Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/141

III.] the idea of 'wish, intent, determination.' The Anglo-Saxon had no future tense, but habitually employed its present in the sense of both present and future; we have struck out, in our modern usage, a peculiarly rich synonymy of expressions for future action: there are the two already mentioned, I will go, and I shall go, each of which is capable of use as simple future, or with a modal implication; further, I have to go, with the nearly equivalent I am to go; I am going to go (to which the French adds the closely correlative expression "I am coming from going," je viens d'aller, that is, 'I have just gone'); I am on the point of going, and I am about to go—with which is nearly allied the Hibernicism, I am after going, for 'I have gone.' These·phrases will illustrate the ease with which are found, in the resources of a rich and flexible language, means of denoting a given relation, the variety in which they may be produced, and the arbitrariness with which certain ones are selected for most frequent and familiar employment.

An instance of a purely formal word of a different character is furnished us in the preposition to as "sign of the infinitive." The infinitive is originally and properly the verbal noun, and, as a noun, should be governed by any preposition which the sense may require. The present usage of our language, however, forbids this freedom of construction, and assigns to the infinitive to as its almost constant accompaniment. At first, the to was only employed where it had its proper significance, as in phrases like "I am here to help him," that is, 'in order to the helping him,' "lawful for him to eat," that is, 'to the eating;' now, no regard whatever is had to this consideration, and, to the apprehension of every speaker of English, to is as arbitrary and non-significant a sign of this form of the verb as is the ending en of the German essen, or re of the Latin edere.

Yet another class of words having the grammatical status of independent members of the sentence, but the logical