English Grammar in Familiar Lectures; Embracing a New Systematic Order of Parsing, a New System of Punctuation, Exercises in False Syntax, and a System of Philosophical Grammar to Which Are Added, a Compendium, an Appendix, and a Key to (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: foreign languages. This is the province of the lexicographer, rather than of the philologist. It is not the business of hinr. who writes a practical, English grammar, to trace words to the Saxon, nor to the Celtick, the Greek, the Dutch, the Mexican, nor the Persian; nor is it his province to explain their meaning in Latin, French, or Hebrew, Italian, Mohegan, or Sanscrit; but it is his duty to explain their properties, their powers, their connexions, relations, dcpendances, and bearings, not at the period in which the Danes made an irruption into the island of Great Britain, nor in the year in which Lamech paid his addresses to Adah and Zillah, but at the particular period in which he writes. His words are already derived, formed, established, and furnished to his hand, and he is bound to take them and explain them as he finds them in his day, without any regard to their ancient construction and application. CLASSIFICATION. In arranging the parts of speech, I conceive it to be the legitimate object of the practical grammarian, to consult praclt- cal convenience. The true principle of classification seems to be, not a reference to essential differences in the primitive meaning of words, nor to their original combinations, but to the manner in which they are at present employed.1 In the early and rude state of society, mankind are quite limited in their knowledge, and having but few ideas to communicate, a small number of words answers their purpose in the transmission o) thought. This leads them to express their ideas in short, detached sentences, requiring few or none of those Connectives. or words of transition, which are afterwards introduced into language by refinement, and which contribute so largely to ita perspicuity a"d elegance. The argument appears to be conclusive...