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Command of Sentence-Patterns: an English Grammar on New Principles

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* * Command of Sentence-Patterns AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR ON NEW PRINCIPLES BY Alfred Dwight Sheffield Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in Wellesley College; Formerly on the Staff of Webster's New Inter' national Dictionary , Author of Grammar and Thinking, Joining in Public Discussion SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY CHICAGO ATLANTA NEW YORK Copyright, 1929, by Scott, Foresman and Company 293.1 — P or language, being the great conduit whereby men convey their discoveries, reasonings, and knowledge from one to an- other, he that makes an ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, which are in things themselves, yet he does—as much as in him lies—break or stop the pipes whereby it is distributed to the public use and advantage of mankind . Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Preface 7 PART ONE THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF GRAMMAR Introduction to Part One : The Aim of Grammar-Study . .. 17 1. Learning the Dialects of Thought 17 2. Studying Grammar for “Sentence Sense” 25 Chapter I. The Sentence as a Unit of Speech 29 3. How Language Fits Thinking 29 4. What a Sentence Is 32 5. Complete and Incomplete Expression 40 6. Multiple Subjects and Predicates 43 7. Kinds of Sentences 44 Chapter II. Words as Parts of Speech 8. What Words Are 48 9. The Groupings of Words in Syntax 50 10. The Classifying of Words 60 PART TWO THE PARTS OF SPEECH IN THEIR TYPICAL FORMS AND USES Introduction to Part Two: Describing Words by Types . 85 11. Major and Minor Parts of Speech 85 12. Economy in Derivative Forms 86 13. Typical and Untypical Parts of Speech 90 3 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Chapter III. Noun and Pronoun 93 14. The Kinds of Noun 93 15. Number 95 16. Case 96 17. Gender 105 18. Pronouns 106 19. Parsing of Nouns and Pronouns 121 Chapter IV. Verb and Link-Verb 124 20. Verb, Verbal, and Verb-Phrase 124 21. Person and Number 127 22. Tense 130 23. Regular and Irregular Verbs 136 24. Transitive and Intransitive Use 137 25. Voice 140 26. Mood 142 27. Modal Link-Verbs 150 28. Parsing of Verbs 155 Chapter V. Adjective and Pronominal Adjective 157 29. The Kinds of Adjective 157 30. Pronominal Adjectives 161 31. Parsing of Adjectives 165 Chapter VI. Adverb and Pronominal Adverb 167 32. The Kinds of Adverb 167 33. Adverb Forms 168 34. Adverb Uses 169 35. Parsing of Adverbs 171 Chapter VII. Semi-Words 173 36. The Articles 174 37. Prepositions 177 38. Conjunctions 181 39. The Parsing of Semi-Words 184 Chapter VIII. Sentence-Words 185 40. The Kinds of Sentence-Word 185 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 PART THREE THE LIBERTIES OF SPEECH PAGE Introduction to Part Three: The Nature of Grammatical Rules 191 41. Attitudes toward Usage 191 42. Causes of Grammatical Irregularity . 193 43. Maxims for Cases of Doubt 197 Chapter IX. Cross-Bred Parts of Speech 200 44. The Possible Blends between Word-Classes 200 45. Noun and Verb Blends: Infinitive 202 46. Gerund 211 47. Adjective and Verb Blends: Participles 216 4S. Noun and Adjective Blends 222 49. Adverb Blends with Noun and Adjective 226 50. Pronominal and Particle Blends 228 51. Parsing of Cross-Bred Parts of Speech 230 Chapter X. Complications in the Sentence 232 52. How Sentence-Factors Grow Complicated 232 53. Qualified Qualifiers 238 54. Multiple Factors of Syntax 239 55. Clausal Subjects and Predicates 243 56. Adjective Clauses 245 57. Adverbial and Object Clauses 249 58. Tense and Mood in Dependent Clauses 252 59. Modal Sub-Clauses (Conditional Clauses) 259 60. The Semi-Clauses 265 61. Compound and Complex Clauses 268 62. Analysis of Compound and Complex Sentences 270 Conclusion: Perspective in the Sentence 274 63. “Sentence Sense” and “Paragraph Sense” 274 64. Grammatical Point of View 282 65. Grammatical Emphasis 286 66. Grammatical Alternatives for Expressing Relations .... 291 67. Grammatical Ambiguity and Punctuation 297 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS APPENDIXES PAGE I. Noun Inflection 307 A. Peculiarities in Noun Plurals 307 B. Genitive of Nouns Ending in -s 309 II. Verb Inflection 310 A. List of Important Strong Verbs and Irregular Weak Verbs 310 B. Example of Verb Conjugation 314 III. Comparison of Adjectives 316 A. Changes of Spelling with Comparison 316 B. Irregular Comparison 316 IV. A Comparative View of the “Complement” Constructions . 317 Index 319 PREFACE This textbook goes beyond the usual treatment of English Grammar in that it presents grammatical word-forms and their patternings in phrase and clause as a working outfit of resources for expressing thought. It is intended for the later years in high schools, for normal schools, and conceivably for the freshman year of college—for students, that is, who need, as their speech-habits mature, a more precise and intimate grasp of grammatical re- lations. Language lessons in the early grades give the pupil a general notion of the sentence as displaying subject and predicate, clauses, phrases, and connectives—with words figuring as “parts of speech.” In high school the student finds his work (especially his reading) progressively involving him in thought that makes more and more exacting demands on language. From this point on, then, grammar should aim at giving him insight into sentence- forms as representing ways of thinking. It should recognize his growth in language-power as partly a matter of his vocabulary —of learning new words for new ideas—and partly a matter of his command of sentence-patterns—that is, of phrase and clause forms to express varying and complex thought. Too much importance can hardly be attached to language- study at this stage. The learner’s attention to the fitness of one or another sentence-form is the beginning of his critical discrim- ination. It treats the thought not as found in the first word- formula that presents itself but as using alternatives of wording to find for itself an expression that is really effective. This means that grammar can give the student, through his own native speech-medium, a grasp of what is most essential in logic. The superior logical training once claimed for Latin was due to the fact that books on Latin Grammar cannot shirk the dis- tinctions of thought to which inflected words give constant 7 8 PREFACE formal cues. But the same distinctions appear in our mother tongue—marked less profusely, perhaps, but adequately; and it is a birthright of all young people, not a privilege of the college- bound, to get the training in accurate thought-processes that can be won from an accurate use of their own speech-resources. The method by which this book makes grammar teach logic is at each step to explain first the kind of sense-relation that is in question, and then the adjustment of wording to convey that relation; so that the student sees at each step first the expressive need, then the speech-mechanism for meeting that need. Grammar teachers have of late been getting rather confusing advice on the way to make sentence-study really develop a dis- criminating “sentence-sense.” “In general,” says the report on Reorganization of English, “the grammar worth teaching is the grammar of use—of function in the sentence—and the grammar to be passed over is the grammar of classification—of pigeon- holing by definition .” 1 Much virtue in that “In general”! If we are here being advised to describe sentence-factors by use only, then we are being told to discard such terms as “noun” and “adjective,” which carry implications as to sense and form as well as to use. If we are being advised to describe words only as used, that is another matter. It is then a wholesome warning against regarding the word as in itself nailed down to one part of speech rather than as susceptible of several part-of-speech uses. The real opposition for grammar to make is not one between use and classification, but one between barren classifying and fruit- ful classifying. It is not barren classifying to note the real sub- junctive and predicate nominative in if he go; that was he; nor i Teachers of English can hope that this able report by the National Joint Com- mittee on Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools (Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 2 for 1917) will bring about a general abatement of formal grammar in the lower grades. Grammar is not an elementary subject. Conventional text- books make it seem elementary by playing up the obvious, and stopping short where fruitful distinctions begin. The result is that young people come to the age of analysis encumbered with a sort of grammatical phrenology, with terms that have grown stale and shophandled without familiarizing them with the forces of phrase and clause which really matter. PREFACE 9 to identify however as conjunction in However, he was tired, and as adverb in However tired he was. And since the old-fashioned term “parsing” should mean nothing more than classifying which really explains, this book continues to employ the word, trusting to the examples and the teacher’s good sense to keep the practice that it stands for at the desired minimum. Another confusion of counsel appears in the very limited mean- ing which some textbook writers are giving to “functional gram- mar.” The only illuminating sense of “functional” as applied to grammar is that which regards it as displaying the ways in which word-forms are drawn into meaningful patterns. Grammar so taught does more than supply formal labels—for example, labels to “sub-clause,” “participle,” and “appositive” constructions.
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