English grammar for the common school

Front matter

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Preface

Grammar is not the " science of language " ; it is but one of the many divisions of that great science. It is that division whose province is to set forth the principles governing the use of the * sentence. It is not a " language drill/' as this term has come to mean ; but, as a body of principles seen in their proper applications, it is to the use of language what a knowledge of Physiology is to the observance of the laws of Hygiene. But just as we should not neglect to observe the laws of health while we are studying the principles of Physiology, so the study of grammatical principles should be done in a manner that will impress the mind with the purity, the strength, and the beauty of speech. The illustrative sentences should therefore be gems of literary excellence, full of thought and beauty and inspiration.

The author or the teacher should try, not so much " to make Grammar easy," by falsely showing it to require no thought, as to make it interesting, by helping the pupil to experience the fascination of its thought. And in teaching the application of principles to the construction of the sentence, the teacher should require incomplete sentences to be filled out, or entire sentences to be written, thereby necessitating discrimination and judgment on the part of the pupil. In this positive way practical Grammar should be taught, and not by exhibiting to the pupil "examples of false syntax/' which is like compelling a child to spend a few hours each day in dens of iniquity, in order that he may constantly behold what he is not to be and to do.

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IV PREFACE.

But the chief importance of Grammar is not as a means to the use of language ; it is to be prized most as a discipline for the mind. The educational value of any study is measured by the power it gives the student to form that kind of judgments he will be oftenest called upon to form in the actual business of life. Of all the studies below the college course, Grammar stands pre-eminently first in respect to educational value. Indeed, it is surpassed by nothing in the college course ; and if any study can claim to be its equal in this particular, that study is Political Economy, or Social Science in general. In each of these studies the reasoning is not simple and definitely exact, as it is in mathematics, but is indefinite and complex, demanding just such grasp of facts, and such discrimination in weighing probabilities, as we are called upon to use scores of times every day, in the ordinary affairs of life.

In accordance with these thoughts this book has been prepared. The author has not failed to take advantage of all the suggestions contained in other books ; but for the most part, this one is an exposition, by the scientific or inductive method, of the sentence, as we find it in the best English of to-day.

Every teacher knows the value of reviews ; and reviews are nowhere needed more than in Grammar. Each part of speech has therefore been followed by a general summing-up, or outline, for review.

Teachers and advanced students desiring a more extended knowledge of technical Grammar will find much additional matter in the "Grammar of the English Sentence and Introduction to Composition " ; for those who care for a more elementary book, the author has written his " English Grammar for Beginners."

JONATHAN RIGDON.