la neif e vait edrant k Rome. (St. Alexis). Le cheval brochet, si vient poignant vers lui. (Ch. dc Roland). Si home ocit alter e il seit cunuissant, &c. (Lois de Guillaume le Conq.). La voz del segnur frainanz les cedres— La voiz del segnur entretren^ant la flamme. (Psalm XXIX.). Trestot a pi<^, defendant son parti. (Garin le Loherain), Plorant li bese le piz et la forcele. (Guil. d’Orange). Je vois querant tun pru, t’honur. (Myst^re d’Adam). Mult par lu vait criant merci. (Tristan). Qui tostens va sivant amor. (Benoit de Sainte More). Quant je ving ^a corrant a toi. (Ditto). Parlant les a issi menez au cors. (Romania VIIL 177). Dolanz m’en part. (Romances, thirteenth century). Vers Castres s’en repairet joians et esbaudis. (Le Siege de Castres (Rom. Stud. I. 591). Et en tel estat fesoient le silence attendans le jourciui vint tantost. (Jehan Froissart). C’est une cit^ de la marine qui siet en la terre de Fenice et est obeissant ^ la citd de Sur. (Tr. de Guil. de Tyr.). .... un povres hons .... fuioit mont criant devans un ors. (Ditto). Je servirai desirans toute voie. (Guiot de Provins). E la metia enans a son poder ab sas cansos e en comtans. (Bib. der Troub.). Non pose mudar, bels amics, qu’en chan- tanz, &c. (Ugo Catola). The above quotations, which might be in¬ creased to any number, will suffice to show that verbals in a^it might remain unchanged or take the sibilated forms ans, anz. I do not believe this is attributable to a mere whim or accident. There must have been a reason for it. For the sake of convenience the same termin¬ ology, as that of Diez, had been determined upon, even before consulting him on the sub¬ ject; and the writer was glad to have his resolution sanctioned by such • an authority. But before proceeding to the syntax, another point must be mentioned, which comes prop¬ erly under this heading ; that is, the compound forms of the gerund. Having created this special construction from the simple gerund (for it differs in so many ways from the Latin, that it may almost 9 The Gertindial Constructio 7 i in the Romaiiic Languages. be said to be a new creation), the Romanic languages went further and constructed a past tense as well as a passive voice, by means of the auxiliary verbs habere and essere: Fr. ayant ahni, eta^it aiini, ayant H& aittii; It. avendo a^nato, essetido amato, essendo stato amato; Sp. habiendo amado, sie^ido amado, habiendo sido a^nado; Port, tendo [havetido) amado, seiido amado, te?ido sido amado. In this way they remedied what we feel to be a weakness in the parent speech, which had no perfect active participle, and not having, strictly speaking, any auxiliary verbs, was obliged to make the passive participle serve for both present and past. The Roman could not literally say: Caesar having crossed the bridge attacked the enemy, but: Caesar, the bridge crossed, attacked enemy. French, C^sar ayant pass6 le pont attaqua I’ennemi, or retaining the Latin construction: Cfear, le pont pass 4 , attaqua I’ennemi, or even; C&ar passant le pont attaqua I’ennemi; It. Cesare avendo passato il ponte attaccb I’inimico, or : Cesare, passato il ponte, attacco, &c., or: Cesare passando il ponte attaccb I’inimico. And so in the other languages, the Wallachian excepted, which seems to make the simple forms serve for all moods and tenses. I say this with some hesitancy, basing my belief on the silence of Diez, Barcianti, Mircesco and others and on my own observation, which, it is true, is not very great in Wallachian litera¬ ture. A number of parallel passages in the Bible show that, where the most of the other languages use the compound tense or some other equivalent, the Wallachian renders the same by the simple gerund. At any rate my experience is sufficiently extensive to justify me in asserting that the compound, if it occurs at all, is very exceptional. We now come to the Syntax, which will be treated under two rubrics: ist. The Gerund without a bt^eposition, and 2d, The Gerund with a preposition. The Gerund without a Preposition. The most striking peculiarity of the gerun- dial construction in the early languages, es¬ pecially those of France, is its infrequency as compared with modern usage. It is more common in verse than in prose, and this is ex¬ plained by the fact, that when a writer starts a “leash” (laisse) whose assonance or rime requires ant, e 7 it, (atts, etis) terminations, he is often driven to seek the construction and the use of words which will give him his rime or assonance. Could we call up the shades of the old poets and question them on the subject of verse-making, many of them would have to make the same confession in this respect as Baltasar del Alcazar makes of the consonants : Porque si in verso refiero Mis cosas mas importantes, Me fuerzan los consonantes A decir lo que no quiero. The freer use of the infinitive during the first stages of the growth of these languages doubt¬ less exerted a great influence in preventing the rapid development of the gerundial con¬ struction, which at the present time has as¬ sumed such extensive proportions owing to the general discarding of the infinitive as a kind of verbal noun. The following French and Provencal ex¬ amples, selected as being the most note¬ worthy in this regard, will make plain the difference as compared with modern usage. Et le fist mult bien k Tenz metre (modern : en les repoussant) si que grant pris Ten dona Ton. Ville-Hardouin. Si unt le clerc truvt? par querre e demander Prechant e batizant, ke (^o fu sun mester. Math. Paris, Vie de S. Auban, 1291. Mais hardis doit estre en servir. Jehan de Cond^, B. 396,3. Il faisait tel noise au venir (mod. en venant) que il sembloit que ce fust la foudre dou ciel. Joinville, Hist, de S. Louis, ch. XLIII. Et y mist Pon au paiement faire le samedi. Ditto, LXXV. Car il avait paour que il ne brisast le col au tourner. Ditto, Cl. Je li demandai comment ce estait que il ne metoit consoil en li garantir ne par noer. Ditto, CXXIX, E la amava e deleitava se en parlar de lieis. Bib. dcr Troub. XXXV. L’un an els fundemens lur cura, Li autre en bastir la mura El altre en far lo mortier. Life of St. Enimia. Aisi se van ferir (might be : feren) cum cascas venc. 10 The Gerimdial Construction in the Romanic Languages. No lor valo escut par un besenc. G. de Rossilho, 2180. Car ab cor franc tan m’afranc en amar. Anonym. Ballad. Contrast the two following examples, in which infinitive and gerund are equivalents : Per la vila s’en van cridan. Die Kindheit Jesu (B's Denkm' ler, XXXIX). E totz los juzieus van cridar. Ditto. That the language has lost much in force and ease of expression by abandoning this free use of the infinitives for other construc¬ tions can not be questioned; as the substitutes, which have been mostly supplied by the ger¬ und, are not as flexible for purposes of thought. One can not but feel this to be one of the lost beauties of the language ; and the loss becomes more apparent, when we turn to the Italian, Spanish etc., in which thegerund- ial and infinitive constructions have grown side by side with each other and give to these languages a variety of expression unattainable in French. The Italian : lo scender questa roccia; al passar questa valle; gli costa caro questo diffamare altrui: Spanish ; un secreto desearos; el huir la ocasion; el comunicar los males; cair fu6 mal castigado en non temer a Dios ; Prov.: al camp levar, etc., had their analogy in : au doner le don, au passer la porte, a un tertre monter, au prendre le cong 4 , en cel tirer—expressions which even Montaigne could imitate (il se penoient du tenir le chastel, and : le paistre I’erbe est salutaire au jeune cheval), but which have now totally disappeared from the language. One of the earliest and very common con¬ structions of the gerund is effected by its con¬ junction with the verb alter. When so used, alter may perform the part of a simple aux¬ iliary or copula and either expresses progres¬ sive or iterative action, or these ideas may be altogether absent and the action of the princi¬ pal verb does not seem to be appreciably modified by the addition of alter. In other cases alter retains in part or wholly its motional signification and as so used may be replaced by almost any verb expressing motion. These two categories are not always clearly defined, certain cases being susceptible of either interpretation. As instances of alter as copula only and in which the fundamental meaning is completely subordinated to the principal verb, may be cited ; 1. E tei tuz jurs apele, “ K’alez vu.sdemandant.” Vie de Seint Auban, 818. 2. As eschies e as tables se vunt esbaneiant. Voyage de Charlemagne, 270. 3. Seignurs baruns, n’en alez mespensant. Pur Deu vus pri que ne seiez fuiant. Ch. de Roland, 1472. 4. Kar chevalchiez. Pur qu’alez arestant ? Ditto, 1783. 5. De grant dolour se va ly ber pasmant. Roman d'Aquin, 1601. 6. Pour Pamour Ddnels alez espargnant. Ditto, 1633. 7. Voire moult plus, ce trovon nous lesant Dedans I'ystoire qui point ne va mentant. Ditto, 1666. 8. Quant li rois I’entendi, de coer va souspirant. Berte aus Grans Pids, 2542. 9. La paiz alout cherchant, les querre metre a fin. Roman de Rou, 1542. 10. Se li reis li alout de nule rien falsant. Ditto, 2544. 11. Fortment lo vant il acusand. La soa mort mult demandant. La Passion, B. 16, 6-7. 12. Or pri a tous les vrais amans Ceste chanson voisent chantant. 13. Ainz y mouron que sa'ion recreant, Ne que de riens nous augeon fouyant. Roman d’Aquin, 1635. 14. Li Tur vindrent assaillir sa gent qui tout de gr^ s'aloient remanant. Trans, de Gull, de Tyr, Liv. VII, 15. D’ores en autres va sa colpe rendant A sa main destre aloit son piz batant. Guil. d’Orange, B. 65, 38. 16. (Ja et 1^ espandu par le chemin et li plus d’eus aloient dormant. Tr. de Guil. de Tyr, Liv. XII. All of these examples either show plainly of themselves, or it may be gathered from the context, that the idea of actual motion in alter is totally wanting, as much so as it would be in “go,” if we should translate example lo by the popular construction : if the king should go to deceiving him in any way. , In Nos. I, 3, 4, 6, 10, the simple verbs : demandez, mespensez, arestez, espargnez, falsout, could be substituted without in any way modifying the thought. It is quite evi¬ dent that alez, in the first line of No. 3, is the The Gerundial Construction exact functional equivalent of seiez in the second line. We learn from the context of No. 2 that Charlemagne found the knights s'eant\ hence “se vunt esbaneiant ” means, they are in the act of enjoying themselves— progressive or continuative action. In 5 and 8 alter gives to the principal verb the notion of incipiency as well as progression ; while “ point ne va mentant,” in No. 8, may imply that history is not hi the habit of lying. In ii and 12 it is possibly repetitive. How com¬ pletely the idea of real motion could be over¬ looked may be learned from the last three examples (14, 15, 16). It is interesting to observe that old Johan Fischart uses the German in a similar manner, in his translation of Rabelais, head¬ ing of chapter 4: Wie Gurgelmiltsam, als sie mit dem kind- lein Gurgellantule schwanger gieng, ein grossen wust kutteln frass und davon genas. The famous boast of Juno, in Virgil, offers a like instance of the copulative use of a verb of motion : Ast ego, quae Divum incedo, Jovisque Et soror et conjux. In English it is a common idiom to say : to go mad, blind, etc.; and we in the Southern States are familiar with the negro lingo : done gone and kilt him=has killed him ; but I was hardly prepared, when some months ago I was speaking of the death of a favorite dog, to have put to me, by a Hoosier acquaintance, the query : when did he go dead? or to find a writer in The Nation of August 4, 1887, (p. 89) speaking of somebody’s horse going dead lame. But returning to alter we see that, used as a simple copula, it may shade off into a number of fine distinctions, in which actual motion is not necessarily implied. At the present day many of these features of alter are supplied by other constructions. Remnants of some of its functions are seen in : L'entreprise suffit ^ prouver que T^tude du fran^ais va toujours prenant plus d’im- portance en Allemagne. Romania, IX. i66. Et des bouches au loin s'ouvrent avidement, A ces atomes fous que la nuit va semant. Hugo, L'Ane. hi the Romanic Languages. Vous n’allez frtquaiitant que spadassins infames. Ditto, Ruy Bias, I. 2. expressions, in which the combination of the two verbs serves to indicate progression, continuance or habit, but only weakly or not at all that of motion. In translating the first sentence into English we should say : is daily becoming more important; in rendering the second, to be exact, we should probably have to make va subordinate to semant —sows as it goes ; while the third is : you habitually asso¬ ciate with, etc. A rather peculiar combination of venir and aller is found in the Roman d’Alexandre (B. 177.5): Alexandres commande Tost amener avant, Quar el bos as puceles vint aler deduisant. In the formation of the compound tenses of aller va the senses above illustrated, avoir is generally, though not always, employed : Et orent tant aid sofrant que il virent la Rouse A mains de demie lieue. Ville-Hardouin, Ch. 94. Tant est alez Tiebalt son orguil demenant. Roman de Rou, 4089. £ com lo reis Fclips avia anat plaideian sobre la riba de laiga. Bil. der Troub. XXVI. When lire is used, the verb more common¬ ly retains its fundamental meaning of motion: One ne Tot tel Aiquin ly amirez, Qui par la mer fuyant s’en est alez. Roman d’Aquin, 2517, Partoutes terres est alez cunquerant. Ch. de Roland, 553. Desus un pin i est alez curant. Ditto, 2363. It is to be expected that constructions analo¬ gous to these of aller should be found with verbs of motion in the other languages. Ch6 spero e vo sperando Che ancora deggio avere Allegro meo coraggio. Federigo II, Rei di Sicilia. Cuando dellos se despide, Lagrimas va derramando. Rom. del Cid, CIX. (Voegelin). Mirabanie las mozas y andaban con los ojos buscandole el rostro que la mala visera le cncubria. Don Quij. Ch. II, pt. i. 12 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. Por las venas cuitadas La sangre su 6gura Iba desconociendo y su natura. Garcilasode la Vega. NSo soffre muito a gente generosa Andar-lhe os cies os dentes mostrando. Camoens, Os Lus. I. 88. E vereis ir cortando o salso argento Os vossos Argonautas. Ditto, I. i8. £ non ai ges tel coratge Com li fals drut an, Que van galian. G. Faidit, B. 142, 10. Ill most of the sister languages, other verbs of motion besides “go” are made to perform the office of copulas. In the Italian expres¬ sion : si venne accorgendo, venne is not only a copula but has also the force of an adverb of manner—little by little he perceived. Molti esempj potrci venir contando. Vitt. Colonna. The Spanish and Portuguese use, perhaps, a greater number of verbs of motion in this way than any of the others. In the former, andar, ir, venir are employed to e.xpress du¬ ration or gradual action, while caminar, con- tinuar, seguir are confined to continued action. So Portuguese grammarians dis¬ tinguish between andar and ir, the former being frequentative. Accordingly they say: ando estudando as linguas antigas, which means, I am making a continual and frequent study of the ancient languages; while : vou convalescendo would mean continuation in a progressive sense—I am getting better every day. The context of the two passages above quoted from the Lusiads seems to bear out this distinction. Many cases arise in which it is not easy to determine whether alter is a copula or whether its action is coordinate with that of the gerund. Li gatle qui estoU sor le tor les vit venir ct ol qu’il aloient de Nicolete parlant. Aucasin et Nicolete, B. 283, 36. Mais qtiant ainnm mendiani. dr vicllroc vu trunluiit, U I'apclc por airline. I'loic Cl lilaiu elior, 76^. I*overtadc va gridandn A gran voce predicando. (Jiacopone da Todi. In the first of these it is said that the guard saw coming the men whom Count Garin had sent to look for Nicolete and heard that they were talking, or were talkhtg as they went along, about Nicolete. The other examples are not clearer, even when studied in con¬ nexion with the passages in which they occur. We next come to a third and very frequent use of alter with the gerund, in which motion is clearly defined. It belongs, in this sense, then, to the general category of verbs of motion, which may be accompanied by a ger¬ und whose action is subordinate to, or, at most, coordinate with, that of the verb -of motion. Alter. Sans Pedre sols seguen lo val, Quar sua fin veder voldrat. Passion du Christ, B. 9. 14. A foe, a flamma vai ardant £t a gladies persccutan. Vie de S. Leger, B. 16. 39. Venir, Done vint edrant dreitmant a la mer. Vie de S. Alexis, B. si. 38. Monier, descendre. Muntent et descendent chantant e esjol Li beiis angeres du ciel. Vie de Seint Auban, X093. Passer, Passastes par Bretiaine d'orient venant. Ditto, 1127. S'adresser, I/enfant ne quaisse ne ne blece, Fuiant vers un chemin s'adrece. Crestien de Troies, B. 145.15. ReParier. Et li altre s'en reparierent fuiant arriere en Tost. Ville-Hardouin, ch. XXI. Tourner. Sun petit pas s’en turnet cancelant. Ch. de Roland, 2227. Quand paiens virent Gormund mort, Fuiant s'en tournent vers le port. Gormund and Isembard, 421 (Rom. St. III. 562). Entrer, Main a main entrent dedans lor chids saignant. Amis et Amiles, B. 62. 11. ysuiH ir . I' i ll u, 3236. Issir. Richart ist de la vile sur son cheval curant. Ditto, 3246. 13 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. Accourir. Kar de Roem acurent burgeis e paisant, Macues e guisarmes e haches aportant. Ditto, 4093. £j/i 7 r^r^{=dchapper). E Normant lur estordent ** Dieu aie ** criant. Ditto, 3235. Encalcer. Vers Saraguce les encalcent ferant, A colps pleniers les en vunt ociant. Ch. de Roland, Sourdre, Par la priere Auban est surse du pendant Funtainne freide e clere k grand ruissel curant. Vie de S. Auban, 1167. Ap^arnitre, Angeres i aparurent k clerc voiz chantant. Ditto, 1182. It is useless to add more to this list; for constructions of this kind are so often met, that I believe it would not be a rash state¬ ment to say that about four-fifths of all the examples of the gerund without en will be found to be accompanied with a verb of motion. To see how the proportion would stand, I have counted the examples in several characteristic works. It will be observed that some authors are much fonder of this mode of thought-expression than others. The figures indicate the number of times the con¬ struction occurs with the verbs they follow. Voyage de Charlemagyie (860 lines). Tour- ner, 2; remeindre, i; trouver, 2; aller, 6; voir, i; tenir, i; venir, i; absolute(?) 2. Chanson de Roland (4002 lines). Aller, 28 ; venir, i; absolute(?), i; mourir, 2 ; tourner, i; encalcer, i. Roman d'Aquin (3087 lines). Tourner, 2; aller, 30; voir, i ; gesir, i; venir, i. Berte aus Grans Pies (3482 lines). Faire, i; aller, 2; trouver, i ; venir, i. Flor et Blanceflor (3342 lines). Aller, 8; venir, 2. H. de Valenciennes (Hist, de I’Empereur Henri). Envoyer, i; aller, 7; venir, i; che- vaucher, i; absolute)?). Gtiiot de Brovins (La Bible). Aller, 4. Traduction de Gtiil. de Tyr. Courir, i ; mener, i ; chevaucher, i ; prendre, i ; tre- bucher, i; venir, ii; faire, 2; suivre, 3; absolute)?), ii; fuir, i; instrumental, 3; trou¬ ver, I; retourner, 4; oir, i ; aller, ii ; chasser, I ; mourir, i. Vie de Seint Audan (1845 lines). Venir, 2 ; aller, 21; gesir, i; absolute)?), 3; remaindre, I; resplendir, i; oir, i; trouver, 3 ; passer, i; laisser, i; voir, i; surdre, i; aparaistre, i; faillir, i. Ville-Hardouin (La Conqueste de Constan- tinoble). Reparier, i; aller, 7 ; venir, 3; tourner, i; envoyer, i; absolute)?), 2. De Joinville (Hist, de Saint Louis). Venir, 6 ; trouver, 2 ; aller, 2; faire, i; as adverb, i; sentir, i; absolute)?), 2. Aiol et Mirabel (10,985 lines). Aller, 68; venir, 9 ; oir, i; encaucher, i; absolute)?), 2 ; tourner, 2 ; fuir, i; par, i. It seems almost superfluous to cite examples from the other languages, as this French con¬ struction is universally current throughout the whole Romanic group. That, however, nothing may be taken on faith, I 'give a few from hundreds of examples noted, remarking that I have been struck with the more frequent occurrence of the construction in early French and Proven9al, especially with aller and venir, than in any of the others. Provengal. Laisse loill, e per nuilla re No venga ves lui trop corren. Daiide de Pradas, B. 177. 32. Car 90 es pessamentz confus Que ven en cor aissi corren. Ditto, El Romanz, 1 . 49 (Stickney's ed). Un bon juzieu que aquo auzi, Tantost corren d’aqui parti. B.'s Denkmaler, XXXIX. p. 274. E Peire Vidals s’en isset fugen. Bib. der Troub. XXII. Italian. Salian scherzando i pargoletti amori. Ariosto, sonetto. E quando a morte deseando corro. Petrarca. Ch’io mi parti’sbigottito fugendo. Guido Cavalcanti. Chiara fontana ancor surgea d'un monte Mormorando con aqua dolce e fresca. Tasso, Gerus. Conquist. XV. 44. E che accorrer potea un giorno Camminando alia bufera. Giorgi Bertola. Spanish. Los males vienen corriendo Jorge Manrique. La olvidada infanta Urraca Vertiendo 1 grimas entra. Rom, del Cid. p. 96. (.Voegelin). 14 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. De zamora sale Dolfos Corriendo y apresurado. Ditto, p. 152. La pied, sacdmiel, fu^se volando. Luis Martin. Porttfguese. .e as terras viciosas De Africa e de Asia andavam devastando. Camoens, Os Lus. I. 2. Pizando o crystallino cdo formoso Vem pela Via Latea. Ditto, I. 20. Mas o animal atroce nesse instante Bramando duro corre. Ditto, I, 78. Wallachian, C 3 Jonanti a venitii nice mancandu niegbendii Math, XI. 18, Vine alergand pe scena cu un snop de burnene in manu. ^ • V. Alecsandri, Mama Anghelusa. Halmana in costum de larna trece tinend o valizil. Ditto, Haimana. With verbs of motion there may be, in general, two kinds of construction in conjunc¬ tion with other verbs: namely, that already illustrated, in which the gerund accompanies the finite verb; and a second, in which the infinitive is used with or without a preposition. The latter use of the infinitive is by far the more common. In either case, that is, whether the preposition be used or not, the verb of motion expresses the purpose to be ac¬ complished by the concomitant infinitive. The distinction in shade of meaning is usually this ; when the idea of purpose is strongly implied, the preposition serves to give promi¬ nence to the purpose ; whereas the preposition is omitted when the purpose is not conspicu¬ ous. We may illustrate this by the sentences: Je vais au theatre m’amuser tons les soirs, and je vais au theatre tons les soirs non-seulement pour m’amuser mais aussi pour observer et pour apprendre—a distinction, which we should secure in English by : for the ptirpose of or by the simple infinitive with to, accord¬ ing as we did, or did not, desire to emphasize the purpose. La fame Amile a la clere fason Estoit alee por faire s'orison. Amis et Amiles, B. 61. 37. La donzela, e per saber Si sa beutatz era tan grans. Guillem de la Bara (Meyer, Recueil, p. 128.) This reference to the infinitive construction with a verb of motion has been made, in order to lead up to the consideration of certain cases in which the infinitive and gerund touch each other so nearly, in point of use and signification, that they become virtual equiva¬ lents. I. II se relieve a grant paine Par grant air le va requerre, Roman de Renart, B. 213. 9. 2. Quant il nous virent, il nous vindrent sus courre. Joinville, Hist, de S. Louis, ch. XLVI. 3. Aisi se van ferir cum cascus venc No lor valo escut pur un besenc. G. de Rossilho, 2180. 4. L'effant Jhesus i ameneron. Ad Arian lo prezenteron. Pueis van li dire e pregar, Que reflfant volgues essenhar. B/s Denkmaler, xxxix. p. 273, 5. Arian vai li demandar: Mon effant, ar digas aleph E en apres tu diras beph. Ditto, p. 273. 6. Grans meravilhas se doneron. Per la vila s'en van cridan. Ditto, p. 274. 7. E totz los juzieus van cridar : Ailas caitiu ! e que ferem Ni qual cosselh penre porem ? Ditto, p. 292. 8. E en apres el manda diire als mainaders Ez als baros de Fransa ez als sieus logadiers. Chanson de la Croisade des Albigeois, 8,412. 9. E mandet dire a nUgo de la signa que vengues a Usercha en un bore on estava en Gaucelm Faidit. Bib. derTroub. XL. 10. Volga la vista (^esiosa e lieta Cercandomi. Petrarca. 11. Mand6 il cavaliero all’albergo della corona, sappiendo (=:ad informarsi) se era suo famiglio. Franco Sachetti. 12. E estando de fora, enviarAo a elle cha- mando-o. Marcos, III. 31. Ahtant se volgran acordar Qual duy pogran anar veser 13. Os Portuguezes somos do Occidente, Imos buscando as terras doOriente. 15 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. Os Lus. I, 50. 14. Que tempo concertado e ventos tinha Para ir buscando 0 Indo desejado. Ditto, I. gs. 15. Si neaflandii- 10 , s’afi intorsti la Jerusa- limQ cantanda-lti. Luca, II. 45. x6. Porque viene mi nina Cogiendo flores. Anonymous, isih cent. The first of the examples is not very decid¬ ed, for although, as the context shows, Dans Constanz, considering his position, does not have to “go” in order to strike Isengrin, va requerre may express future, rather than pro¬ gressive, action. Still there can be no doubt but that, in accordance with the freedom, I might almost say, looseness, of the gerundial construction at this time, the author, if push¬ ed for a rime, would not have scrupled to use, all the circumstances and situations remaining the same, the gerund as an equivalent for the infinitive, without feeling he was guilty of any grammatical negligence. A part of this re¬ mark might apply to the quotation from Girart de Rossilho; but the passage shows rather that van ferir means that the knights continue ihe fight, “cum cascus venc ; ” i. e. van is subordinate to ferir, in other words, copulative; so that the same numice of thought might have been rendered by i>an fereyi. In No. 2, it is plain that courant substituted for courre would not vary, in the slightest degree, the thought, wliich is: they came rushing upon us. The first two lines of No. 4 inform us that the parents of Jesus were already in the presence of Arian. It can not, therefore, be said of them literally x'an, they go; wox CM\ van dire be explained here as future. Being already before Arian, they speak to him and request him to undertake the instruction of their son; or they go on telline: thCix story and requesthigfhxxi, etc. No. s contains a still more decided instance ofllie copiilatix f use \ da)HU \ as vai UdeniiUi- f/ifc uieaiis H dt inandw notliiiig more. In inoiletn I'leiu li venir is soinelimes used in \ ery nearly the same way : I'n sourire livide , \'ient glacer ses traits, {/.e Rmnfais, Boston, j vol. i, p. 55). I A comparison of 6 and 7, taken in connex¬ ion with the passages in which they occur, shows the same approximation in thought¬ shading, of s’en van cridan and van cridar ; the difference, if any, is very slight. So manda diire and mandet dire, in the two following examples, are seen to be modes of expression analogous to: mandet disen, pre- gan in : E tan tost com el fo vengutz el man¬ det disen al Dalfil et al comte Guion que ill li deguessen aiudar. Bib. der Troub. XIV.; in: el li mandet pregan qu’el fezes si qu’el fezes mudar los edificis, ditto, B. 241, 15; to : mandd sappiendo (No. ii); and to the Portu¬ guese ; enviarao chamando (No. 12). The Wallachian and Spanish would likewise use the gerund here after the verb to send. And so Henri de Valenciennes, in the work already quoted (ch. IV), uses enz'oyer: Et envoierent lor archiers huant et glatissant et faisant une noise. Cf. also Romania VIII, 9o:Je me levoy un matin au jort prenant, Entvoy m’en en un giardin la flor culhant. In modern French also the gerund after this same verb, as well as after other verbs of motion, is allow¬ able to express a purpose, although the in¬ finitive is more common, in accordance with a general preference which the Frenchman entertains for the infinitive construction, where no ambiguity arises by its use.* M. de Freycinet a appris qu’une note, dma- nant du minist^re de I’int^rieur, avait dt^ en¬ voy^ disant que M. de Freycinet avait capital^. Courrier des Etats Unis. J’eus peur d’avoir senti la peur une fois, et prenant mon sabre, cachd sous mon bras, j’entrai le premier brusquement donnant l’exem|)le a mes grenadiers. A. de Vigny. A^tius avait d^ja d^pech^ ses courriers dans toute la Gaule et chez les peoples alli&, les invitant a s’unir h lui. Le Beau. G’est le voyageur quo nous avons vu tout h riioiuo oner clioroliaiu un gito. \ . Hug.,. It is Util p.issiblo ii, iutorpret tliosc geruui.ls ♦II esi (Ians le gt^nie tie la langue frana 9 ise de preftVcr I’in- finilif h tom autre mode, quand la clarn5 de la phra.sc n’en csi pas alierdc, — H okel. The Geruvdial Construction in the Romanic Languages. otherwise than as expressing a purpose ; for in some of them the infinitive with pour could be substituted; and in the others, while in their present shape this substitution could hardly be made, its exclusion would be more owing to the cacophony that would thereby arise than to any forbidding principle of gram¬ mar. In the case of the first and last sentence, a well-educated Frenchman, if asked why not use pour dire and pour chercher, would likely answer: C’est I’harmonie de la phrase qui exige le g^rondif (participe), as Vharmonie is the universal retreat behind which French¬ men take shelter, when brought face to face with a knotty point of grammar. The gerunds in lo, 15, 16 may as legitimate¬ ly be regarded as expressing a purpose as co¬ incident or progressive action, and the thought would not be materially changed, if they were converted into the infinitive construction. We see this well illustrated in the two remain¬ ing examples (13 and 14), which do not differ essentially in signification, since the purpose of the going, in both cases, is to look for India. From the foregoing reasoning we gather that, after a verb of motion, the infinitive or gerund may take the place of a final depend¬ ent clause. Here belong also certain verbs, which, while they are not verbs of motion, are ac¬ companied by verbals in -a 7 it which serve to complete, in a manner, the predication of the principal verb. They may, in most cases, be resolved into adverbial phrases. Car ml fil sont ocis et mort saignan.. Amis et Amiles, H. 62. 37. A peine chant remeint li quors en piz batant. Vie de S. Auban, 844. Je li lo bienqu'elle vos maint tandant. Jeu-parti, 341. 16. Murut subitement scant sus une sele. Ilerte aus Grans Pi^s, 2072. Lo corns G. e ilh sen s'en van dolen, 0 E Ihi baro dc K. restan ploran, G. de Rossilho, 5340. Tlie nature of the examples considered up to the present time has been such that the action of the dependent verb (gerund or infini- him complete the action ; 2d, that I saw him performing an act which he began before I looked and may havecontinned after I turned away ; but for the present: I see him going in¬ to the house, only ; since, I see him go into the house, can only be said of a habit or an action indefinitely repeated and would usually be accompanied by an adverb indicating the habit, etc; as, I see him go into the house every day. However, here, as in other things, what ought to be is at variance with what actually is, and we find a great freedom in the use of the infinitive. Indeed, with the excep¬ tion of to find {meet, come upo 7 i, etc.), the in¬ finitive (or some other construction) has gen¬ erally usurped, in the modern languages, the place of the gerund, and is used to express both completed and continued action, according to the construction of the sentence. Trouver. Ses maisuns truva arses e ses viles ardant, E un suen fils truva mort en biere gisant, E sa femme e sa gent merveillus duel faisant. Roman de Rou, 4104. Vint milie chevaliers i troverent seant, E sunt vestut de palies e de hermines blans. Voyage de Charlemagne, 267. Les enfans trueve gisanz soz la valee, En seant ierent, s’ont grant joie menee. Amis et Amiles. Lc maillet troverent pendant A la port par de devant. Le Pelerinage Renart, 93. E quand venc un dia, Raimons de Castel Rosillon trobet passan Guillem de Cabestaing. Bib. derTroub., IX. This construction is still preserved, in all its freedom, in the modern language: Linus venant du ciel sur Pegase, au relai, Troiive votre sorci re enfourchant son balai. V. Hugo, Religions et Religion, p. 33. L’abb6 alia rejoindre Jeanne et Gabriel, qu’il trouva se promenant avec tristesse dans le pare dii chateau. Alc^e Fortier, Gabriel d’Ennerich, p. 23. It is, moreover, common to the whole group of Romance tongues, as may be illustrated by the 46th verse of the 24th cliapter of Matthew, which has been rendered by them all in the same manner. Heureux ce serviteur que son niaitre trou- vera faisant ainsi quand il arrivera. Beato quel servitore, il quale il suo signore, quando egli verra, trovera facendo cosi. Bienaventiirado aquel siervo, alcnal, cuan- 17 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. do sii Seiior viniere, le liallare haciendo asi. Bienaveiitiirado aquelle servo, ao qual, quando seu Senhor vier, o achar fazendo assim. Fericitiieste servulti acela, pre care, venindtt domiauia seii, ’lii va afla facendQ a§a. Luther translated here by the infinitive with¬ out any apparent reason, as it was departing from the Greek (o v tXScov 6 uvpioi avrov Evpvdei ovTOoi Ttviuvera), and we find him using the participle with yfwo'cw in Marc XIII, 36 : auf dass er nicht schnell komme und finde euch schlafend. The infinitive is not admissi¬ ble in the Romanic languages, as far as my observation goes, but is still current in Ger¬ man, its use depending upon certain condi¬ tions, the discussion of which would be out of place here. Ouir (entendre). The gerund or infinitive is indififerently used without any appreciable distinction. Examples: Fors fut la noise etla bataille grans Et li hustins mervillous et pesans, N’i oissiez nes damedeu tonnant. Ch. de Gibert de Metz (Rom. St. I, 464). Nils tut VO veimes ke m'o"z recuntant. Vie d S. Auban, 1184. Et frainte d’armes i avait par tout, que Ten n’oist mie Dieu tonant. Tr. de Guil. de Tyr, Liv. iv. Li arcevesque les ot contrarier. Ch. de Roland, 1737. llloec m'assis pour escouter Deus dames quej'oi parler. Flore et Hlanceflor, 44. j Car adonc aguera om ausit les sens et campanas i sonar al repiquet. ^ j Ch. de la Croisade d’Albigeois. i “Summae Deus clementiae,” nel seno Del grand' ardore allora iidi’ cantanoo. Dante, Purg. XXV, 122. K degU uccelli le diverse e tante Odo voci cantar dolci e gioconde. Vitt. Colonna. Le oigo hablando con un hombre desconocido. .Sauer’s Gram, espagnole. Aslfelttl aiuli pero tengra cochetS parisianS dicGul ca a primiit un puiii de gainS. \’. Alecsandri. The Wallachian excejited, the modern lan¬ guages seem to avoid the gerund with words signifying to hear, and the infinitive or a rela- i five clause is used instead. The two following examples with e 7 ttendre, which now usually takes the place of the obsolescent ouir, will serve to illustrate the use of the infinitive to express completed or progressive action. J’ai entendu le rossignolet chanter dans son langage. Romania, IX, 565. Mais tout se tait. Je n'entends rien venir. V. Hugo, Hernani. It is not pretended, of course, that entendre is not constructed with the gerund; yet it does not seem possible to lay down a rule for its use. Judging from this sentence: Enten- dons maintenant Alcuin signalant ^ Charle¬ magne les memes abus (Haur^au), we might probably apply to entendre what further on is said of iwir. Ecouter. On 4 coutait avec plaisir les Jongleurs chan- tant les jestes des anciens. Paulin Paris, Preface to Guil. de Tyr. I'oir (with the gerund). Jeo vi, dist il, une mult bele Par desus les ewes montant. Guil. le Clerc de Normandie. Quant le virenl en Pair salant, Bauduin de Sebourc, B. 397, 8. Quant li sires le vit venant. Si le salua maintenant Li Contes del Graal, B. 166, 17. Jeu VOS vigui entre los layois penden On VOS fazian irops grans escarnimens. Plainte de Notre Dame, 58. K vidi spirti per la fiamma andando. Dante, Purg, XXV., 124. Vido al conde paseando Y estas palabras le ha dicho. Rom. del Cid (Voegelin). Diego, f, Que viste ? Al gran Fernando, Mi vida con mi muerte amenazando. G. de Castro, Moc. del Cid, Pt. seg. 1 , 4. Como vereis o mar fervendo acceso Co’ os incendios dos vossos pelejando. Os Lus, II, 54 (also II, 68). Cine m’ar viclea cutrieranci ora.sul cu valiza pe spinare, ar cuteza porte a crede cS shit vagabond ? V. Alecsandri, Halmana. /L) 7 V(with the infinitive). Quant ele venir ne le voit, 'I'antost arriere s’tn relorne. Fabliatis des Pcrdris, B, 293, 24. 18 The Gertindial Construction in the Romanic Languages. .donde il mattin partille, Vedendo di lontano fumar le ville. Giusto de’ Conte Romano. Veras despues las potencias Ir valiendo.... Juan Rufe. .o grao Thebano Olliando oajuntamento Lucitano As mouro ser molesto e aborrecido. Os Lus. I, 73. Occasionally both constructions are found in the same sentence : Mult veisslez formant issir aronez Normanz Querre turneiemens e juste demandanz. Roman de Rou, 3357. Ed al nome dell’ alto Maccabeo Vidi muoversi un altro roteando. Dante, Pur. XVIII, 41. E quand’ eo veggio li altri cavalieri Arme portare e d'amore parlando. Folcacchiero de’ Folcacchieri. The infinitive is much the more common, even where the gerund would be more logical. This is especially true of the Old French. It would be but reasonable, for instance, to ex¬ pect in the quotation from Guillaume d’Orange (B. 65, 18); Vivien vit gesir desoz un guet Desoz un abre qu'est foillus et ramez. For Guillaume did not see Vivien lie down but saw him already in that posture {tying), as any other man would, without doubt, have been who had had his body pierced with fifteen wounds, from any one of which (the old romancer naively adds) an emir would have died. What was said with reference to the current construction with verbs signifying to hear, holds, with some little modification, of verbs meaning to see. The Wallachian, which is generally more varied in its syntax than the other members of its group, makes very free use of the gerund. Of thirty odd instances noted in the Bible, the Italian, .Spanish and Portuguese translate by the infinitive or a relative clause, while the Wallachian invariably employs the gerund. I'his is strictly in accordance with the rule laid down by the grammarians—the Italian gerund being excluded by the grammatical dictum, that the gerund should always refer to the sub¬ ject ; while for the Portuguese and .Spanish the infinitive is to be preferred (unless the idea of duration is to be made very prominent), and always where the principle verb is in a past tense or the object is a noun. The Wallachian, however, is not trammeled by any such restric¬ tions, provided the thought is clearly ex¬ pressed. It is this latter point which deter¬ mines, to a great extent, the syntax of the ger¬ und in all these languages. The Italian has probably not gained anything by its rigorous e.xactness. In such cases as those cited from the Divina Commedia and in the one follow¬ ing, from Vittoria Colonna, there could be no possible misunderstanding and, consequently, there is no good reason why the construction should have fallen under the ban of the gram¬ marian. Ed a mirar i lor piJi cari armenti Pascendo insieme far piacevol guerra. It must be admitted, however, that the rule often prevents ambiguity in a very neat way. Separated from its context, the following stanza from Metastasio’s canzonetta. La Potenza, might present some difficulty, smee giimgendo could logically be taken either with quanti or with the subject of vedrai. The possible mis¬ understanding is obviated by applying the rule. Quanti vedrai giungendo Al nuovo tuo soggiorno, Quanti venirti intorno k offrirti amore e fe. The same ambiguity is avoided in : Ch’amor quest’ occhi lagrimando chuida. Petrarca. The French easily evades the difficulty by the use of en before the gerund ; En arrivant a ton nouveau s 4 jour combien de personnes tu verras &c. E71 with the gerund always express¬ ing adverbial relations, it can never take the place of an adjective clause and must conse¬ quently affect the action of the principal verb and not its object. At the present day the construction in French with verbs of seeing and synonymous import is dependent upon conditions more easily felt than defined. It would be rash to make the rule a general one; because this would leave full .scope for a promiscuous use of the gerund, which would not coincide with jwactice. I believe that a rule formulated somewhat as follows would serve as a pretty 19 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. safe guide: namely, the gerund occurs more frequentlywith a verb in a past tense and that in any case it should have an object or some phrase to modify its action. J’ai vu les vents grondant sur les moissons superbes. Delille. Les moines et les pr^tendus savants ne virent dans cet obscur Stranger qu’un aventu- rier cherchant fortune de ses chimdres. Lamartine. Ils en ^taient 1^ quand des paysans les aper- 9urent marchant cote a cote dans I’enclos. Saintine. Je les vois cherchant ^ deviner des dnigmes sans mots et je les aide ^ s’embrouiller. George Sand. Jeme d^fie de la dialectique, quand je vois I’esprit hiimain tournant sur lui-meme. Nisard. La famille en pulit et vit en frJmissant Dans la poudre du greffe un po'te naissant Boileau, II contemplait la forme svelte et ^l^gante de la jeune fille traversant la cour an bras du docteur. X. de Mont^pin. Je t’ai vu la griffonant sur ton genou et chantant d^s le matin. Beaumarchais. Sentir. The construction of this verb, which falls under the same rubric as other verbs of per¬ ception, has been noted in a few instances; but considered either with reference to modern or early usage, it does not call for any special discussion which has not already been covered by the remarks on other verbs of this class. We need to stop, tlierefore, to notice only a few e.xamples. Quant il nous senti venans, il toucha en fuie. Joinville, Hist, de S. Louis, ch. c. Voltando sentirei le giostre graine. Dante, Piirg. XYII, 42. Y qiic con el deseo agonizando Morir me siento de la misma suerte. Anonymous, 15th Cent. And in the modern languages : Mais il la sentit menteuse, incapable de se garder, se donnant aux amis, aux passants, en bonne bete n^'^e pour vi\ re sans chemise. Zola,Nana, p. 474. La pauvre femme se sentit litt^ralement mourir. X. de Mont^pin. Epopea nella quale si sente palpitare il cuore di tutto un popolo. Nuova Antologia, Sec. Ser. XXIV, 385, Faire. Our attention will now be claimed by faire, which occurs with verbals in -ant, and which, as already observed, requires special consid¬ eration. It may be stated at the outset that this construction has been found only in early French and Provencal and is probably pecu¬ liar to these languages. And again, its total absence from some authors is somewhat re¬ markable; while others use it only with en- tenda 7 it, which usually, tho’ not always, may he translated by the passive voice. This fact, together with the observation that certain combinations of the -ant forms with the pre¬ positions h, de, par, etc, were also susceptible of a passive rendering, attracted my attention quite early in my researches and led me to conclude that not only the Latin present parti¬ ciple and gerund, but also the gerundive (par¬ ticiple in -dus) were, in some instances, hidden under these verbals in -ant\ further, that the construction of the gerund with faire, regard¬ ed from the standpoint of its origin, not being natural, the construction was probably refer¬ able to the gerundive; and, finally, that the fact of its appearing with an active force and governing a case was effected through analogy and confusion with the gerund and active ]rar- ticiple. That is, if what has been assigned as the probable cause of the inflexion of the Wallachian gerund be true, it is the same jiro- cess of passing from a jrassive to an active meaning. In Merovingian Latin, too, we have instances in which the passivity of the partici¬ ple in -dus was o\’erIooked and it was allowed togovern a case. In the “ foca monachorum ” we read ; quis asinam pcrsiquenduin renum invenet? i. e. quis asinam pcrsequcns regnum invenit? There can be no doubt, I think, that this is the proper interirretation ; and the case is not an isolated one ; fijr in the same collec¬ tion is found a similar interchange of functions of the two parts of siieech : ciuis vivindum secuhim vicit? Now, whether vivindmn be 20 The Geriaidial Construction in the Romanic Languages. here construed with quis or seculum, it has the same force, that of vivens. Returning now to the French and Proven¬ cal, let us illustrate what has been said by analyzing a few sentences. Ainsi li fait la vielle entendant la favele. Berte aiis Grans Pits, 2079. Et ces choses vous rementoif-je pour vous faire entendant aucune chose qui offierent ^ ma mati^re. Joinville, S. Louis, ch. XL. Id in the first of these examples is a dative, and vous, in the second, maybe so taken like¬ wise ; and they might be turned into Latin, root for root, in this way : Illi facit vetula intendendam fabulam ; and .vobis facere intendendas aliquas unas causas etc. But the Latin gerundive comes out much plainer in cases where a preposition is used with the verbal in -ant. Des qu’al’eue de Diepe nus iriim esluignant, Mais jeo ferrai anceis a cele eue passant. Roman de Rou, 3806. That is : ad (ab) ecce-illam aquam passandam. Sire, on me fait a entendant (ad intenden- dum) que vous av^s une fille &c. Henri de Valenciennes, ch. IX. If, in the following example from the Trans¬ lation of Guillaume de Tyr, te is to be taken for an accusative, as the form usually is, en- te 7 idant is then active. M6s cil anions le decent trop malement, qui entendant le fit que il serait patriarches.* Other similar constructions are not infre¬ quently met, which are capable of being re¬ solved into the Latin gerundive, as : * The admission of the gerundive in early French offers a satisfactory explanation of the construction in Tartuffe, I, i, now a very common expression and one which, tho' an evident difficulty in modern syntax, is passed over in silence by the grammars. Et Pon sail qu'elle est prude a son corps defendant. By turning this into the Latin : ad suum corpus defenden- dum, we at once see a reason for the construction and the diffi¬ culty vanishes. The expression, therefore, originally meant, as it still does; en se defendant contre une attaque; the other meanings now attaching to it, such as, k contre-coeur, avec repugnance etc., are derivative. The translator of Guil¬ laume de Tyr uses an equivalent in Liv, II, ch. 2, where in answer to Godefroiz, the king says : Si y meismes la main comme efforcid, sur nous defendant. Dont il lessa au roy, par pais faisaiit (per pa- cem faciendam) la contee de Augo. Joinville, ch. XVI. Et bien voieiit ke se il par sens u par engen u par treuage donnant (per tributaticum don- andum) n’entrent en la chit^. Henri de Valenciennes, ch. XVI. And so in Joinville (ch. CX): par grant tr^u rendant (per grande tributum reddendum). Turning now to this sentence from Guil¬ laume de Tyr (Liv. XI, ch. lo): Et ceus qui ne s’en voudroient issir fesoient remanoir seurement en leur teneures par ren¬ dant une resnable somme d’avoir,—we seethe construction has either become active or so ambiguous in point of syntax that it could hardly fail to be taken as such. If we compare the above phrases with nu¬ merous infinitive constructions, we shall have an additional proof of a phenomenon already discussed at some length, namely, the con¬ stant Interchange ofverbals in-a«/ with the in¬ finitives, without any apparent difference in meaning or function. In Ville-Hardouin we have many instances of the construction in question. Et mistrent grant paine ^ la ville prendre, (ch. XCI), which is evidently represented by the Latin, ad villam prehende 7 tda 7 n. And so inch. XII: mais nos ne somes mie tant de gent que par nos passage paier poons les lor attendee—a construction, which, in the pas¬ sages above cited from Joinville and Henri de Valenciennes, we found explicable by a parti¬ ciple derived from the Latin gerundive or par¬ ticiple in -dus. This will suffice, I think, to show that the force of the gerundive construction partially, at least, survived among the early French and Provencal speaking people and brought about the construction above canvassed ; altho’ it is more than probable that they were unconscious of this, owing to the identity of form with the gerund and present active participle. And it was likely this identity of form which led to its being merged into the other verbals in -a 7 it and apparently becoming active in force. A few other examples collected, possibly show this active force a little more clearly than those already given, and I set them down here as additional proof. 21 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. Car por fol sembleir Me font cil fauls proiant d’ameir. Guiot de Provins (Wackernagel XV). Renarz mist I’aive sor le feu Et la fist trestot boillant. Roman de Renart, B. 209, 9. E vuelh tenir autre viatge On restaiire so que m’a fag perden. Cadenet. Tant estet enviro lo lor assetjamens Tro grans cocha de fam fetz celz dedins rendens. Peire de Corbiac, B. 213,22. Olhs de merce, boca de chanzimen, Nulhs horn nous ve que nol fassatz jauzen. Peire Vidal, Song 44 (B.’s ed. 1857). Not fazas ardit ne prezan Ne ton cor non aviles tan. Daude de Pradas, Four card. Virtues (Stickney's ed.). With the exception of a son corps defendant, all the constructions noticed under the head¬ ing of faire have dropt into desuetude or shaded off into other constructions still bear¬ ing an affinity with the original. A la ville prendre, for instance, would find its modern offspring in : cl prendre la ville ; par pais fai- sant in : en faisant la paix; and par trevage donnant in ; en donnant {payant) le tribut.* The direct objects of the verbs avoir, lais- ser, tenir, guerpir and some others may be accompanied by the verb in-««^ to express a *It is proper to state that I was anticipated in the above explanation by Mr. N. de Wailly in his “ Memoiresur la lan- gue de Joinville,’* and that Prof. Adolf Tobler (Vermischte Beitrage zur Franzosischen Grammatik), Paul Klemenz (Der syntactische Gebrauch des Participium Praesentis und des Gerundiums im Altfranz^sischen) and others have ex¬ pressed their belief in the erroneousness of this theory, but not, as it seems to me, on sufficient grounds. Prof. Tobler bases his objections, in the main, on the fact that many cases of this special construction are no more easily explained by assuming them to come from the participle in -dus than from the present active participle, and further that, where the accompanying noun is feminine, we should expect- -endavi, -andam to produce -ande and not -ant,, the form al¬ ways found. As an answer to the latter part of this statemens it is relevant to remark that, as -ando, -endo, -antemf -enievt, all through the law of analogy, wore away into-^w/, it hardly seems a violation of this law, but rather a natural proceeding, to ■^ui-andn 7 n,-anda 7 n,-endutn,-endam, together with their plural forms, all in the same category, especially as they are all, to a certain extent, functional equivalents in syntax. Replying to the first of Tobler’s objections, I will say that I, for my part, in arguing for the gerundive, do not pretend tnat its admission will clear away all the difficulties; my thesis simply is, that the gerundive, as well as the gerund and present active participle, was operative in producing the-ant constructions. As the forms were confused, it is not remark¬ able that the syntax should have met with a similar fate. state or condition existing at the time of the action of the principle verb. Et le lessierent gisant sur une table. Joinville, ch. XXXVUI. Pur mort le guerpissent en sabelum gisant Charoinne le tenent sans alme enfreidissant. Vie de S. Auban, 845. La dame ot lors le cuer joiant. Flore et Blanceflor, 1065. Qu’’us fis jois capdel’ em nais Quern te jauzent en gran doussor, Peire Vidal, Song 22 (B.'s ed. 1857.) The verbal in -atil is also used after interjec¬ tions. .Es-le-vus relevant E le flot tut sechi, dunt cist vunt Deu loant. Vie de S. Auban, 1157. Ast vus venant de deu fideil. Brandan’s Voyage, 580 (Rom. St. I. 573). Es vous par le chemin errant Mon seignor Renart le goupil. B. 266,12. But here, as in so many other cases, the in¬ finitive may likewise be used. The nature of the interjection places it in the same category with verbs of seeing, beholding, etc. and of course the same construction is to be expected in both cases. Ves les armes reluire: tons li cuers m’en esclaire. Jehan Bodel, B. 310, 26. Ay filh, tan vos vech malmenar. Plainte de Notre Dame. 40. What has been said in the treatment of the gerund without a preposition does not by any means exhaust the subject. In fact, many of the cases arranged under the caption of verbs of motion fall naturally and logically into a more general division of the subject; but as in the languages of Provence and North France there was an evident predilection, now to some extent abandoned, for constructing the verbal in -aw/with a verb of motion, it was thought preferable to consider all ex¬ amples of this nature under the same heading. By a more general division of the subject is meant, that, irrespective of the signification or use of the principal verb, the gerund may play the part of an abbreviator, so to speak, in the expression of thought. In addition to conciseness, a greater harmony of word- arrangement is attained for the sentence, since a constant resort to conjunctions, relative pro¬ nouns, and temporal and causal adverbs is 22 The Geruudial Construction in the Romanic Languages. avoided. All tlie Romanic languages held to this mode of expression inherited from the Latin, and some of them, notably the Spanish, Italian and Wallachian, have given a so much freer scope to it than the mother-tongue, that there is hardly any relations which may not be rendered by the gerund. The Teutonic languages, on the other hand, seem not to have fallen naturally and easily into the parti¬ cipial or geruudial construction. It must have been rare in Gothic, considering the few ex¬ amples to be found in its extant literary mon¬ uments. The Old and Middle High Ger¬ man writers show little liking for it; and the same may be said of Early and Middle English authors. With these languages the growth has been slow and occasioned probably, in great measure, by the influence of the Romance tongues. Its earlier and rapid growth in our language is doubtless traceable to this source. One who is accustomed to read the German papers published in this country will notice with interest how their editors and contribu¬ tors, speaking both languages, allow them¬ selves to be drawn by English influence into a license, in this respect, which must astonish in no small degree their Teutonic brothers on the other side of the water. The present writer can well recall his own feeling, when a few years ago he took to reading Gennan- American papers. Having been brought up, so to speak, on the grammar and the authors of the golden age of German literature, he began to ask himself the question, whether he had not misunderstood the teachings of his grammar and instructors and whether they had not taught him a fossilized language no longer in vogue. And it was some time before the light dawned upon him, that more recent authors indulged in a freer use of the parti¬ cipial construction and that German-American editors were only carrying this freedom to an extreme through the influence above men¬ tioned.* It has been said that the use of the verbal in enables the speaker to avoid the con¬ stant repetition of conjunctions and relative, temporal and causal clauses, while at the same ♦Note.—Goethe’s liberal use of the participle in * Her¬ mann und Dorothea' and some others of his works was not sanctioned by the custom of his predecessors and contempo¬ raries. time it gives harmony and variety to the dis¬ course. This posited, we may expect to find it expressing any of the numerous phases of thought common to coordinate and subordi¬ nate clauses ; and such is the case. It takes the place of a coordinate clause, and when that of a dependent, it may represent a rela¬ tive sentence, an adverbial clause of time, cause, manner and means, a condition, a con¬ cession, or even a final clause, as has already been noted under eiivoyer, ma 7 idar, etc.f It is incumbent to make two divisions of the cases that may arise : first, where the gerund is used absolutely; and, second, where it depends jn some way on the principal sen¬ tence. In the second category the gerund may bear directly or indirectly upon either the subject or the object of the finite verb. The latter (the object) has been partially treated in discussing the construction of voir, trouver, ouir, se?ttir, etc. It may be stated in general terms that neither of these divisions affords many examples. The absolute construction, in fact, can hardly be said to be an established principle of Old French syntax. This is what fNoTE. —This implies that it is permissible to speak of mood and tense as belonging to the gerund, not, it is true, as inherent in it as an essential element, but indirectly through its connection with the finite verb. In this way it may come to have any mood, tense or number, according to the con¬ struction of the sentence in which it is contained. The simple tense is usually confined to the expression of past, present and future time, without reference to other actions; the compound to that of past anterior and future anterior events, not excluding, however, perfect or completed action independent of conditions. This holds generally true of the principal members of the Romanic group of languages, with the exception of the Wallachian, which is so free in the use of its simple gerund that it seems to feel little need of a compound. It may be of interest here, by way of illustrat¬ ing this fact, to take the same thought and trace its expres¬ sion through these several languages. For this purpose I select Matthew, iii, i6. BanridOi-i; Se 6 'h/dcvi evOv? dvefh/ dnu Tov vSaro^. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water. Et quand J^sus eut ^t^baptise, il sortit incontinent de I'eau. E Ges^, tosto che fu battezzato, sail fuor dell'acqua. Y Jesus despues que fud bautizado, subid luego del agua. E sendo Jesus baptizado, subio logo da agua. Si batezandu-se lisusQ, IndatS a esitu din apS. That is, only the Wallachian has translated the Greek aorist participle by the simple form of the gerund. Many other parallels might be cited from the same source. But it must not be inferred that the rule is absolute. 23 The Gcrundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. we should expect a priori. The absolute con¬ struction was almost unknown in early Latin. But a single doubtful instance is found in the Laws of the Twelve Tables. The people being the great conservators of language and traditions, we may infer that the construction had hardly worked down into the popular dialect even during the classical and post classical period of Roman literature. The Romanic languages, deriving from the popular Latin carried into the provinces by the Roman soldiery, would hardly, during their formative period, show any certain traces of a syntactic principle which was probably foreign to their primordial source. Two forms in -ant {-e^tt) {xom voir and dir are of frequent occurrence both in Old French and Provengal ; and authors do not seem to have had a very clear idea as to their nature, that is, whether they were simple prepositions or verbs. There can be no doubt but that they originated in the ablative absolute of the Latin, but their force as such was evidently not clearly felt. I should be disposed to believe that in cases like the following, where they precede the noun they were felt to have a kind of prepositional force such as ‘ before,’ ‘ in the presence of Que mon language ont blasme li Francois Et mes chansons oiant les champenois. Quesne de Betune, B. 221-15, Par les dous resnes le cobra Veant ses euz, puis i monta. Gormund and Isembard, 571, La ne passoit Sarrasins ne Escler Ne I’esclinast, volant tot lebarn^, Huon de Bordeaux, B. 186-1. Tant que Abiaatar.soanet la offerta de Joachim, veyent tot lo poble. Sermons xi-xii cent. B. 23-28. But in the following lines from the ‘ Vie de Seint Auban,’ ouant and veant to have their full verbal force; E dist en haute voiz, les sarazins ouant ( 1 . 805) De chastre fu menez, tuz de la curt veant (1144). Later on, Rabelais treated oyant like any other form in -ant\ “ Panurge ayant pay^ le marchand, choisit de tout le troupeau un beau et grand mouton et I’emportait criant et bellanl, oyans tons les autres et ensemblement bellans.” This fact testifies to the persistence all along of its verbal force. In Provencal ausent and vesent were gen¬ erally treated as in French ; but they might also be followed by the preposition de, which virtually deprived them of their verbal function and they then became adverbial or preposi¬ tional phrases, equivalent to : ‘ in the hearing of ’ and ‘ in the presence of: ’ Vesent de totz, de denlhos, G. Barra, pro cavalier, Estec dejos lo vert laurier, G. de la Barra, 224. E vay comensar sa razo Ausent de totz los Sarrasis ditto. 120. Whatever be the final conclusion with refer¬ ence to oyant and voyant, the circumstance of their universal use both in North and South France and by authors who seem to have studiously avoided the absolute construction, argues strongly in favor of the presumption that their real nature as absolute constructions was not clearly defined.* Excepting these two crystallized expressions, it would, I imagine, be a very difficult task to find an unquestionable example, in the old authors, of the absolute construction. For neither in the ‘ Chanson de Roland,’ ‘Voyage de Charlemagne,’ ‘Roman de Rou,’ La Bible de Guiot de Provins,’ ‘ Vie de S. Auban,’ ‘Roman d’Aquin,’ ‘ Berte aus grans pies’ ‘Flore et Blanceflor,’ ‘Henri de Valencien¬ nes,’ ‘Ville-Hardouin,’ the translation of ‘Guil¬ laume de Tyr,’ ‘Aiol et Mirabel,’ ‘Vie de S. Alexi ’ {Romania, viii), ‘De Saint Alexi (Joseph Herz),’ the selections in Bartsch’s ‘ Chres- tomathy,’ nor in various other shorter pieces, have I been able to come upon a genuine, undoubted case; while voyant and oyant in some of these works are frequently met; as, for instance, in‘Guillaume de Tyr,’ eleven times. The following are possibly absolute but they are not clearly so and may be otherwise construed without forcing the syntax. *Notk.—I n the second volume of the Archivio Glot. Hal,, p. 242,1 find an example which may be one of these same constructions on Italian soil. Ma de soi vexin alquanti, Per visitar li logi santi, De voiante, vegne lanto, etc. This might represent either Deo vidente or Deo volente. If the latter, it would be a case of the disappearance of medial I in Italian, which would be peculiar. 24 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. La peussiez veier estur espes e grant Maint cheval escumer, ses rednes trainant. Roman de Rou, 3242. Et emporta cil qui frappez estoit, le glaive trainant. Joinville, ch. LII. Et li soudans s’enfui on flum le glaive trainant. ibidem, ch. LXIX. The only example contained in Bartsch’s ‘ Chrestomathy ’ is found in the selections from the ‘M^moires de Philippe de Comines ’: mais estant le jour un peu hauss^ et esclaircy, ils trouverent que c’estoient grands chardons. The great literary and artistic movement known as the Renascence, which had been ripening in Italy in the preceding century, spread northward into P'ranee in the sixteenth, through the intimate relations between the French and Italians which sprang out of the wars of Charles VIII and Louis XII. The literary part of this movement consisted chiefly in a recurrence to classical models ; and how much the literature and languages of the countries reached by this reformation were affected, the most cursory examination will show. It is but reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the absolute construction with the gerund, which had not found favor prior to this period, was immensely helped on by the influence of the classic languages; pos¬ sibly also by the Italian, in which the con¬ struction in question had been an established principle of syntax from the earliest times. But it must not be supposed that the French mind has manifested the same fondness for this construction as that of the other Ro¬ manic peoples. On the contrary, while it has now become thoroughly naturalized, French writers, unlike the Spanish, Italian and Portu¬ guese, seem to fall more naturally into other constructions. The French and English not having gone to such extremes in this respect, have always in reserve a means of producing fine effects. Witness the exceeding happy effect of the last line of the following stanza from a poem by Heber addressed to his wife : If thou wert by my side, my love, How fast would evening fail In green Bengala’s palmy grove, Listening the nightingale. The gerundial construction, as has been said, is a shortened device, whereby the use of conjunctions and verbs in personal moods is avoided. The precise shade of meaning of the gerund is implied in, and has to be gathered from, the general or logical make-up of the sentence. If converted into a finite mood, the conjunction requisite to make the clause equivalent will be (in French) any one of these : si, attendu que, vu que, puisque, parce que, pendant que, etc. I do not find a conces¬ sion so expressed {quoique, bie7i que), altho’ the difference between condition and conces¬ sion is often so slight, that one may be taken for the other, as the example below cited from PONSARD will show. It is not always easy to determine the exact relation implied in the gerund ; for this reason it is not as clear as the personal construction, and would be instinctively avoided where rigid accuracy is demanded. This could be especially recommended in case of the Italian and Spanish, in which gerunds are sometimes so loosely dragged in, that one is sorely tried before getting at their meaning, to determine which must frequently prove puzzling even to a native. The subject may be either a noun or a pronoun, which usually precedes its pred¬ icate. Instances may arise, however, where the position may be reversed. Occasionally the subject is omitted and has to be gathered from the context; but this is rare. Si. Parleriez-vous ainsi, C4sar ^tant present ? Ponsard. II y a li plus qu’il ne faut pour faire tomber, le cas ^chdant, la t^te du due de Chaslin. X. de Mont^pin. Attendu que, vu qtie. Certaines congregations n’etant pas recon- nues par le Vatican, les d^crets pourraient leur etre appliques sans peines. Courrier des Etats-Unis. Puisque. Je ne dirai plus rien, le silence dans ce cas etant une necessity. Paulina de Souza. Parce que. II aurait dit qu’il ne pent en aucun cas fitre condamne, Pacte n’ayant pas eu de temoins. Courrier des Etats-Unis. Et d’ailleurs j’espionnerais mal, la ruse me faisant horreur. X. de Montepin. 25 The Gerundial Co7istruction in the Romanic Languages. Pendant que. Je ne croyais pas que, moi vivant, elle ddt jamais voir le Jour. Boileau. Aprts que. The force of this conjunction can only be rendered in French by the compound tenses of the gerund; but preference is given to the finite clause with aprts que or the perfect in¬ finitive with aprts. The following example is very peculiar, in that the relative qui is made the subject of the absolute clause. This is probably to be re¬ garded as a solecism: Je passais prds d’une frigate anglaise qui m’ayant tird quelques coups, tous mes ra- meurs se Jet^rent ^ I’eau. Paul-Louis Courier. It would not be easy to resolve this sentence from Michelet, in which the gerunds are possibly causal but which at the same time are logically in apposition with and define “accidents terribles,’’ instead of being the cause of them. The latter part of the sentence could have been better expressed by a per¬ sonal mood ; oil les chevaux s’effrayaient, recu- laient, etc. The gerund being frequently resorted to in lively descriptive narration may explain the freedom of its employment here : On pent Juger des accidents terribles, qui eurent lieu dans cette masse compacte, les chevaux s’effrayant, reculant, s’dtouIfant,Jetant leurs cavaliers, ou les froissant dans leurs armures entre le fer et le fer. The following sentence, too, is not well put together, since it is not clear whether the ge¬ rundial clause is to be construed with the pre¬ ceding or succeeding member; but this comes more from the faulty construction of the sen¬ tence than from the clause being gerundial. Toutefois, comme il n’est que temps de sauver de I’oubli et d’une perte imminente ces intdressants monuments de I’esprit et de la langue de nos p^res, nos vieilles traditions disparaissantdejour enjour, il y avaiturgence de se mettre a I’ceuvre. Montel et Lambert, Chants pop. du Languedoc. Subject omitted, the action referable to the speaker. Matrimonialjement parlant, il n’y avait plus mari qui osat rdpondre de sa femme, ni amant de sa maitresse. Dumas. Subject omitted, the agent to be gathered from the context. N’ayant eu avec lui aucun lien publique, peut-^tre cette ouverture vient-elle convena- blement de moi, qui ne puis ^tre atteint d’aucune partialitd. Guizot. Grammarians have agreed to call the sub¬ ject the accusative in this construction. Hav¬ ing come into use at a time when the distinc¬ tion between cases had been abolished, Tt would be as reasonable to call it nominative absolute. The dependent gerund is a little more varied in its functions than the absolute. In addition to the relations assigned to this use of it, as noted above, it may be concessive, instrumen¬ tal, simply coincident in its action with the principal verb, or take the place of an adjec¬ tive clause, and be used in other ways that can not be adequately defined by the ordinary grammatical terminology. Relative clause. Proiez pur moi Jesus en ciel regnant. Vie de S. Auban, 822, The early French, having a much greater license in regard to word-position than the language of the present day, could place the verbal in -afit, which represented the relative clause, in almost any part of the sentence. Examples. U uns paYens haut s'escrie une mace portant. Vie de S, Auban, 826. L'ermite est apeM Corentin Messe chantant don baron saint Martin. Roman d'Aquin, 3027. Coincident action. Brochant lasche les rednes si feri I'alemant. Roman de Rou, 3255. Comcident action (co-ordinate clause). Il monta sor son ceval et prent S’amie devant lui baisant et acolant. Aucasin et NicoUtc. Co-ordinate clause (not. coincident with the finite verb). Alhis fut mis en la chaainne Comme murdrier, soufTrant grant paine, Renart le Contrefait, B. 417,21. 26 The Gernndial Construction in the Romanic Languages. Concession{?). Deu hi tut guverne regnant en majesti. Vie de S. Auban, 782. Adverbial clause of time, equivalent to a past anterior tense. Quoy voiant les barons, incontenant presque confus lui nianderent que tres-voulontiers ilz feroient entendre la rayne de Chippre ^ faire paix avecques le conte Thibault de Cham- paigne. Joinville, Hist, de S. Louis. Instrument, means, etc. Ne sai se vous sav^s che que lisant trovon. Herman de Valenciennes. Clers es e apris I’as en tes livres lisant. Vie de S. Auban, 1193. This last use of the gerund is very rare in Old French, and in the modern language the instrtiment, means, etc., are usually rendered by the gerund with en. Three e.xamples of it are found in Guillaume de Tyr, but all of them are the same word, lisant-. (Liv. x, ch. 14; Liv. xi, chs. 13 and 30). I have not noted it with any other words. Passing south to the language of the Troubadours, we find it one of the most common of constructions, and like¬ wise the gerund more freely used to express relations which in the north were rendered by other constructions. Instrument, means, etc., (Provencal). Per qu'eu vos die c’ab aital gen No vuihatz parlan contrastar. R. Vidal de Bezandu. Et el la enauset cantan e comtan a son poder. Bib. der Troub. xlii. As a number of examples have been col¬ lected to show the ease and freedom with which the writers of Provence employed the gerund, they will be given here for want of a better place. E risen ela se levet e garda e vi le fol [de] Peire Vidal e comeisset a cridar. Bib. der Troub. xxii. E ploran len preguet quel en degues pendre vengansa. ditto. Lai estet longa sazo e lai fes maintas bonas cansos recordan del baizar quel avia emblat. ditto. E sai perden gazanhar E quan sui vencutz sobrar, Peire Vidal, song 12 (B.*s ed. 1857), Car demandan es horn reconogutz ♦ E responden, per que etc, ditto, song 34, Car sieu parlan ab un de gran valensa Die un fols mot, tu fas mays de falhensa. Bertran de Carbonel de Marcelha. Aissy cum io foe ha son usi Que ben usan fai so servisi. Le Libre de Senequa. Quar quan alcus i fai lo son Chantan lo pot abreviar. Terramagnino de Pise, Doctrina de Cort, 767. Per que la reblan Mas mas jontas, humilian. G. Faidit. B. 143, 24, Examples parallel with many of these are found in the Langue d’oil, as the former quotations show, but they are sporadic, one might almost say, exceptional, while the lan¬ guage of South France employed the gerund nearly, if not quite, as freely as the Spanish and Italian. A few other exceptional cases are of a nature which forbids logical classifi¬ cation. That immediately following, from the ‘Vie de S. Auban,’ takes the place of a final clause. .u fu gent al'm^e Atendant la parole k queu chief fust mende. Line 581. La voiz del segnur frainanz les cedres, e frainderat li sire les cedres Libani. Psalm xxix. B. 42,25. Mil sumes par numbre e vus sul demandant, Mes ke un suls i faut malade surgurnant. Vie de S. Auban, 1189. That is, in the last two examples the verbal in -ant is connected by a conjunction with the finite verb, as if it were itself a verb in a personal mood. .je n’en ferai noiant Ne pris vo deu un denier valissant. Huon de Bordeaux, B. 189,6. No quier de raenz o valhan dinier. G. de Rossilho, 7682. This expression was common both in early French and Provencal and is so strikingly identical with our not inelegant slang, worth a cent, as: my pony won’t gallop worth a cent, that one is strongly tempted to believe in a historical connection between the two. It would be but another instance of the import¬ ant part played by the people as conservators of once well-established linguistic phenomena. 27 The Gcrnndial Construction in the Romanic La^iguages. Esdreganz esdreceras tun arc, les seremenz as lignedes les quels tu parlas. Canticum Habaccuc, B. 43,17. Only in the Portuguese have I noticed this duplication or gemination, so to speak, of verbs for purpose of emphasis. Vi claramente visto o lume vivo. Os Lus. V. x 3 . Andando vae Dom Gayfeiros Andando a bom andar. Hardung, Romanceiro Part. II. 8. Andando andando toda a noite andava; LA por madrugada que me attendava. ditto, II. 163. Two gerunds asyndetically used. Fichant musant par mi ces voies Cort audevant por eus de^oivre. Roman de Renart, B. zoo, zi. Issi parlant li enfant vinrent Plorant et par les mains se tinrent. Flore et Blanceflor, zSzy. This mode of expression is not confined to the French ; it is quite common in some of the other languages. Lo vers fo faitz al.s enblabotz A Poivert tot jogan riden, Peire d’Alvernhe, B. 80, 24. Aquela gentil domna ma domna Beatris . . . .era ben apercebuda quel moria languen deziran per ela si la toquet piatatz. Bib. der Troub. xxxii. Cosi, benedicendomi cantando, Tre volte cinse me, si com* io tacqui. Dante, Par. xxiv,.j5i. Que havendo tanto j A que as portas vendo Onde o dia ^ comprido e onde breve. Os Lus, I. 27. Intrdnd Inte apSrfindu-se cu evantallul. V. Alecsandri, Scora M^tei. Compare also Shakespeare’s: So weeping smiling greet I thee, my earth. But returning from this digression, it is to the modern language that we have to look for the full and easy use of the gerund under the second heading, that is, when not absolutely employed. Here it is universally made to discharge any of the following functions; (a) relative or adjective clause; (b) temporal clause; (c) conditional clause; (d) a conces¬ sion ; (e) causal relations ; and (f) to determine the modality of some finite verb of motion, which last we saw to be the most common use of the gerund in the early language. A few examples will illustrate the modern usage. (a) Ce n’^tait encore qu’un vague profil se d^tachant rl peine sur I’azur du ciel. Erckmann-Chatrian. (b) Ce disant la grande Sarah [Bernhardt] se pelotonna sur son petit pouf ^ peine plus haut que le tapis. L’Ev^nement (Paris Paper). (c) Madame de Vergis, sachant le comte sur ses gardes, n’avait pas osdsortir de I’hdtel cette nuit. X. de Mont^pin. (d) Soit; mais ne disant mot, je n’en pense pas moins. Moli^re, Tartufe, II. 2. (e) L'homme dans son miroir se fait de grands saluts ; Le miroir les lui rend, mais dans son ame obscure II rit et salt le fond de Phomme, ^tant mercure. V. Hugo, L'Ane, (f) A mesure que la langue d’oc allait s’effa^ant on voyait grandir la langue d’oil ou le roman wallon. Peschier. LA sur une charette une poutre branlante Vient mena9ant de loin la foule qu'elle augmente. Boileau. In sentences like;— Et la bonne femme se levant comme un res¬ ort, accourut me d^barrasser de mon man- teau, and ; Je me bornai donc^ prier Sperver de bien se garder de faire feu sur la Peste- Noire, le pr^venant que cela lui porterait malheur (Erckmann-Chatrian), the gerundial clause is not subordinate to that containing the finite verb. The two actions are con¬ secutive to each other and form the members of a compound sentence, as may be seen by converting the gerund into a verb of the same mood and tense as the other verb; la bonne femme se leva et accourut, etc. As the Latin used the present participle preceded by quasi, in the sense of as if, so the Romance tongues employ the gerund after words of similar import. Au fond se tient son page, immobile et comme attendant ses ordres. V. Hugo, Ruy Bias, IV. i. Je le consid^rais comme m’appartenant, puisque je le portals au theatre. X. de Montdpin. Noi ne gim quasi gabbando. Guittone d’Arezzo. Ya estS hecho brasa, y ya estd como tem- blando de frio. G. de Castro, moc. de Cid. Con este pensamiento gui6 Rocinante hacia su aldea, el cual, casi conociendo la querencia, con tanta gana comenzd A caminar. Don Quijote, ch. 4. 28 The Gerundial Construetion in the Romanic Languag^es. Gerund with hi. We now come to the consideration of the gerund with in. The use of other prepositions in Latin (ab, de, ex, etc., with the ablative; ad, ob, inter, etc. witli the accusative) with the gerund was not excluded, altho’ they can not be said to have been as common as in. This to a certain extent is implied in the fact that, of all the prepositions so used, only in has held its place in the Romanic tongues. That other prepositions were allowable in the first centuries of the growth of these languages may be inferred from a few isolated examples found in the early written documents. Diez cites from G. Villari: Con levando ogni di grandissime prede, as an instance of con in old Italian. I have not observed any other case of it. In the following passage from an anonymous Spanish poet of the fifteenth cen¬ tury, para, I presume, is to be regarded, as governing burlando. Pues el favor que vas dando Es mucho para burlando Y poco para de veras. In early Provengal, per is sometimes met: Si per chantan esjauzir Pogues horn cobrar joven Assatz fora convinen. But this is exceptional rather than regular and calls for no special comment. In French, such expressions as par ce fai- sant, par treuage donant, etc., are probably, as has been stated, to be explained by the gerun¬ dive of the Latin ; au muriant, en vostre vi- ■■ vant, en estant and other similar phrases are the verbal in ant substantively employed; while a I'aube aparaissant, devers soleil cou- chant, de soleil couchant, au soleil levant, etc., are constructions formed on the analogy of the Latin ad orientem solem. Practically, there¬ fore, the study of the prepositional gerund does not extend beyond its use with in. Witt the Latin gerund, in generally express¬ ed time, or the means, instrument, etc. : Contrivi in quaerendo vitam atque aetatem meam. Terence. Altero utitur in narrando aliquid venuste, altero in jaciendo mittendoque ridiculo. Cicero. Conveniet cum in dando munificum esse, turn in exigendo non acerbum. Cicero. The gerund thus used did not admit of any object but a neuter pronoun. The Romanic languages improved on their parent both by not restricting the object and by increasing the number of relations and functions per¬ formed by the gerund. In all of these lan¬ guages except the Wallachian, this construc¬ tion has been preserved. The only relic of it I have found in the Wallachian is the adverbi¬ al phrase : in curindu—&n. courant, au pas de course, hence, rapidly, quickly. Not having access to any of the earliest monuments of this language, I have not been able to ascer¬ tain whether the construction in question ever was a part of its syntax. Its struggle for existence in some of the sister.languages has been a hard one. The Italian seems not to have taken to it at first, as it is found but once in the whole of the Divine Comedy (‘Purg.’ v, 45); and altho’ Dante was wont to boast that his verse never drove him to say anything he did not wish to say, it is highly probable that he here stuck in the in to make out his line. la the ‘ Gerusalemme Liberata,’ I have found in used with the gerund nine times. Diez observes that the most recent authors employ it oftener ;.but with all due deference to the statement of the great master and pioneer, I do not find this to be true. One may often read on, in authors of the present day, for fifty, a hundred and even two hundred pages without once meeting it (some gram¬ mars even pronounce the construction obso¬ lete at the present day). In Silvio Pellico’s ‘ Le.mie Prigioni ’ and ‘ Francesca da Rimini,’ a volume of over two hundred izmo pages, I have not found it at all; and he surely belongs to the “neueste Schriftsteller.” But the total absence of the construction here is probably exceptional; and it is not pretended that Diez did not feel justified in his assertion, from the authors he had read. As the necessity for the use of in seems to be so little felt in Ital¬ ian, its employment might be as much a mannerism with some authors as its absence would be in others. The relations expressed by the Italian pre¬ positional gerund are not varied and, as far as I have observed, are only temporal and instru¬ mental. The clause in which it occurs may be 29 The Gcrundial Construction in the Romatiic Languages. turned into a subordinate sentence introduced by quando, nicntre che, etc. The action of the principal verb, therefore, is supervenient to that of the gerund.—Pero pur va’, ed in andando ascolta, that is, mentre che vai as- colta. All the examples in the ‘ Gerusalemme Liberata ’ may be resolved in a similar way. £ da tergo, in passando^ alzj la mano. iii, 29. E il caso in narrando aggrava molto, v, 33. E sta sospeso aspettando quale Avri la fera lite avvenimento. vi, 55. E in rileggendo poi le proprie note Rig6 di belie lagrime le gote. vii, 19. E dove in passando le vestigia ei posa, Par che ivi scaturisca, o che germoglie. xviii, *3. Stanno le schiere in rimirando intente La prestezza de’ fabbri e le arte ignote. xviii, 45, Suona il corriero in arrivando il corno. vii, 29. .e non affretti Le sue miserie in aspettando i mali. xiv, 64. The first six of these examples are resolv¬ able into temporal clauses beginning with mentre che ; the seventh with quando, or do- poche ; while the eighth is instrumental. After stare, as in the sixth, it is more common to omit the in. .e d'alto Stanno aspettando i miseri I'assalto. * Gerus. Lib.,* xix, 35. Un grosso volume di novelle toscane sta preparando lo stesso autore per publicarlo in Firenze. Riv. di Lett. Pop., vol. i, fasc. i. As examples, from other sources, of hi with the gerund may be given: Fui dato in voi amando, Ed in vostro valere. Frederigo ii, Rei di Sicilia. .se I’ardor fallace Dur6 molt’ anni in aspettando un giorno. Petrarca. Osopiti in aspettando i; finito il vostro bando. Ales. Manzoni. In ripensando io tremo, • Come dal duolo estremo Ei fosse vinto e preso. Benedetto Menzini. Ci punge a morte in promettendo mele. Carlo Maria Maggi. E in ci6 dicendo levossi la gonella e gliele mostrb. Giuseppe Parini. Imparerai solo in morendo che non in tutto ubbedir dovrai al tuo padrone. Giuseppe Taverna. Il romito in veggendo la estupefazione e lo . • "SO scompiglio di Gianni, riteneva a gran fatica le risa. . Michele Colombo. But all the phases of thought rendered by the Italian gerund with in may be, and gener¬ ally are, attained by the gerund without in. This accounts for the relative infrequency of the former. The old Spanish was not more partial to the prepositional gerund than the early Italian. Diez, speaking of the subject, says: “altere Schriftsteller brauchen es noch sparsam, im Cid kommt es vielleicht garnicht vor.” I pre¬ sume he means by vielleicht that a categorical statement would be rash in view of the circinn- stance that some parts of the manuscript ha^e so far proved illegible. I have carefully ex¬ amined Karl Vollmoller’s text (Halle, 1879) and have not discovered any example of the construction.—A. S. Vogelin’s ‘ Ro- mancero del Cid ’ (Herders ‘ Cid,’ Heilbronn, 1879) contains six examples. Coming down to the sixteenth century, I find Cervantes using en with the gerund eighty-five times in ‘Don Quijote.’ An examination of other works of this period and a little later, shows that the construction had now become well established. The ‘Gramatica de la Real Academia Es- pafiola ’ (p. 211) sets forth as follows the rule for determining the use of en with the gerund in Spanish : Si el gerundio expresa una idea anterior & la contenida en la oracion principal, suele ir precedido de la preposicion en, v. gr.: en comiendo saldremos k paseo. In order to test the utility of this formula, I have examined several authors from Cervan¬ tes down to the present time, and I must con¬ fess I do not find it of the slightest practical worth. For while it is true that in nine cases out of ten (possibly more) en with the gerund expresses an action anterior to that contained in the principal sentence, it is equalTy true that, for one case of the gerund with en, there will be found a half dozen without en, express¬ ing priority, and that, too, not only on the same page but even in the same sentence. Take the passage from ‘Don Quijote,’ Pt. I, ch. 1: Y tan rey seria de mi estado como cada uno del suyo, y siendolo haria lo que quisiese, y The Gerundial Consfructiofi in the Romanic Lang7iages. haciendo lo qiie quisiese haria mi gusto, y haciendo mi gusto estaria contento, y en es- tando uno contento no tiene mas que desear y no teniendo mas que desear acabdse. Now, no one will pretend that the idea of priority is any more prominent in en estando than in siendo and some others of these ger¬ unds. For one could not cease to want before having become content; nor could Sancho do what he pleased before having become king. In both cases, the predication of the gerund precedes and continues along with that of the finite verb. Further on, in Pt. II, ch. xxi, we have a similar use and omission of en\ “El cura oyendo lo cual, le dijo que atendiese k la salud del alma &ntes k los gustos del cuerpo.” And a few lines lower: “ En oyendo Don Quijote la peticion del herido, en altas voces dijo que Basilio perdia una cosa muy justa.’’ The curate and Don Quixote both had heard before they spoke ; and there is nothing in the context to lead us to infer that they broke in upon the speaker before he was done. The action of oyendo in both instances was com¬ pleted, and not in progress at the time of their beginning to speak. Judging by these and other examples, we may assume that Cervantes, in using or omitting the en, was governed solely by the position of the subject: el cura oyendo, but en oyendo Don Quijote; en estando uno contento; en acabando de decir su glosa Don Lorenzo, etc. If the rule of the Spanish Academy was founded on the usage of the most recent authors, it fares no better, as the following citations from Caballero’s ‘Un Servilon y un Liberalito ’ will show : En teniendo yo veinte y cinco afios, respon- dia con caraje Leopoldo, si hay entdnces constitucion, he de procurar ser disputado k cortes. Ch. iii. Y abriendo el libro en el sitio donde habia por senal una cuartilla de papel con palotes .se puso k leer. Ch. v. Here en teniendo expresses an action prior to that of he de procjirar, but so, too, does abriendo to se puso k leer; for the reading could not begin until after the. book had been opened. Y metiendo la mano en el bolsillo sac6 un pequeno envoltorio. B. P. Galdos, ‘ La Fontana de oro,’ ch. ii. En tocando k este punto le daban arrebatos de Santa c61era, y entdnces no se la podia aguantar. Ditto, ch. v. These parallels might be increased to any extent, but what has been given will suffice to demonstrate the utter worthlessness of the rule laid down by the grammar of the Acade- rhy. If the rule is defective in this respect, on the other hand there are other ways in which it is equally so. It does not state, for instance (what, from my observation, I believe to be true), that eti is omitted when the gerund is accompanied by a negative. I do not, how¬ ever, lay much stress on this as holding good under all circumstances, as a wider experience may show the error of my belief. But of the following there can be no doubt, that the Spanish gerund with en does not always ex¬ press completed anterior action, as the dictum of the Spanish Academy would lead us to infer. “ En comiendo saldremos k paseo,’’ the example given by the Academy to illus¬ trate its rule, means: after we shall have eaten, we shall go out to walk. That is, the action of en comiendo is past and completed before that of saldremos begins. But any number of examples might be adduced to show that the prepositional gerund frequently expresses an action which is coincident with that of the principal verb and may dr may not continue after the completion of the action of the latter. Que no serA muerte, Si en viendote muero. Jorge de Montemayor. Y hoy en durmiendo un marido Halla A su lado otro Adan. F. Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas. En siendo gusto, sef.ora, No importa que no sea bueno. Agustin Mureto. The first two of these examples rhay be inter¬ preted strictly in accordance with the Acade¬ my ; but it is more in harmony with the thought to take them to mean: whe^t or while seeing, sleeping. About the third there can be no dispute; it is not covered by the rule.— The relations expressed by the Spanish gerund with en are temporal, shading off sometimes into conditional and causal. The examples already given will suffice as illustra¬ tions. In some of the most recent authors The Gernndial Construction in the Romanic Lan^tages. there seems to be a growing tendency to abandon the use of en altogether. Of the Portuguese prepositional gerund there is nothing very special to say that has not already been covered by the remarks on the Spanish. Not having at hand any of the earliest literary documents, I have not been able to form any opinion relative to its histori¬ cal growth. Em is employed four times in the ‘Lusiads’; i, 8 ; iii, 136; v, 8; vii, 25. In each case it is equivalent to an adverbial clause of time. The whole of Hardung’s ‘ Romanceiro Portugues ’ (600 pages) offers but three examples : i, pp. 171 and 203, and ii, 243; the first two are temporal, the third temporal or conditional. Authors of the present day use the construction very sparingly; and the attempt to formulate a rule for its use would prove as abortive as in the case of the Spanish. The two languages do not here differ material¬ ly in their syntax, as would naturally be ex¬ pected from their close affinity to each other. —The Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese do not show such a decided preference for the prepositional gerund as the languages of the north-western Romance territory. There it became naturalized in the first centuries of their development and was even with them of more frequent occurrence than it has ever been with the sister languages of the south and south-east. But altho’ the early French and Provencal use of the gerund with eri may be pronounced extensive as compared with the other lan¬ guages, it is very rare as compared with modern French and Proven9al. In ‘Girart de Rossilho,’ a poem of nine thousand lines, I find en used but twice; while in Aubanel’s ‘La Miougrans Entre-Douberto ’ and Mis¬ tral’s ‘ Mireio,’two modern poems contain¬ ing about the same amount of matter, the same construction occurs one hundred and six times. I have counted in one of Emile Zola’s latest novels, of 524 pages, i2mo, five hundred and twenty two examples; that is, nearly once on a page. This is probably a greater num¬ ber of times than the prepositional gerund can be found in the whole of French literature from the ninth to the fourteenth century. The following table will be, to one who is acquaint¬ ed with the works it embraces, a sufficient proof of the probability of this statement. ‘ Chiinson de Roland,’ 3 times; ‘Voyage de Charlemagne,’5 t. ; ‘Flore et Blancefior,’ 10 t.; ‘ Les Joies de Nostre Dame’ {Zeit. f. R. Phil., iii), 2 t.; ‘ Vie de Seint Auban,’ 5 t.; ‘ La Vie de Saint Alexi ’ {Romania, viii), o t.; ‘ Roman de Rou ’ (Andresen, Theil i und ii), 5 t.; ‘ Roman d’Aquin,’ 2 t. ; ‘ Berte aus grans pi 4 s,’ 9 t.; ‘ Hist, de S. Louis ’ (Joinville), 12 t.; ‘ Hist, de I’empereur Henri ’ (H. de Valen¬ ciennes), 8 t. ; ‘ Conqueste de Constantinoble ’ (Villehardouin), o t.; ‘ Translation of Guil¬ laume de Tyr,’ 6t. ; ‘ Aiol et Mirabel,’ 10 t.; ‘ Guiot de Provins,’ o t. 1 have not thought it necessary to carry this investigation so far in Provencal, as the follow¬ ing, together with my own general observation, convinced me that the proportion was about the same. ‘Bib. der Troubadours,’ 10 times; ‘Four Card. Virtues’ (Daude de Pradas), i t.; ‘ Girart de Rossilho,’ 2 t.; ‘ Peire Vidal’s ‘ Songs,’ 2 t. The frequency, infrequency or total want of the construction in an author is traceable, of course, to psychological causes. That one writer should employ it oftener, or less often, than another, only shows that it was a part of his mental equipment, and the expression of his thoughts would naturally be through the most familiar, most habitual channel—in the jargon of the new philosophy, along the line of least resistance. If Joinville, for instance, uses en with the gerund twelve times, and Villehardouin when doing about the same amount of writing does not employ it at all, this only proves that with the one it was a conscious part of his mode of thought, while the thoughts of the other sought different paths of outlet, because more accustomed to run in them. All men have words and ways of combining them into sentences peculiar to themselves; and originality of style is proportional to the amount of diver¬ gence from the ordinary formularies of thought. The discrepancy, therefore, be¬ tween these two authors, in the respects just mentioned, proves nothing more than the fact itself—namely, the discrepancy and the cause thereof. Nothing further can he educed from it, and this should make us chary in setting too high a value on statistical methods in 32 The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Languages. philology, a thing which we are all more or less prone to do. If the prepositional gerund of the old French compares badly with the modern usage in point of frequency, it does also in variety. One cannot but be struck with this. It forced itself upon me almost at the \'ery outset of my investigations. The want of variety is seen in this, that with many authors en is used only in certain combinations and after certain verbs, that is, they use en only in a few to them apparently fixed or stereotyped ex¬ pressions. The most common of these are: en dormant, en riant, en pleurant and some others, especially after verba declarandi. This may be illustrated by citing, in brief, all the examples of several works.—' Chanson de Roland,’ 3 times, as follows: en riant I’ad dit (619), dist en riant (862), il la prent en gisant (2523).—‘Flore et Blanceflor,’ 10 times: en plorant li respont (210), respont en baisant (603), en lisant cou racontoient (664), en plorant prist a parler (716), respont en plorant (2276), en dormillant li respondi (2529), en baisant se sont rendormi (2554), respont en plorant (2795), tot en plorant (2986), en riant icon li dient (3172).—‘ Berte aus grans pi6s,’ 9 times: en plorant (208), tout en plorant (521), e 7 i fuiant (844), tout e 7 i plorant (1252), en dormant li sambloit (1678), plorant (2535), en plorant (2452), en alant (2754), en plorant (3247).— JoiNviLLE ‘Hist.de S. Louis,’ (de Wailly’s edition) 12 times: en plourant (207), distrent e 7 i riant (298), gardast en mangant (430), comme en couroussant (439), en ce faisant (494), tout en plorant (556), souflfre en li gardant (560), diSt en riant (673), me fu avis en dormant (731) appela en s’aide e 7 i disant (756), e 7 i regardant rendi s’orison (757), dist e 7 i profetizant (794).—‘ Vie de Seint Auban,’5 times: e 7 i murant jeta un cri (249), e 7 i suspirant dit (382), dist e 7 i reschis- nant (753), en plurant a dit (868), s’a dit en suspirant (1115)-—‘Roman de Rou ’ (Andre- SEN, i, ii), 4 times; en fuiant fu ocis (563), e 7 i dormant (909), dist en riant (1573), en plurant (1824). This will suffice to give an idea of the phe¬ nomenon above mentioned, which is very marked in ‘ Flore et Blanceflor ’ and ‘ Berte aus grans pi^s.’ In most other writers no such decided tendency is manifest; for while the above often recurring expressions are found, other examples sufficiently demonstrate that the writers used en with the gerund in accordance with a general principle of syntax. Examples: ‘Guillaume de Tyr’ (P. Paris’s edition), 6 times: s’escusa en jurant (p. 83), s’en va en aguisant (190), estoit apareuz en dormant (208), en languissant (210), salua e 7 i inclinant (329), leur sembloit en dormant (418). —‘ Voyage de Charlemagne,’ 5 times : dist e 7 t riant (278), esguardant cum e 7 i riant (360), en bruslant (479), e 7 i turnant (480), en reversant (481).—‘ Henri de Valenciennes,’ 8 times : en preservant (ch. i), escriant (8), e 7 i fuiant (8), en plovrant (9) e 7 t escriant (25), e 7 i fuiant (25), ett respondant (38), en sozriant (38). What now is the force of the prepositional gerund as used at this period of the growth of the language? The majority of the above ex¬ amples, and numerous others, teach us that its most common function consisted in taking the place of an adverbial clause of time, always, therefore, modifying, or affecting in some way, the action of the principal verb. The gerund’s action in such cases is coincident with that of this verb, but the latter is always incidental to the former. In addition to this, the gerund also expressed the mea 7 is, the in- stru 7 ne 7 tt and occasionally the 7 na 7 tner. I say occasionally, because I have noticed but one rather doubtful instance of 7 /ian 7 ter. Means, instrument: Et en ce faisant il occi- oient les lyons de leur saietes. Joinville, ch. xcvi. S’cle tant fait que vos rie En riant vos decevra. B. 334, ji. Dont m’est il bien avis baisant me traTstes. ‘Blonde! de Neele,* B, 226, 3. Par joie d'amors vraie Sui en baisant mors. Ditto, 225, 4. En belHant I'ourent pass^, Ne I'aveient mie esgard^. * Roman de Ron/ B. 112, 35. Et pour itant aprendre a harper Et ma dame en chantant loer. .Guil. de Machau, B. 408, 35. Manner: '‘^ Car la grant hache Pataint en rechipant. * Roman d’Aquin,* 1594. These (thne, i 77 str 7 i 7 )ient, and 7 fian 7 ter) are the regular and almost exclusive offices dis¬ charged by the gerund with e 7 i, during the first centuries of the development of the lan- 3.^ The Gerundial Cofisfruction in the Romanic Languages. guage. The rule for its use should be, that , the actions of both verbs be performed by the | same agent: il dit en pleura 7 it \ but there are numerous exceptions to this, which are per¬ fectly logical and always justifiable, provided no ambiguity arises from the violation of the rule. Maint hume enmi lur veie mort tut estendu, A maint uni en dormant le chief sevre de bu. ‘ Roman de Rou/ 909. En fuiant li ont fait les ronces maint escroe De sa robe et la dame entour li la renoe. ' * Berte aus grans pi-s/ 844. II se misent a la fuite et li nostre les ochi- oient en fuiant. H. de Valenciennes, ch. viii. Such sentences are lucid enough and no reasonable objection can be raised to them ; [ but a construction like the following squints | (as the French say) and barely escapes obscuri¬ ty by the thought itself and not by the syntax of the sentence. j Et des oiseaus et des bestes sauvages Faisoient douter les orguilleus corages En escoutant le doulz son de sa lire. Guil. de Machau, B. 4x0, 13. The gerund is sometimes loosely thrown in where other constructions would be a more natural expression of the thought, as seen when analyzed. Les letres de fin or estoient Et en lisani cou racontoient. ‘ Flore et Blanceflor/ 644. Tresk’ as espaules sans fosete, Ounie et grosse en avalant. Adam de la Halle, B. 377, 23. Here the meaning is : the letters, when read, or on being read, recounted this ; and second¬ ly, the neck was ounie et devenait grosse eti avalant, since the poet desired evidently to depict a neck that tapered from the shoulders upward. Again, e 7 i is occasionally omitted, where, by general usage, it ought to have been em¬ ployed : Or vous gisds, biax pere, bien i venr^s dormant. H. de Valenciennes, B. 87, 14. Fortment plurant dist as freres. * Brandans Seefahrt,' 333. Dist chascun lermant: las pur quei nasqui ? ‘Vie de Seint Auban,* 1503. On the other hand, it is sometimes found where universal custom has sanctioned its omission : ,'-.4 A genousle trouvai ourant A jointes mains et en plourant. ‘Jehan Bodel,’ B. 313, 31. Rut these examples are exceptional and are probably confined to poetry, as I have not observed any such in prose. The Provencal usage does not differ essentially from the P'rench, as might be presumed. Only in the former there does not seem to have existed the same tendency to the use of the crystallized expressions so notable in the latter. Instrument, means ; Complir si pot en pessan Per tot home qu’en a talan. Daude de Pradas. Mils aten horn en atenden, Motas vetz no fa en corren. Le Libre de Senequa. E vau conortan Mon cor en chantan So que no cugei far ogan. G. Faidit, B. 141. 7. Temporal: En chantan m’aven a membrar So qn'eJ cug chantan oblidar. * Folquet de Marseille, B. 119. 6. Lo payre sanct en donan la crosada Lay vay premier coma veray pastor. Pasiorela, B. 404. 28, We find also in Provencal the same depar¬ ture occasionally from the common usage, which constructs the gerund without en with to fi 7 id and verbs of motion. Qu'enans fui trobatz en dormen Sabre chevau. Guillem IX, Songs. L'us ab fols motz, I’autres vay en fenhen Qu’el fay cobias naturalmen e be. Bertran Carbonel de Marcelha. Adonc se son armatz et de la vila Son salitz frapan et aisso en cridan. ‘ Chanson de la Croisade.' From what now has been said and shown, a sufficiently definite judgment may be formed regarding the early use of the prepositional gerund in Provencal and French. The modern languages, having widened its sphere of usefulness to the enormous extent above indicated, have naturally given , to it more varied functions to discharge, as we shall see. temporal, the modern French gerund with en may express : A. I. An action anterior to and completed before that of the principal verb ; as, Eti ap- prenant I’issue de I’entreprise la reine Hor- tense accourut en France. Guizot. Une personne qui me plaisait et (jui s’est re- The Gcriindial Constructioti hi the Romanic Languages. tir^e en apprenant qiie nion p^re avail Iaiss 4 plus de dettes qiie de capital. George Sand. 2. The action may begin before and end with that of the principal verb ; as, Si I’Aimer ^pique fut fait prisonnier par eu.x, rAimer his- torique trouva la mort en les combattant. Gaston Paris. Le R^v. Miller, doyen de 1 ’university de mydecine et de chirurgie de Philadelphie a yty arrety dimanche en allant a Pyglise. Courrier des Etats- Unis. 3. Its action may begin before and continue after that of the, finite verb; as, Le comte de Niedeck se couche en claquant des dents. Erckmann-Chatrian. II entra en tenant ft la main quelques papiers. X. de Montypin. 4. The action of both verbs may begin at the same time; as, Pierre avail tuy sa mat-; tresse et s’ytait enfui en emjx)ftant la petite fille. X. de Montypin. Elle a appeiy M. Greluche et lui a dit en lui montrant une avant-sedne; Tiens: voil^ ma- dame de Sartorys. Froufrou, ii, 2. 5. The gerund’s action may begin after that of the principal verb ; as, Mais surtout quand la brise Me touche en voltigeant, La nuit j’aime Ctre assise, Etre assise en songeant. V, Hugo. II lira les dossiers du tiroir et les lut at- tentivement Pun apr^s I’autre en prenant des notes. X. de Montypin. .Sometimes the temporal gerund shades off partially into an adverb of manner: Je ne viens qu’en passant, vous voyez, je suis en grande toilette. A. de Musset. L’historien recueillit en passant des dytails et des tymoignages. Villemain. B. When expressing causal, or instrument¬ al relations, the action of the prepositional gerund always precedes that of the finite verb. This necessarily follows from the fact that the latter is but the result of the former, the two actions standing to each other in the relation of cause and effect: M. Constans pouvait surmonter cette difficulty, en soumettant au cabinet une liste des ytablissements qu’il se proposait de fermer. Courrier des Etats- Unis. I Vous faites une si vive impression sur lui j que j’ai voulu compiyter son bonheur en le rapprochant de son idole. Balzac. In such cases the gerund is objective in character. Where the cause is subjective, it j becomes the motive for the action of the I principal verb, and the gerund without en is j then used ; as, N’entendant rien aux discus¬ sions politiques, j’ai repris Pytat militafre. Scribe. Sentences are occasionally crossed, whose cast is not distinctly definable, the gerund being capable of temporal, or instrumental, interpretation : En suivant Sperver, qui mon- tait Pescalier d’un pas rapide, je pus me con- vaincre que le chateau Niedecle myritait sa ryputation. Erckmann-Chatrian. C. The gerund with en expresses a conces¬ sion. The actions of the two verbs are then coincident. Coligny dans son coeur a son prince fid’ele Aimait toujours la France en combattant contre elle.. Voltaire. The concession may be strengthened by the addition of tout, or mime : Napoiyon fut ac- cueilli par les acclamations du peuple qui, tout en maudissant la conscription . . . . . . voyait en lui.le vaillant dyfenseur du sol national. Thiers. Myme en supposant qu’on organise la vente gynyrale du clergy, la guerre ne pouvait faire autrement que de mettre le royaume d’ltalie, etc. Chevalier. And the same thing is accomplished by con¬ trast, as it were; that is, by using in the principal sentence one of the adverbs toutefois, cependant, niannwins, just as tho’ a correla¬ tive {quoique, bien que) had been used in the preceding clause. Cet ^mour en naissant est toutefois extr'me. Corneille. Mais Sir Robert, en proclamant la complete indypendance de PEspagne dans le choix du mari de la reine, persiste cependant au fond ft en exclure les princes fran9ais. Guizot. D. The gerund with en may take the place of a conditional clause, upon whose realization depends the action of the principal verb. Its action, therefore, is contingently anterior to the latter. The Gerundial Construction in the Romanic Lanf^iages. En sondanr ccs cachots, en comptant ces victimes, Ils diront: £lle aussi mise u mort pour ses crimes. C. Delavigne. Parmi les formations ^ radical latin que le suffixe ati a produites en roumain {^en admet- tant que au soit rest 4 intact), je n’en trouve que deux. Romania, ix, 107. This becomes a very convenient way of ex¬ pressing a condition, when it is desired to throw in a parenthetical condition after the conjunction si\ Et quisait si, en d^pensant un million sur cette lande, on n’en fera pas line affaire qui aura au bout du compte une tournure assez honorable? Fr^d^ric Soulid. E. Lastly, the gerund with en may serve to modify the action of the principal verb. This, strictly speaking, is only true of verbs of motion, and only then, when the manner of the movement is defined or limited by the ger¬ und. Les voici qui viennent en trottinant devant leur m^re. Pylodet’s ‘ Fr. Reader.’ II vient en rampant mettre aux pieds de son maitre son courage, sa force et ses talents. Buffon. Here en trottinant describes the manner of coming of the little chickens, and eti rampant that of the coming of the dog, and I think we should distinguish the gerund as so used from its use in such sentences as: Le baron s’avan- ga jusqu’^ la porte en souriant malicieusement. E. About. En souriant does not affect the action of s'avanga but is merely a concomitant action ; whereas, if we substituted for it some such words as en bronchant, en chancelant, they would become a part of the movement ex¬ pressed by s'avanqa and hence be strictly adverbs of manner. When used after ttre, the prepositional ger¬ und becomes the real predicate of the sentence; as, Ils se plaignaient que leurs fati¬ gues eussent 4 t 4 en augmentant. S 4 gur. As regards the subject of the gerund with c«, the same usage prevails at the present day as in the early language; both actions are, for the most, performed by the subject of the finite verb, as the examples above quoted show. The departures from this general rule are of the same character as those already noted. Subject in Dative : Dieu nous envoie souvent le bien en dormant; envoie cela ^ ta mtire et assure-la que j’aurai soin d’elle et de toi. Fr^d^ric II, Roi de Prusse. No subject expressed ; La fortune vient en dormant, ce qui prouve que ce n’est qu’un reve. Tintamarre, Aug. 1880. The latter sentence may be objected to on the ground of its not being logically con¬ structed, since fortune does not come while asleep ; but we recognize at first sight that the sentence means: la fortune nous vient en dor¬ mant, and hence no doubt is left in the mind. The real objection to this exceptional use of the gerund is where the sentence is so loosely constructed as to leave it doubtful whether the gerund refers to the subject of the princi¬ pal verb, or to its object. Instance the two following sentences: Vienne la voile qui t’emm^ne en souriant je te verrai partir. A. de Musset. En payant pourriez-vous me donner une assiette de soupe et un coin pour dormir dans ce hangar? V. Hugo. Where several gerunds follow each other in the same sentence, en is used, as a rule, with them all, if they are separated from each other by intervening words ; as. Tout en regardant les boutiques, en paraissant admirer les objets d’art et en souriant aux jolies femmes, le baron creusait son probl^me. X. de Mont 4 pin. But where the gerunds follow each other in immediate succession, the preposition gener¬ ally is omitted with all but the first. Euphony doubtless is the governing principle in both instances. Une poulette jeune et sans experience, En trottant, cloquetant, grattant, Se trouve, je ne sais comment. Fort loin du poulailler, berceau de son enfance. Florian. C’est ainsi qu’il apprend ^ sentir la pesan- teur, etc, ... .. r^* Z >■