ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

1. ENGLISH GRAMMAR is an account of the English language, and of the rules for speaking and writing it correctly.

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2. It is of very great service to us to have a thorough knowledge of our own language. It is the means by which we make our thoughts and wishes known to our fellowand the more briefly and clearly we can do this, the more able shall we be to influence them, and to attain the ends for which we speak or write to them; while we shall the better avoid those mistakes and misunderstandings from which arise so many angry disputes and unhappy divisions among mankind. The exercise of attention, thought, and memory, in studying language, has always been allowed to be one of the most effective means for training and invigorating the mental powers: it turns the mind inward upon itself, causes it to reflect on its own operations, and aids in forming and strengthening that habit of self-examination which is so valuable to man as a moral, intellectual, and religious being. A particular knowledge of our language is requisite before we can fully appreciate and enjoy the beauties and delicacies of our rich and varied literature, whether in the rude and simple ballads of old, or in the more refined writings of modern periods, such as those of Shakspere, Milton, Addison, Robertson, Gibbon, Cowper, Burns, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Dickens, Macaulay. The subject of Language is intimately interwoven with that of History: and the student of the latter finds, at every turn, the advantage of being acquainted with the general nature and structure of languages, and of his own language as a foundation. The examination of the means by which we express our thoughts is curious, and should receive some attention, merely as a part of the natural history of man, and as illustrating the powers and habits of a being which ought to interest us fully as much as any of the lower animals, or a plant, or a stone. Lastly, in studying our own language we become acquainted with the general principles of language, and obtain ideas of the nature of words which will assist us greatly in the study of any other language—an object of importance to all, in an age when, happily, the inhabitants of different and distant countries, speaking many different tongues, have so much friendly and social communication with each other.

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3. The study of English Grammar is not difficult, nor is it necessary that it should be dry on the contrary, it is really interesting, if treated in a plain and homely style, with familiar illustrations, full explanations, abundance of examples, and a gradual progression from the more simple and easy parts to those more advanced. It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that we mean to say that a knowledge of English Grammar can be acquired without earnest mental efforts, both of attention and reflection, on the part of the learner. Neither grammar, nor any thing else worth learning, can be mastered without such efforts. The journey on which we are about to enter will be made as interesting and pleasant as we can make it for those who intend to join us; and it will be divided into short and easy stages. But the traveller cannot, by any possibility, accomplish it without stepping out vigorously himself; he cannot be carried, or pushed, or dragged; there is no conveyance by horse, coach, or train, along the highway to knowledge—no royal road to learning. Each must move along by the exertion of his owr powers, and tread every foot of the ground for himself.

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INTRODUCTION.

4. The ENGLISH LANGUAGE means-the words used by the English People in writing and speaking. It is not only the language of the English People, but of the great majority of the Scotch and Irish, of the people of the United States of America, and of most British colonists. It is as widely spread as the great British Empire, being, therefore, spoken in some part of every quarter of the globe; and is the language of a greater number of civilized, free, and educated people, than any other known tongue.

5. A WORD is any of the complete sounds with distinct meanings which we use in speaking, and after which we stop for a moment and BEGIN ANEW; as-word, any, complete, sound, we, speaking. In writing or printing, there is a little space left after each word, as may be seen.

6. A SENTENCE is a number of words making complete sense; as the paragraph at the head of this article; or the following:-A knowledge of grammar is useful-The ancestors of those who speak the English language came to this country about the fifth century of the Christian era-England expects every man to do his duty-He sailed yesterday-Where is my umbrella?-Do not hurt him-It rains. Each of these makes complete sense. After having said any one of them the speaker may stop: we do not expect more; or, at least, we should be satisfied, and not at all surprised were he to stop. But, if he were to say, "A knowledge," and then stop, we should not be satisfied; we should desire him to go on, and should ask him what he had to say about "A knowledge." If he said "is useful," we should inquire, "What is useful?" We should consider such expressions as abrupt and incomplete, and demand some other words to fill up and complete the sense; that is, to complete the sentence.

7. Each word consists of several distinct SOUNDS joined together in speaking, and represented by separate characters called LETTERS. Thus, the word not consists of the three sounds represented by the letters n, o, t.

8. The letters used in the English language are twenty-six in number, and are divided into two sorts-vowels and consonants. A vowEL is a letter which can be sounded by itself, without the aid of any other letter, as a, o, e. A CONSONANT is a letter which cannot be distinctly sounded without the help of a vowel sounded along with it, as k, m, p. We say, kay, em, pee.

9. The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and w and y when they do not begin a word or part of a word, as in vow, city. All the others are consonants, including w and y in the beginning of a word, as in you, war.

10. Each distinct vowel-sound in a word, taken with the consonants sounded along with it, is called a SYLLABLE. The, man, go-are syllables. In the words disdain, silent—dis and dain,-si and lent, are separate syllables. A syllable may be considered as that which is formed by a single effort of the voice.

11. Words of one syllable, as we, they, them, John, are called monosyllables; words of two syllables, as, distinct, taken, cruel, are called dissyllables; words of three syllables, as, syllable, consider, are trisyllables; and words of more than three syllables, as, usually, considering, infallibility, are called polysyllables.

12. When we speak or write, then, we form sentences.

These consist of a number

of separate parts called words. And these words are composed of sounds, which must be properly uttered; and which, when written, must be properly represented by letters. Accordingly, English Grammar consists of the following parts: ETYMOLOGY, or the nature, varieties, and changes of words; SYNTAX, or the construction of sentences; ORTHOGRAPHY, or spelling; and ORTHOEPY, or pronunciation. To this there is usually added PROSODY, or the rules of versification. Of these, the two first are the most important, and will therefore take precedence in this treatise.

* Definitions, Rules, and Examples, will be printed in italics.

PART I.

ETYMOLOGY.

CHAP. I.-General Account of the Parts of Speech.

13. In every thing we study, as well as in every thing we do, where we have to deal with a multitude of objects, CLASSIFICATION-that is, arranging the objects into divisions and subdivisions, each having some peculiar point about it that distinguishes it from the others-is of the utmost importance, and should be set about first. The general has his army in battalions these are divided into regiments-these into companies, and so on: while some are cavalry, some infantry, some sappers and miners, some artillery-men, some sharp-shooters. The botanist divides his thousands of different plants first into flowering and flowerless tribes, and he then subdivides these into many classes, orders, and other divisions and subdivisions.

14. So it is with the grammarian. There are nearly sixty thousand words in the English language; and the first thing we must do is to marshal them in order: in divisions and subdivisions.

15. In speaking or writing we must have a NAME for that about which we speak or write.

16. First, then, we observe a very great number of words which are NAMES OF THINGS, as the words by which we would name or designate the objects shown in the adjoining cut, if we wished to speak of them.

17. The man shown there may be spoken of as a man, a gentleman, an Englishman, a father, a husband, a friend, a merchant, a master, a householder, Sidney, or George Sidney. All these are name-words, or NOUNS. In like manner, the words, woman, Mrs. Sidney, Jane Sidney, lady, wife, mother, boy, Henry, girl, child, cat, book, John, tongs, fire, rug, fireside, are NOUNS, or names of things.

18. As all these objects are represented in the engraving, it might be supposed that we might define a noun to be "the name of whatever we can see;" or use the old description, that "a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing." It is true that the name of any thing we can see is a noun; but there are many things which we cannot see, the names of which are nouns. In the scene represented in the above cut, there would be heat coming out from the fire, and sound from the girl who is reading, neither of which can be seen; yet the words heat and sound are undoubted nouns, or names of things. But they can be perceived by the senses which reside in the skin and in the ears; and we might therefore think that we could appropriately define a noun to be "the name of that which can be perceived by any of the senses:" but this would not be sufficiently comprehensive, for there are many things which cannot be perceived by the outward senses, but of which the names are nouns, as goodness, wisdom, knowledge, virtue, mercy, strength, happiness, woe, sorrow, freedom, fear. These, however, may be perceived by the inward mind: they are the names of qualities or properties of things. Also, the names

of actions and states of being are nouns; as reading, and sleeping. The girl who is reading might say, "reading is very fatiguing; may I stop now?" and if any one wished to rouse the child, the mother might say, " Sleeping is good for a little thing like that do not disturb it." In these sentences, the words reading-the name of an action; and sleeping-the name of a state of being, are nouns. Also in the following from Bacon, "Reading maketh a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man," "-"reading" and "writing are nouns.

19. The name of whatever we can think of or speak about is a NOUN: or, a Noun is the name of whatever can be perceived by the outward senses, or by the inward mind.*

20. The reader who does not now feel himself able at once to distinguish a noun, will do well to exercise himself in looking out the nouns in a page of this or any other work at hand. If he is in doubt about any word, let him think if, of itself, it presents a distinct idea to his mind, and if he could make it the subject of his discourse.

Thus,

if he meets the words, to, but, if, there, where, from, he at once knows these are not nouns: they are not names of things of any description; they convey no ideas to his mind. He will perform exercises of this description more easily after the next kind of word has been described.

21. The NOUN, then, is the first division of words, or, as each division is often called, a part of speech. The term "noun" is derived from the Latin word nomen, signifying, a name.'

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22. The next part of speech is the ADJECTIVE, a word used along with a noun, to express some quality or property of it-that is, to qualify it.

23. In the above cut, we see several objects, the names of which are nouns; as the man, the woman, the boy, the balls. But we observe that the man is old, the woman is young, the boy is little, one ball is black, and the other ball is white. Those words in italics are adjectives, for they qualify the nouns, that is, tell us some qualities or properties of the nouns. They may be used along with the nouns, either in the way given above, or as follows: an old man, a young woman, a little boy, a white ball, a black ball.

24. An adjective is often described as a word used along with a noun, to limit its signification. Thus the words "a man," may mean any man whatever in the wide world. But if we say 66 an old man," we now limit the meaning of the word "man" to one that

*The thoughtful student will observe how difficult it is to give a brief and precise definition. It is the same even in the mathematics, which are of a much more exact character than grammar:a satisfactory definition of a straight line has not yet been produced. We subjoin the definition of a noun by several recent writers on grammar.

"A noun or substantive is the name of any thing that exists, or of which we can have any idea or notion, as man, pen, sweetness, justice."-Sullivan.

"A noun is a word which is simply the name of an object: as, boy, school, lesson, obedience, wisdom."-M'Culloch.

"A noun is the name of any person, place, quality, or principle; or, more generally, it is the name of whatever can be an object of contemplation, or subject of discourse."-Connon.

"The noun is a name constituting a distinct, independent notion."-Hunter.

is old, shutting out from our consideration any man that is not old. It is well to observe this effect of the use of an adjective; but the simplest and best view of an adjective, for a definition, is the common one, that it "expresses some quality or property of the noun along with which it is used." It will assist us in understanding the nature of the adjective, to recollect, that of each kind of thing that exists there are many different sorts, and that we require a word to tell us which sort is meant. "A boy means any boy, and there are many kinds of boys; but the little, or good, or bad boy, tells us which sort is spoken of.

25. The words in italics in the following sentences are adjectives; the words in small capitals are the nouns which they qualify:-He is a good BOY. Jane is very TALL. Alfred was a great, wise, and good KING. That is a pleasing TALE. Hallam the historian is a learned MAN. There were five English SOVEREIGNS of the name of Tudor.

26. The word adjective is derived from the Latin words jactum, thrown, and ad, to; signifying that it is added to, or placed beside, the noun. It is also called the adnoun.

27. We can now, by the help of the adjective, more readily distinguish the noun. A noun admits an adjective before it, as, great goodness, many people, green leaves, quick walking. Write out therefore the nouns in any passage at hand, and put an appropriate adjective before each, to qualify it; then go over the list again, and try how many different adjectives can be applied to each noun. For example, if the noun were man," we might use along with it any of the following adjectives:-tall, short, fat, thin, strong, feeble, good, bad, kind, cruel, clever, stupid, wise, foolish, agreeable, disagreeable, learned, ignorant, great, little, droll, serious, English, Irish, &c.

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28. By the help of the noun, moreover, we can distinguish the adjective. An adjective admits a noun after it, as in the examples above. Select, therefore, the adjectives in any passage, and then set nouns after them-not the nouns with which they are used in the passage taken for exercise, but others thought of for the purpose.

29. Adjectives may also be known as answering to the questions-What kind of? or What sort of? as, What kind of weather had you? Fine weather. What sort of person was Queen Elizabeth? A wise and a great queen, but, not a good woman.

30. The next part of speech is the PRONOUN, the name of which tells its meaning distinctly. It is from the Latin word pro, for—and the word noun, and means for a noun. It is a word used for, or instead of, a noun.

31. In the engraving we see a little boy who has taken his brother's ball, and the latter is complaining to his mamma. He would very likely say to her-"Please, mamma, would you speak to Tommy; he has taken the pretty white ball that grandpapa gave me, and he won't let me have it; and he won't let me play with him." And mamma probably replies-"Well, John, we will go to him, and hear what he will say to us about it."

32. The words in italics are pronouns. They are used instead of nouns :-you instead of mamma; he and him instead of Tommy; me instead of John himself, who is speaking; it instead of the ball; we and us instead of mamma and John taken together. That and what may be disregarded at present.