Manual of English Grammar and Composition

J. Nesfield

Description

This scarce book contains an incredibly detailed treatise on the grammar of the English language. Manual of English Grammar and Composition is readily accessible, making it the perfect book for both teachers and students of English, as well as a great addition to any collection of antiquarian linguistic literature. Containing a level of detail and insight often unparalleled in modern grammar texts, Manual of English Grammar and Composition is a must-have for discerning students who seek to gain an exemplary knowledge of the evolution of English grammar. This text is split into five parts, including: Parsing and Analysis; Composition: Force and Propriety of Diction; Enlargement of Vocabulary: Figures of Speech; Prose and Poetry; and History of the Language. This book has been chosen for republication because of its immense educational value, and we are proud to republish it here complete with a new introduction to the subject. This book was originally published in 1905.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• EAN13: 9781473394698
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

MANUAL OF
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
AND COMPOSITION
BY
J. C. NESFIELD, M.A.
AUTHOR OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR PAST AND PRESENT, HISTORICAL ENGLISH AND DERIVATION, ETC .
IN FIVE PARTS
I.-PARSING AND ANALYSIS II.-COMPOSITION: FORCE AND PROPRIETY OF DICTION III.-ENLARGEMENT OF VOCABULARY: FIGURES OF SPEECH IV.-PROSE AND POETRY V.-HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Introduction to English Grammar
English grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. There are many historical, social and regional variations of English, but there are eight main word classes or parts of speech, that are traditionally distinguished: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Other important grammatical categories are negation, clause and sentence structure; including questions, imperatives and dependent clauses.
The first published English grammar was a Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), written by William Bullokar. It had the stated goal of demonstrating that English was just as rule-based as Latin. Bullokar s grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily s Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), used in English schools at that time, having been prescribed for them in 1542 by Henry VIII. (This point interestingly relates to current debates about prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to grammar: the former prescribes how English should be spoken-e.g. a teacher showing students how to write; the latter describes how English is spoken-e.g. a sociolinguist studying word use in a population. It comes as no surprise that the Tudor monarch was of the former camp). Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a reformed spelling system of his own invention; but many English grammars, for much of the century after Bullokar s effort, were written in Latin, especially by authors who were aiming to be scholarly. John Wallis s Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1685) was the last English grammar written in Latin.
It was really during the nineteenth century that modern-language studies became systematized though. In the case of English, this happened first in continental Europe, where it was studied by historical and comparative linguists. In 1832, Danish philologist, Rasmus Rask, published an English grammar, Engelsk Forml re as part of his extensive comparative studies in the grammars of Indo-European languages. German philologist, Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, included English grammar in his monumental grammar of Germanic languages, Deutsche Grammatik (1822-1837). And the German historian, Eduard Adolf Maetzner published his 1,700 page Englische Grammatik between 1860 and 1865. Although such works contributed little in terms of fresh approaches to the intrinsic study of English grammar, they nonetheless showed that English was being seriously studied by professional linguists.
As phonology became a fully-fledged field, spoken English began to be studied scientifically, generating by the end of the nineteenth century an international enterprise investigating the structure of the language. This enterprise comprised scholars at various universities, their students who were training to be teachers of English, and journals publishing new research. All the pieces were in place for new large-scale English grammars which combined the disparate approaches of the previous decades. The first work to lay claim to the new scholarship was British linguist Henry Sweet s A new English grammar: logical and historical , published in two parts (1892-6). The title suggests not only continuity and contrast with the work of scholars like Maetzner, but also kinship with the contemporary A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (begun 1884), and later, the Oxford English Dictionary (1895).
Despite such efforts, numerous English grammatical constructions are still in dispute. Examples of such irritations are the Generic you , e.g., Brushing your teeth is a good habit , as opposed to Brushing one s teeth is a good habit. Split infinitives , e.g., To boldly go where no one has gone before , as opposed to To go boldly where no one has gone before and the use of like as a conjunction, e.g., Like I said , as opposed to As I said. There are numerous circumstances, largely peculiar to the English language, which add to such problems, namely that there is no central grammatical authority. Unlike some languages, such as French, which has the Acad mie fran aise, Italian, which has the Accademia della Crusca, or Spanish, with the Real Academia Espa ola, English has no authoritative governing academy. For this reason, different works of reference can be considered authoritative. Some people argue that, lacking a recognized authority, correctness is defined by common use. That is, once its use is sufficiently prevalent, a certain construction or use becomes correct. Older or better-established constructions-or those perceived as such- are considered superior by some (even those constructions that are little used anywhere but in the most formal writing and therefore considered obsolete by many). Thus, English grammar, and the debates resulting from it, is an area still very much alive. It is hoped that the current reader enjoys this book.
CONTENTS
PART I.-PARSING AND ANALYSIS.
1. A NALYSIS IN O UTLINE
2. T HE P ARTS OF S PEECH IN O UTLINE : P HRASES
1. The Parts of Speech.
2. Classification of Phrases.
3. N OUNS
1. The kinds of Nouns.
2. Gender.
3. Number.
4. Case.
4. A DJECTIVES
1. The kinds of Adjectives.
2. The two Uses of Adjectives.
3. Comparison of Adjectives.
5. P RONOUNS
1. Personal Pronouns.
2. Demonstrative Pronouns.
3. Relative or Conjunctive Pronouns.
4. Interrogative Pronoun.
6. V ERBS
1. The kinds of Verbs.
2. Transitive Verbs.
3. Intransitive Verbs.
4. Auxiliary Verbs.
5. Active and Passive Voices.
6. Complete Conjugation of a Verb in the Finite Moods.
7. Indicative Mood.
8. Imperative Mood.
9. Subjunctive Mood.
10. Infinitive Mood.
11. Participles.
12. Gerunds and Verbal Nouns.
13. The Strong and Weak Conjugations.
14. Defective, Irregular, and Impersonal Verbs.
7. A DVERBS
1. The Functions of Adverbs.
2. The kinds of Adverbs.
3. Comparison of Adverbs.
4. Verbs compounded with Adverbs.
5. The two Uses of Adverbs.
8. P REPOSITIONS
9. C ONJUNCTIONS
1. Co-ordinative Conjunctions.
2. Subordinative Conjunctions.
10. I NTERJECTIONS
11. T HE S AME W ORD AS D IFFERENT P ARTS OF S PEECH
12. S YNTAX AND P ARSING
13. A NALYSIS IN D ETAIL
1. Sentences Simple, Compound, and Complex.
2. Scheme of Analysis in Detail.
3. Degrees of Subordination.
E XAMPLES IN P ARSING AND A NALYSIS
E XAMPLES IN D IRECT AND I NDIRECT N ARRATION
PART II.-COMPOSITION: FORCE AND PROPRIETY OF DICTION.
14. P UNCTUATION , OR THE R IGHT U SE OF S TOPS .
15. T HE N ORMAL O RDER OF W ORDS
16. I NVERSION OF THE N ORMAL O RDER : E MPHASIS
17. S TRUCTURE OF S ENTENCES
18. P URITY OF D ICTION
19. P ROPRIETY OF D ICTION
1. Common Errors in the Use of Common Words.
2. Words used in Wrong Senses or Wrong Connections.
P LURALS IN S PECIAL S ENSES
20. P ERSPICUITY OR C LEARNESS OF D ICTION
1. Grammatical Precautions.
2. The Obscure.
3. The Double Meaning.
21. S IMPLICITY OR E ASE OF D ICTION
22. B REVITY OR T ERSENESS OF D ICTION
23. E LEGANCE OF D ICTION
PART III.-ENLARGEMENT OF VOCABULARY: FIGURES OF SPEECH.
24. E NLARGEMENT BY C OMPOSITION
1. Unrelated or Juxta-positional Compounds.
2. Related or Syntactical Compounds.
25. E NLARGEMENT BY P REFIXES AND S UFFIXES
1. Teutonic Prefixes.
2. Teutonic. Suffixes.
3. Romanic Prefixes.
4. Romanic Suffixes.
5. Greek Prefixes.
6. Greek Suffixes.
7. Some General Results, with Questions.
26. F IGURES OF R HETORIC
27. E NLARGEMENT OF V OCABULARY BY M ETAPHOR AND M ETONYMY
PART IV.-PROSE AND POETRY.
28. M AIN D IVISIONS OF P ROSE -C OMPOSITION
1. Classification according to Matter.
2. Classification according to Form.
29. P ROSODY AND P OETIC D ICTION
1. Prosody.
2. Poetic Diction.
30. M AIN D IVISIONS OF P OETRY
PART V.-HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE.
31. O RIGIN AND G ROWTH OF E NGLISH
1. English and Cognate Languages.
2. Old English.
3. Middle English.
4. Modern English.
32. B ORROWINGS
1. Celtic.
2. Danish or Later Scandian.
3. Dutch.
4. Latin.
5. French.
6. Greek.
7. Modern Borrowings: Miscellaneous.
33. N OTES ON A FFIXES AND A CCIDENCE
1. Origin of Teutonic Affixes.
2. Noun Forms.
3. Adjective Forms.
4. Pronoun Forms.
5. Verb Forms.
I NDEX OF S UBJECTS AND S ELECTED W ORDS
PART I.-PARSING AND ANALYSIS.
CHAPTER I.
ANALYSIS IN OUTLINE.
This chapter assumes that the student has a rough knowledge of the Parts of Speech to start with .
1. Sentence. -When one person says something to another, or puts what he says into writing, he uses a combination of words which is called a sentence:-
Fire burns.
Here fire is the thing talked about. The word fire, though it names the thing, does not make a sentence. It is a name , and nothing more. It is only by adding such a word as burns to the word fire, that is, by saying what the thing (fire) does, that we can make a sentence.
Definition .-A sentence is a combination of words, in which something is said about something else.
Note .-That which is said may be an assertion, or a command, or a question, or a wish, or an exclamation,-whatever, in fact, can be expressed by a Finite verb (on the meaning of Finite verb see 5). Thus there are five different kinds of