19th century English syntax

Notes from the last decade (or so) of reading 19th century novels

Reflexive pronouns

Less use of reflexives in general:

• “lay them down” instead of “lay themselves down”
• “Sir Lancelot made him ready” instead of “Sir Lancelot made himself ready”

But in some cases a verb takes the prefix be- and a reflexive pronoun that matches the subject:

• “She bethought herself of doing that.” (“She thought of doing that.”)
• “He betook himself to bed.” (“He took himself to bed.”)

Auxiliaries

• More inversion of modal verbs rather than insertion of do in questions
  • “need I” instead of “do I need”
  • “haven’t you” instead of “don’t you have”
• “should have” in place of “had” in past-perfective constructions:
  • “As soon as the Trojans should have left…”
• “should” in place of “would” for embedded future tense:
  • “It was unlikely that he should win.”
• ”done” treated more like a past participle than a predicate/passive particle.
  • “have done” for “be done” (as in finished)
• As with French and German, the verb “to be” is used with certain verbs of motion and change: “is come,” “is become,” “is grown tall”

Negation

• “not” less frequently contracted
  • “Is my father not dead?”
  • “Did not he say that he was coming?”
  • “I knew not” instead of “I didn’t know”
• negating terms occur later in the sentence:
  • “I saw him not at all/hardly at all.”
• “no X, but Y” instead of “no x who Y”:
  • “there is no person, but can feel how painful this is” (“there is no person who can feel…”)
• “never X but that Y” for “never X that not Y”
  • “Never ere now was there a tourney, but that he had the victory” (for “Never before was there a tourney that he didn’t win.”)

Conditionals:

• “had” for “would have”: “it had been easier for him, had he…” (for “it would have been easier for him, had he..”)
• Inverted “were” for “would be”: “so were his fortunes over,  had…” (for “his fortunes would have been over, had…
• Inverted auxiliary in place of “if”:  
  • “Had not he done that” (for “if he have not done that”)
  • “Could they have looked forward they would have …” (for “If they could have looked forward they would have”).
• When there’s no auxiliary, insertion and inversion of “do”:
  • “did they know my unhallowed acts” (for “if they knew my unhallowed acts…”)
• “as” for “if”: “as you value your life” (for “if you value your life”)
• “though” for “even if”: “though he had been a much duller man” (for “even if he had been a much duller man”)
• “should” or “must”  in place of “would”:
  • “If I had known, I should have behaved differently”
  •  “If he had at all cared about me, we must have met long, long ago.

The preposition “of” as a default preposition for subordinate clauses and other phrases:

Greater use of “of” instead of “to”

• “opportunity of seeing” (instead of “opportunity to see”)
• “wish of being better acquainted with” (instead of “wish to be”)
• “cannot fail of attracting” (instead of “cannot fail to attract”)
• “susceptible of being deceived” (instead of “susceptible to being deceived”)
• “failure of producing” (instead of “failure to produce”)
• “inability of doing” (instead of “inability to do”)

Greater use of “of” in general

• “possessed of” (instead of “possessed with”)
• “opportunity of” (instead of “opportunity for”)
• “occasion of” (instead of “occasion for”)
• “hopelessness of” (instead of “hopelessness about”)
• “irresolute of” (instead of “irresolute about”)
•  “despair of” (instead of “despair about”)

Extraposition of nonrestrictive relative clauses to the end of the sentence:

• Instead of “My lair that was full when this moon was new is empty”: “My lair is empty that was full when this moon was new” (The Jungle Book)
• Instead of  “He must have a tug with the devil who gets it.”: “He must have a tug with the devil who gets it.” (Wolfert Webber by Washington Irving)

Miscellaneous:

• “request me to” instead of “request that I”
• “signify” as an intransitive verb:
  • “doesn’t signify” for “doesn’t mean anything”
  •  “What signifies?” for “What does that mean?”
• “now he had done that” instead of “now that he had done that”
• relative clauses with “such… as”:
  • “they visited such sick people as refused to call in a confessor” (instead of “they visited those sick people who…”)
• Splitting of “so as to”:
  • “it was so arranged as to …”
• “that” instead of “so that”
  • ““Let us die that we may live”
• “dative” pronouns placed after the direct object:
• “give it me.”
• Underuse of the -ly ending for adjectives (harks back to Germanic, which makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs)
  • “He was sore dismayed.”