habits. There are, indeed, very few who do not, while they are learning to speak, acquire some wrong ways, which they have to correct afterwards. It is partly in order to help in this process of correcting bad habits, that the good and approved usages of a language are collected and set forth in a book which is called a "grammar." 11. Hence, the English language, as made the subject of a grammar, means the English of the present day, as used by good speakers and writers; and English grammar is a description of the usages of the English language in this sense. A description of one of the earlier forms of English (as the Anglo-Saxon, or the Middle English), or of one of the dialects of English (as the Scottish, or the Yorkshire, or the negro English), or of one of the forms of bad English (as the thieves' slang), would also be an English grammar, but in a different sense; and we should not call it simply an English grammar, but should give it some different name, which would tell precisely what it was. 12. Grammar does not at all make rules and laws for language; it only reports the facts of good language, and in an orderly way, so that they may be easily referred to, or learned, by any one who has occasion to do so. 13. Nor is the study of the grammar of one's own native language by any means necessary, in order to correctness of speech. Most persons learn good English in the same way that they learn English at all—namely, by hearing and reading; by hearing and imitating good speakers, by studying books written correctly and well, by correcting themselves and being corrected by others, and so on. But attention to the rules of good usage as laid down in grammars, with illustrations and practical exercises, often helps and hastens this process; and it is especially useful to those who have been unfortunate enough to learn at first a bad kind of English. of 14. Then there are many other respects in which the study grammar is useful. The learning of language is made up of many different parts; and it is never finished. It begins in infancy, and lasts all our lives. The most learned and able never get through with adding to their knowledge, even of their own language, and to their power to use it. At the very beginning of language-learning, we have to learn to understand the words which we hear others make. Then we learn to make them ourselves, and to put them together correctly—that is, in the same way that others do in order to express our thoughts and feelings. A little later, we have to learn to understand them as they are put before our eyes, written or printed; and then to make them in the same way that is, to read and spell and write and this also correctly, or as other people do. But then we want to use our English not only correctly, but well, so as to please and influence others. Many of us, too, want to learn other languages than English, languages which answer the same purposes as our own, but have other means of doing it. Or, we want to study some of the other forms of English, and to compare them with our own, so as to understand better what it is, and how it came to be what it is. We are not content, either, with merely using language; we want to know something of what language is, and realize what it is worth to us. The study of language has a great deal to tell us about the history of man, and of what he has done in the world. And as language is the instrument of the mind's operations, and the principal means by which they are disclosed, we cannot study the mind's workings and its nature without a thorough understanding of language. 15. For all these purposes, we need to have that sort of knowledge of language to which the study of grammar is the first step, and to which a study of the grammar of our own language is the easiest and the surest step. CHAPTER II. THE SENTENCE; THE PARTS OF SPEECH. 16. Our language, like every other, is made up of words. Each word has its own particular part to play in the work of expressing our thoughts: its own meanings, and its own ways of being used along with other words. 17. Thus, for example, sun, moon, star are the names of objects. But shine, move, twinkle are of quite another character : they are not names; they are words which we put with names like those given above, to state or declare something about the objects to which the names belong as when we say the sun shines; the moon moves; the stars twinkle. The word the, again, in these sentences, is unlike the others; it neither names anything nor declares anything; it is never used except before a name, like sun, etc. We may say, further, the golden sun shines brightly. Here golden and brightly are words of yet other kinds; each may be used in its own ways, but not in those of the others. And so it is with all our words. 18. But not every word is different from all the rest in its uses. There are a great many names of things which we use in the same way with sun. There are a great many words used in the same way with shines, to declare something. There are a great many used as golden is used, or brightly. The words which are thus used alike we put together into classes, and give each class a name. 19. The classes into which our words are divided, according to their uses, are called the PARTS OF SPEECH; and every word, as belonging to one or another class, as having a certain kind of use, is called a PART OF SPEECH. 20. This name, " part of speech," given to a word, plainly implies that there is something incomplete about it; that it is not a whole, but must be joined with other "parts" in order to make a whole, or in order to be speech. That is in fact the case; and the whole which these parts make up is the SENTENCE. 21. All our speech, as we actually use it in talking or writing, is in sentences; we do not really say anything unless we make a sentence. If, for example, we speak the words sun, tree, ink, goodness, he, we are only mentioning something; any one who hears us will naturally ask, "Well; what about it?" So if we say shines, or stands, or writes, or went: the natural question is, “What shines?" and so on. So, too, if we say the, with, golden, brightly, away, tall. But if we say the sun shines; he writes with ink; the tree is tall; we have really said something. It may be very uninteresting; it may be foolish; it may even be false; but it is at any rate something said; the person to whom we speak does not need to wait for it to be finished in order to approve or reject it. We have thought something and said it; we have made up our mind to some purpose or other and told what it is; we have (as it is called) formed an opinion or judgment, and expressed it by a sentence. A sentence is, then, in the sense thus explained, the expression of a judgment. 22. Strictly speaking, this definition is true only of one kind of sentence: the ASSERTIVE sentence, as it is called, or that by which we assert something, declare something to be so and so. There are two other kinds of sentence: one, the INTERROGATIVE, asking a question: thus, does the sun shine? and the other, the IMPERATIVE, giving a command: thus, shine out brightly, sun! But the kind which we have been describing is the regular and by far the most common one, and the other two will be best treated afterward, as variations of it. In going on, therefore, to speak of the sentence, we shall consider only the first kind, leaving the second and third until later. 23. In order to form a sentence, we have to use words of more than one kind. Every complete act of speech is made up of at least two parts of speech. We cannot produce a sentence by stringing together words of one sort only: for example, Nor, again, can we take words of different sorts at haphazard out of a dictionary or spelling-book, and make of them sentences even foolish or false sentences. the with golden brightly away; Thus This would be like trying to make an instrument, or a piece of furniture, out of materials picked up at random, and having no adaptation to one another. For a sentence, |