A history of the English Language

235.
Grammatical Tendencies.
The several factors already discussed as giving stability to English grammar (§ 152)—the 
printing press, popular education, improvements in travel and communication, social 
consciousness—have been particularly effective during the past two centuries. Very few 
changes in grammatical forms and conventions are to be observed. There has been some 
schoolmastering of the language. The substitution of 
you were
for 
you was
in the singular 
occurs about 1820, and 
it is I
is now seldom heard. What was left of the subjunctive 
mood in occasional use has disappeared except in conditions contrary to fact 
(if I were 
you)
. Some tendency toward loss of inflection, although we have but little to lose, is 
noticeable in informal speech. The nonstandard 
he don’t 
represents an attempt to 
eliminate the ending of the third person singular and reduce this verb in the negative to a 
uniform 
do
in the present tense. Likewise the widespread practice of disregarding the 
objective case form 
whom
in the interrogative 
(Who do you want?)
illus-trates the same 
impulse. Though some people are shocked by the latter “error,” it has a long and 
honorable history. Shakespeare often commits it, and historically the reduction of case 
forms in this pronoun is as justifiable as that in the second person (
you
for 
ye;
cf. § 
182).
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Occasionally a new grammatical convention may be seen springing up. The 
get
passive 
(he got hurt)
is largely a nineteenth-century development, called into being 
because 
he is hurt
is too static, 
he became hurt
too formal. This construction is noted only 
from 1652
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and is unusual before the nineteenth century. One other tendency is 
sufficiently important to be noticed separately, the extension of verb-adverb 
combinations discussed in the following paragraph. 
The nineteenth century and after 325

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