The English language; an introduction to the principles which govern its right use

Front matter

HE ENGLISH

BOB

CCBIRCHARD r ^

Foreword

AGAIN and again it has been announced that English is a grammarless tongue, and the general recognition of this liberating truth is beginning to have a decided influence upon the school. To aid in hastening the day of full emancipation from the thraldom of the needless study of needless distinctions is the purpose of The ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Naturally, lucidly, vividly, with direct appeal to the sensibilities and emotions, and with a minimum of inflectional and syntactic complications, the language of the English peoples has developed the power to convey thought and feeling, and to enlist sympathy and co-operation. Ability to say and to interpret is conditioned only by ability to think and feel and will, and is no way hampered by involved difficulties of diction such as only erudition can overcome. English speech lends itself with equal readiness to the simplest and the most complex thought, to the most superficial and the deepest feeling, to the plainest and the most impassioned appeal. Whatever of clearness, beauty, and impressiveness may distinguish its statements, it derives directly from the speaker's men-

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FOREWORD tal life, not from etymological and syntactic dogma. It is distinctively the language of a people destined for freedom, — for a freedom in which personal influence depends exclusively upon personal worth and inherent ability.

For these reasons our book comes to the learner under the plain title, " The English Language," placing stress in its pages upon the stimulation and liberation of thought and feeling rather than upon certain borrowed technicalities of speech of little or no value in modern English. Whatever grammatical technicalities are needed are introduced more or less incidentally in the main or First Part, which is devoted to the logical and rhetorical structure of English speech. To this there has been added in the Second Part a number of chapters wherein grammatical technicalities are collated in a shape which, it is hoped, will render them available, singly or collectively, whenever during study of the First Part, or after its conclusion, their introduction may seem desirable.

Perhaps it is needless to add that the book is intended for grammar-school pupils, not only as an adequate introduction to an appreciation and control of the English of life and literature, but also as a sufficient preparation for its advanced study in higher departments of learning.

PART I Page

Introduction xiii

Lesson

I. Ideas and Words. Thoughts and Sentences i

II. The Two Essential Parts of Every Sentence 6

III. Kinds of Sentences 14

IV. Kinds of Predication. — Nouns .... 24 V. Logical and Grammatical Analysis. . . 37

VI. Verbs . . . , 43

VII. Direct and Indirect Object 52

VIII. Verbs continued: the Passive Form . . 56

IX. Verbs as Copulas and as Predicating Words 6$

X. Auxiliaries, or Helping Verbs .... 70

XL Auxiliaries continued 77

XII. Auxiliaries concluded 84

XIII. Pronouns 89

XIV. Modifiers 105

XV. Modifiers continued no

XVI. Modifiers continued. Adverbs . . . . 115

XVII. Adjectives and Adverbs Compared . . . 122

XVIII. Modifiers continued. Phrases and Clauses 135

XIX. Modifiers continued. Participles . . . 142

XX. Modifiers. A Review 143 x CONTENTS

Lesson Page

XXI. Modifiers continued. Phrases . . . 154

XXII. Modifiers continued. Adjective Clauses 161

XXIII. Modifiers continued. Adverb Clauses . 167

XXIV. Modifiers concluded. Apposition . . 172 XXV. Complements 177

XXVI. Compound Subject, Predicate and Object 187

XXVII. Phrases used as Nouns . . . . . . 195

XXIII. Clauses used as Nouns 200

XXIX. Independent Elements 207

XXX. Pleonasm 213

XXXI. Ellipsis . . . 217

XXXII. Classes of Sentences 223

XXXIII. How the Simple Sentence may be Ex-

panded 230

XXXIV. Compound Sentences 240

PART II Introduction 255

Nouns 257

Nouns and Pronouns. — Number 271

Nouns and Pronouns. — Gender 282

Nouns and Pronouns. — Case 288

Cases of Pronouns 292

Adjectives 298

CONTENTS xi

Page

Verbs continued. Voice 318

Verbs continued. Number, Tense 324

Participles 364

Mode 349

Adverbs 368

Conjunctions 373

Prepositions 381

Paragraph 390

Choice of Words 392

Arrangement of Words 395

Suggestions 397

Figurative Speech 415

Punctuation 430

Letter- Writing 435