Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/140

118 our past tenses, and of which the primitive significance is 'possession.' It is easy to see how "I have my arms stretched out" might pass into "I have stretched out my arms," or how, in such phrases as "he has put on his coat," "we have eaten our breakfast," "they have finished their work," a declaration of possession of the object in the condition denoted by the participle should come to be accepted as sufficiently expressing the completed act of putting it into that condition; the present possession, in fact, implies the past action, and, if our use of have were limited to the cases in which such an implication was apparent, the expressions in which we used it would be phrases only. When, however, we extend the implication of past action to every variety of case—as in "I have discharged my servant," "he has lost his breakfast," "we have exposed their errors," where there is no idea of possession for it to grow out of; or with neuter verbs, "you have been in error," "he has come from London," "they have gone away," where there is even no object for the have to govern, where condition, and not action, is expressed, and "you are been," "he is come," "they are gone" would be theoretically more correct (as they are alone proper in German)—then we have converted have from an independent part of speech into a purely formative element. The same word, by a usage not less bold and pregnant, though of less frequent occurrence, we make to signify causation of action, as in the phrases "I will have him well whipped for his impertinence," "he has his servant wake him every morning." And, yet once more, we turn it into a sign of future action, with further implication of necessity, as in "I have to go to him directly." As is well known, the modern European languages which are descended from the Latin have formed their simple futures by means of this phrase, eliminating from it the implication of necessity: the French j'aimerai, 'I shall love,' for instance, is by origin je aimer ai, i.e. j'ai à aimer, 'I have to love.' Nor is our own "I shall love" of different history, for I shall means properly 'I owe, am under obligation;' and the will of "he will love," although we now so commonly employ it as the mere sign of futurity, conveys