Although in this grammar I would have preferred not to depart from the usual nomenclature and explanations, there are points on which I felt that the practices of the Spanish language could be represented in a more complete and exact manner.10 Some readers will no doubt call arbitrary the alterations I have introduced on these points, or will attribute them to an exaggerated desire to say new things; the reasons that I adduce will at least prove that I have adopted them only after mature consideration. But the most negative prejudice, because of the hold that it still possesses over even quite well-educated persons, is the prejudice of those who believe that in grammar there is no harm in inadequate definitions, badly made classifications, and false concepts, if only, on the other hand, the rules of good usage are carefully set forth. However, I believe that these two things cannot be reconciled, that usage cannot be correctly and faithfully explained except by analyzing it, by uncovering the true principles that govern it. I believe that strict logic is an indispensable requisite for all teaching, and that in the first test of the awakening intellect it is most important not to let it be satisfied with mere words.
The speech of a people is an artificial system of signs, which in many respects differs from other systems of the same kind; it follows from this that each language has its own particular theory, its grammar. Hence we must not apply indiscriminately to one language the principles, terms, and analogies into which, more or less successfully, the practices of another are resolved. The very word idiom (in Greek, particularity or characteristic), tells us that each language has its genius, its physiognomy, its turns of phrase. The grammarian would do his office badly if, when explaining his own language, he were to limit himself to what it had in common with another, or (worse still) to assume resemblances where only differences existed—and important, radical differences at that. General grammar is one thing and the grammar of a given language another; it is one thing to compare two languages and another to consider a language as it is in itself. Are we dealing with the conjugation of the Spanish verb? We must enumerate the forms it assumes, and the meanings and uses of each form, as if there were no other language in the world but Spanish. It is a necessary position with regard to the child, who is taught the rules of the only language within his grasp, his native tongue. This is the viewpoint in which I have tried to place myself, a viewpoint in which I beg intelligent persons, to whose judgment I submit my work, to place themselves as well, laying aside most particularly any reminiscences of the Latin language.
In Spain as in other European countries, an excessive admiration for the language and literature of the Romans placed a Latin stamp on almost all productions of the mind. This was a natural tendency of men’s spirits in the period when letters were being restored. Pagan mythology continued to supply the poet with images and symbols, and the Ciceronian period was the model of elocution for elegant writers. Hence it was not strange that the nomenclature and grammatical canons of our Romance tongue should be taken from Latin.
If, as Latin came to be the ideal type for grammarians, circumstances had awarded this preeminence to Greek, we would probably have had five cases in our declension instead of six, our verbs would have had not only a passive but a middle voice, and aorists and paulo-post-futures would have figured in the Spanish conjugation.
Signs of thought doubtless obey certain general laws which, derived from those laws which regulate thought itself, govern all languages and constitute a universal grammar. But if we except the resolution of thought into clauses; and the clause into subject and attribute; the existence of the noun to express objects directly; that of the verb to indicate attributes; and that of the other words that modify and determine nouns and verbs in such a way that, with a limited number of both, all possible objects, real as well as intellectual, can be designated (as well as all the attributes that we can perceive or imagine in them), then I see nothing that we are obliged to recognize as a universal law from which no language can be exempt. The number of parts of speech can be larger or smaller than it is in Latin or the Romance tongues. The verb might conceivably have genders and the noun tenses. What is more natural than the agreement of the verb with the subject? Well, in Greek it was not only allowed but customary to make the plural of neuter nouns agree with the singular form of verbs. To the intellect, two negatives must necessarily cancel each other out, and this is almost always the case in speech; but it does not alter the fact that in Spanish there are circumstances in which two negatives do not make a positive. Therefore we must not transfer lightly the effects of ideas to the accidents of words. Philosophy has erred no little in assuming that language is a faithful copy of thought; and this same exaggerated supposition has caused grammar to stray in the opposite direction. Some argued from the copy to the original, others from the original to the copy. In language, conventional and arbitrary factors include a great deal more than is commonly thought. Beliefs, whims of the imagination, and myriad casual associations cannot fail to produce an enormous discrepancy in the means that languages use to make manifest what is taking place in the soul. It is a discrepancy that becomes greater and greater the farther they depart from their common origin.
I am willing to listen patiently to the objections that may be made about what seem to be the new features of this grammar, though on careful examination it will be found that on those very points I sometimes do not innovate but restore. The idea, for example, that I present of the cases in declension is the old and genuine one, and in attributing to the infinitive the nature of a noun I am merely bringing back an idea that is perfectly set forth in Priscian: “… uim nominis [rei ipsius] habet ver bum infinitum… dico enim ‘bonum est legere,’ ut si dicam ‘bona est lectio.’” [The infinitive (of the action itself) has the force of a noun. I say To read is good’ as if I should say ‘Reading is good.’] On the other hand I have not wanted to depend on “authorities,” for to me the ultimate authority with regard to a language is the language itself. I do not feel that I am entitled to divide what language constantly unites, nor to forcibly unite what it separates. I regard analogies with other languages as no more than accessory proofs. I accept practices as language presents them, without imaginary ellipses, without other explanations than those that illustrate usage by means of usage.
This is the logic I have followed. As for the aids from which I have tried to profit, I must cite especially the works of the Spanish Academy and the grammar of Don Vicente Salvá. I have regarded the latter book as the most abundant source of Spanish ways of speaking, and as a book which no one who aspires to speak and write his native language correctly can be excused from reading and consulting frequently. I also owe a debt to some ideas of the witty and learned Don Juan Antonio Puigblanch, in the philological material to which he refers incidentally in his Opúsculos. Nor would it be fair to forget [Gregorio] Garcés, whose book, even considered only as a glossary of Spanish words and phrases from the language’s best period, does not in my opinion deserve the disdain with which it is treated nowadays.
After such an important work as Salvá’s, it seemed to me that the only thing missing was a theory that would show the system of language in the development and use of its inflections and in the structure of its sentences, stripped of certain Latin traditions that fitted it not at all. But when I say “theory,” let it not be thought that I am dealing with metaphysical speculations. Señor Salvá rightly condemns those ideological abstractions which, like those of an author whom he cites, are brought in to legitimize what usage forbids. I avoid them, not only when they contradict usage, but when they go beyond the actual practice of language. I would reduce the philosophy of grammar to representing usage by the simplest and most comprehensive formulas. To base these formulas on other intellectual procedures than those that really and truly govern usage is a luxury that grammar does not need. But the intellectual procedures that really and truly govern usage, or in other words the precise value of inflections and combinations of words, must necessarily be subject to proof; and the grammar that ignores this will not perform its function adequately. Just as the dictionary gives the meaning of roots, so grammar must declare the meaning of inflections and combinations, not only the natural and original meaning but the secondary and metaphorical meaning, whenever such inflections and combinations have entered into general use in the language. This is the area that grammatical speculations must most especially embrace, and at the same time is the boundary that confines them. If I have at any time overstepped this boundary, it has been in very short excursions, when I was trying to refute the alleged ideological bases of a doctrine or when grammatical accidents revealed some curious mental procedure. Such transgressions, however, are so rare that to call them inappropriate would be unnecessarily severe.
Some have criticized this grammar as difficult and obscure. In the schools in Santiago which have adopted it, it is obvious that its difficulty is much greater for those who, concerned about the doctrines of other grammars, do not take the trouble to read mine with attention, and scorn to familiarize themselves with its language, than for the pupils who form their first grammatical ideas with its aid.
On the other hand, there is quite a common belief that the study of a language, to the point of speaking and writing it correctly, is effortless and easy. Many points in grammar are not accessible to the intelligence of young children; hence I have thought it wise to divide my grammar into two courses, with the first of these reduced to the least difficult and most indispensable ideas and the second made extensive to those parts of language that require a somewhat better-trained mind. I have indicated these with different kinds of type and included both in a single treatise, not only to avoid repetitions but to offer to the teachers of the first course the aid of the explanations intended for the second course, should they at any time be required. I also believe that these explanations will be of some value to beginners, for as they progress, difficulties in understanding them will gradually disappear. This allows teachers to decide whether to add to the lessons of primary instruction everything that they think appropriate from the second course, according to the pupils’ capabilities and progress. In the footnotes I call attention to certain nefarious practices of popular American speech so that they can be recognized and avoided, and have explained some doctrines with observations that require knowledge of other languages. Finally, in the notes at the end of the book I write at more length on some doubtful points, on which I believed that explanations which could satisfy better-educated readers would not be superfluous. In some cases it may seem that examples have accumulated rather profusely; but this has only been done when I was trying to counter the practice of writers given over to regrettable novelties, or to argue controversial points, or to explain certain procedures of the language which I thought had not been sufficiently dealt with until now.
I also believed that in a national grammar certain forms and locutions that have disappeared from present-day language ought not to be passed over, either because the poet and even the prose writer sometimes have recourse to them, or because a knowledge of them is necessary for complete understanding of the most cherished works of other periods in our language. It was also desirable to demonstrate the improper use that some writers make of them, and the erroneous concepts with which others have tried to explain them. And if it is I who have made errors, may my mistakes serve as a stimulus to more competent writers, to undertake the same labor with better success.
I do not claim to write for Spaniards. My lessons are aimed at my brothers, the inhabitants of Spanish America. I believe that the preservation of our forefathers’ tongue in all possible purity is important, as a providential means of communication and a fraternal link among the various nations of Spanish origin scattered over the two continents. But what I presume to recommend to them is not a superstitious purism. The prodigious advances of all the sciences and arts, the diffusion of intellectual culture and political revolutions, daily require new signs to express new ideas; and the introduction of novel words, taken from ancient and foreign languages, no longer offends unless they are manifestly unnecessary, or unless they reveal the affectation and poor taste, of those who think that by using them they are embellishing what they write. There is another and worse vice, which is to give new meanings to known words and phrases, thus multiplying the ambiguities that arise out of the variety of meanings from which all languages suffer more or less, and perhaps even more so those most often studied, owing to the almost infinite number of ideas to which a necessarily limited number of signs must be accommodated. But the greatest evil of all, and one which, if it is not controlled, will deprive us of the precious advantages of a common language, is the torrent of grammatical neologisms which inundate and render obscure much of what is written in America, and which by altering the structure of the language tend to change it into a multitude of irregular, undisciplined, and barbaric dialects; embryos of future languages which, during a long development, would reproduce in America what happened in Europe during the dark period of the corruption of Latin. Chile, Peru, Buenos Aires, Mexico, would each speak their own language, or, to express it better, a number of languages, as happens in Spain, Italy, and France, where certain provincial languages predominate but a number of others exist beside them, hampering the spread of enlightenment, the execution of laws, the administration of the State, and national unity. A language is like a living body: its vitality does not depend on the constant identity of elements, but on the regularity of the functions that those elements perform, and from which arise the form and nature that distinguish the whole.
Whether or not I exaggerate the danger, it has been the chief reason that has led me to compose this book, so superior to my powers in so many ways. Intelligent readers who honor me by reading it with some attention will observe how much care I have exercised in marking out, so to speak, the boundaries that good usage in our language respects, amid the looseness and freedom of its turns of phrase; and in pointing out the corruptions most widespread today and showing the essential difference that exists between Spanish constructions and foreign ones that resemble them up to a point, which we tend to imitate without exercising the discernment we ought to employ.
Let no one believe that, by recommending the preservation of Castillan Spanish, I intend to accuse as harmful and spurious everything peculiar to American speech. Very correct locutions exist which are considered outdated in the Peninsula, but which persist in Spanish America. Why outlaw them? If according to general practice among Americans the conjugation of some verb is more logical, why should we prefer the one that has prevailed more or less by chance in Castile? If we have formed new words from Spanish roots according to the ordinary rules of derivation that the Spanish language recognizes, and which have been used and are still being used to increase its capacity, why should we be ashamed of using them? Chile and Venezuela have as much right as Aragon and Andalusia to have their occasional divergences tolerated, when they are supported by the universal and authentic usage of educated persons. These differences are much less damaging to purity and correctness of language than are those Frenchified usages that are sprinkled today through even the most admired works of Peninsular writers.
I have set forth my principles, my plan, and my aim, and have justly recognized my obligations to those who have preceded me. I am indicating paths that have not been explored before, and it is likely that in them I have not always made the observations necessary to deduce exact general rules. Even if everything that I now propose does not seem acceptable, my ambition will be satisfied if some part of it is, and if that part contributes to the improvement of a branch of instruction which is certainly not the most brilliant of all, but is one of the most necessary.