The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

are requisite for the syntactical parsing of the several parts of speech in English, may be seen at once by any one who will consider for a moment the usual construction of each. The correction of false syntax, in its various forms, will require more—yes, five times as many; but such of these as answer only the latter purpose, are, I think, better reserved for notes under the principal rules. The doctrines which I conceive most worthy to form the leading canons of our syntax, are those which are expressed in the twenty-four rules above. If other authors prefer more, or fewer, or different principles for their chief rules, I must suppose, it is because they have studied the subject less. Biased, as we may be, both by our knowledge and by our ignorance, it is easy for men to differ respecting matters of expediency; but that clearness, order, and consistency, are both expedient, and requisite, in didactic compositions, is what none can doubt.

OBS. 7.—Those English grammarians who tell us, as above, that syntax is divided into parts, or included under a certain number of heads, have almost universally contradicted themselves by treating the subject without any regard to such a division; and, at the same time, not a few have somehow been led into the gross error of supposing broad principles of concord or government where no such things exist. For example, they have invented general RULES like these: "The adjective agrees with its noun in number, case, and gender."—Bingham's English Gram., p. 40. "Interjections govern the nominative case, and sometimes the objective: as, 'O thou! alas me!'"—Ib., p. 43. "Adjectives agree with their nouns in number."—Wilbur and Livingston's Gram., p. 22. "Participles agree with their nouns in number."—Ib., p. 23. "Every adjective agrees in number with some substantive expressed or understood."— Hiley's Gram., Rule 8th, p. 77. "The article THE agrees with nouns in either number: as, The wood, the woods."—Bucke's Classical Grammar of the English Language, p. 84. "O! oh! ah! require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first person after them: as 'Ah me!' But when the second person is used, it requires a nominative case: as, 'O thou!'"—Ib., p. 87. "Two or more Nominatives in the singular number, connected by the Conjunction or, nor, EITHER, NEITHER, govern a singular Verb. But Pronouns singular, of different persons, joined by or, EITHER, nor, NEITHER, govern a plural Verb."—Ib., p. 94. "One Nominative frequently governs many Verbs."—Ib., p. 95. "Participles are sometimes governed by the article."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 192. "An adverb, an adjective, or a participle, may involve in itself the force of a preposition, and govern the objective case."—Nutting's Gram., p. 99. "The nominative case governs the verb." [326]—Greenleaf's Gram., p. 32; Kirkham's, 176; and others. "The nominative case comes before the verb."—Bingham's Gram., p. 38; Wilbur and Livingston's, 23. "The Verb TO BE, always governs a Nominative, unless it be of the Infinitive Mood."—Buchanan's Syntax, p. 94. "A verb in the infinitive mood may be governed by a verb, noun, adjective, participle, or pronoun."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 187. Or, (as a substitute for the foregoing rule,) say, according to this author: "A verb in the infinitive mood, refers to some noun or pronoun, as its subject or actor."—Ib., p. 188. Now what does he know of English grammar, who supposes any of these rules to be worthy of the place which they hold, or have held, in the halls of instruction?

OBS. 8.—It is a very common fault with the compilers of English grammars, to join together in the same rule the syntax of different parts of speech, uniting laws that must ever be applied separately in parsing. For example: "RULE XI. Articles and adjectives relate to nouns expressed or understood; and the adjectives this, that, one, two, must agree in number with the nouns to which they relate."—Comly's Gram., p. 87. Now, in parsing an article, why should the learner have to tell all this story about adjectives? Such a mode of expressing the rule, is certainly in bad taste; and, after all, the syntax of adjectives is not here comprised, for they often relate to pronouns. "RULE III. Every adjective and participle belongs to some noun or pronoun expressed or understood."—Frost's El. of Gram., p. 44. Here a compiler who in his etymology supposes participles to be verbs, allows them no other construction than that of adjectives. His rule implicitly denies that they can either be parts of their verbs in the formation of tenses, or be governed by prepositions in the character of gerunds. To suppose that a noun may govern the objective case, is both absurd in itself, and contrary to all authority; yet, among his forty-nine rules, this author has the following: "RULE XXV. A participial noun is sometimes governed by a preposition, and may govern an objective case; as, 'George is too fond of wasting time in trifles.'"—Frost's El. of Gram., p. 47. Here again is the fault of which I am speaking, two rules in one; and this fault is combined with an other still worse. Wasting is a participle, governed by of; and time is a noun, governed by wasting. The latter is a declinable word, and found in the objective case; the former is indeclinable, and found in no case. It is an error to suppose that cases are the only things which are susceptible of being governed; nor is the brief rule, "Prepositions govern the objective case," so very clear a maxim as never to be misapprehended. If the learner infer from it, that all prepositions must necessarily govern the objective case, or that the objective case is always governed by a preposition, he will be led into a great mistake.

OBS. 9.—This error of crowding things together, is still more conspicuous in the following examples: "RULE IV. Every article, adjective, and participle, must qualify some noun, or pronoun, either expressed or understood."—Nutting's Gram., p. 94. "RULE IX. The objective case is governed by a transitive verb or a preposition, usually coming before it."—Ib., p. 98. Here an author who separates participles from verbs, has attempted first to compress the entire syntax of three different parts of speech into one short rule; and, secondly, to embrace all the forms of dependence, incident to objective nouns and pronouns, in an other as short. This brevity is a poor exchange for the order and distribution which it prevents—especially as none of its objects are here reached. Articles do not relate to pronouns, unless the obsolete phrase the which is to be revived;[327] participles have other constructions than those which adjectives admit; there are exceptions to the rules which tie articles to nouns, and adjectives to nouns or pronouns; and the objective case may not only be governed by a participle, but may be put in apposition with an other objective. The objective case in English usually stands for the Latin genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative; hence any rule that shall embrace the whole construction of this one case, will be the sole counterpart to four fifths of all the rules in any code of Latin syntax. For I imagine the construction of these four oblique cases, will be found to occupy at least that proportion of the syntactical rules and notes in any Latin grammar that can be found. Such rules, however, are often placed under false or equivocal titles;[328] as if they contained the construction of the governing words, rather than that of the governed. And this latter error, again, has been transferred to most of our English grammars, to the exclusion of any rule for the proper construction of participles, of adverbs, of conjunctions, of prepositions, or of interjections. See the syntax of Murray and his copyists, whose treatment of these parts of speech is noticed in the fifth observation above.

OBS. 10.—It is doubtless most convenient, that, in all rules for the construction of cases, nouns and pronouns be taken together; because the very same doctrines apply equally well to both, and a case is as distinct a thing in the mind, as a part of speech. This method, therefore, I have myself pursued; and it has indeed the authority of all grammarians—not excepting those who violate its principles by adopting two special rules for the relative pronoun, which are not needed. These special rules, which I shall notice again hereafter, may be seen in Murray's Rule 6th, which is double, and contains them both. The most complex rule that I have admitted, is that which embraces the government of objectives by verbs and participles. The regimen by verbs, and the regimen by participles, may not improperly be reckoned distinct principles; but the near alliance of participles to their verbs, seems to be a sufficient reason for preferring one rule to two, in this instance.

OBS. 11.—An other common fault in the treatment of this part of grammar, is the practice of making many of the rules double, or even triple, in their form. Of L. Murray's twenty-two rules, for instance, there are six which severally consist of two distinct paragraphs; and one is composed of three such parts, with examples under each. Five others, though simple in their form, are complex in their doctrine, and liable to the objections which have been urged above against this characteristic. These twelve, therefore, I either reject entirely from my catalogue, or divide and simplify to fit them for their purpose. In short, by comparing the twenty-two rules which were adopted by this popular grammarian, with the twenty-four which are given in this work, the reader may see, that twelve of the former have pleased me too little to have any place at all among the latter, and that none of the remaining ten have been thought worthy to be copied without considerable alteration. Nor are the rules which I adopt, more nearly coincident with those of any other writer. I do not proffer to the schools the second-hand instructions of a mere compiler. In his twenty-two rules, independently of their examples, Hurray has used six hundred and seventeen words, thus giving an average of twenty-eight to each rule; whereas in the twenty-four rules which are presented above, the words are but four hundred and thirty-six, making the average less than nineteen. And yet I have not only divided some of his propositions and extended others, but, by rejecting what was useless or erroneous, and filling up the deficiencies which mark his code, I have delivered twice the amount of doctrine in two thirds of the space, and furnished eleven important rules which are not contained in his grammar. Thus much, in this place, to those who so frequently ask, "Wherein does your book differ from Murray's?"

OBS. 12.—Of all the systems of syntax, or of grammar, which it has been my fortune to examine, a book which was first published by Robinson and Franklin of New York in 1839, a fair-looking duodecimo volume of 384 pages, under the brief but rather ostentatious title, "THE GRAMMAR of the English Language" is, I think, the most faulty,—the most remarkable for the magnitude, multitude, and variety, of its strange errors, inconsistencies, and defects. This singular performance is the work of Oliver B. Peirce, an itinerant lecturer on grammar, who dates his preface at "Rome, N. Y., December 29th, 1838." Its leading characteristic is boastful innovation; it being fall of acknowledged "contempt for the works of other writers."—P. 379. It lays "claim to singularity" as a merit, and boasts of a new thing under the sun—"in a theory RADICALLY NEW, a Grammar of the English Language; something which I believe," says the author, "has NEVER BEFORE BEEN FOUND."—P. 9. The old scholastic notion, that because Custom is the arbitress of speech, novelty is excluded from grammar, this hopeful reformer thoroughly condemns; "repudiating this sentiment to the full extent of it," (ib.) and "writing his theory as though he had never seen a book, entitled an English Grammar."—Ib. And, for all the ends of good learning, it would have been as well or better, if he never had. His passion for novelty has led him not only to abandon or misapply, in an unprecedented degree, the usual terms of the art, but to disregard in many instances its most unquestionable principles, universal as well as particular. His parts of speech are the following ten: "Names, Substitutes, Asserters, Adnames, Modifiers, Relatives, Connectives, Interrogatives, Repliers, and Exclamations."—The Gram., p. 20. His names are nouns; his substitutes are pronouns, and any adjectives whose nouns are not expressed; his asserters are verbs and participles, though the latter assert nothing; his adnames are articles, adjectives whose nouns or pronouns are expressed, and adverbs that relate to adjectives; his modifiers are such adverbs as "modify the sense or sound of a whole sentence;" his relatives are prepositions, some of which govern no object; his connectives are conjunctions, with certain adverbs and phrases; his interrogatives and repliers are new parts of speech, very lamely explained; his exclamations are interjections, and "phrases used independently; as, O hapless