A Rational Grammar of the English Language

Excerpt from A Rational Grammar of the English Language

Many of the rules and much of the terminology of the first English grammars, as is well known, were based largely on the rules and terminology of Latin grammar, because at the time these grammars were written Latin was the language of scholars. The grammar for the new language was made to correspond to the one with which the authors were most familiar. The resulting distortion of the facts of the English language on which a grammar of the language should be based has long been the bane of this study. In making this book the authors, recognizing the small amount of inflectional element found in English, have shown the relation element that characterizes the language. This grammar presents the study of our language as it exists, free from the trammels of a forced analogy with Latin, yet avoiding the serious error of teaching Anglo-Saxon more than English.

Some of the merits claimed for the book are a natural development of the subject treated, a simple and clear statement of hitherto puzzling points in grammar, and an adequate emphasis of the practical side of the study, - the correct forming of the speech of the pupil. The pupil being led to think for himself (a matter as important in the study of grammar as it is in the study of other sciences) finds the subject so shorn of its terrors that it is interesting.

Analysis precedes parsing, the sentence being divided into its great parts according to a simple system of classification based on a single principle, use.

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