The Grammar of English Grammars/The Grammar of English Grammars
THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH GRAMMARS.
Grammar, as an art, is the power of reading, writing, and speaking correctly. As an acquisition, it is the essential skill of scholarship. As a study, it is the practical science which teaches the right use of language.
An English Grammar is a book which professes to explain the nature and structure of the English language; and to show, on just authority, what is, and what is not, good English.
ENGLISH GRAMMAR, in itself, is the art of reading, writing, and speaking the English language correctly. It implies, in the adept, such knowledge as enables him to avoid improprieties of speech; to correct any errors that may occur in literary compositions; and to parse, or explain grammatically, whatsoever is rightly written.
To read is to perceive what is written or printed, so as to understand the words, and be able to utter them with their proper sounds.
To write is to express words and thoughts by letters, or characters, made with a pen or other instrument.
To speak is to utter words orally, in order that they may be heard and understood.
Grammar, like every other liberal art, can be properly taught only by a regular analysis, or systematic elucidation, of its component parts or principles; and these parts or principles must be made known chiefly by means of definitions and examples, rules and exercises.
A perfect definition of any thing or class of things is such a description of it, as distinguishes that entire thing or class from every thing else, by briefly telling what it is.
An example is a particular instance or model, serving to prove or illustrate some given proposition or truth.
A rule of grammar is some law, more or less general, by which custom regulates and prescribes the right use of language.
An exercise is some technical performance required of the learner in order to bring his knowledge and skill into practice.
LANGUAGE, in the primitive sense of the term, embraced only vocal expression, or human speech uttered by the mouth; but after letters were invented to represent articulate sounds, language became twofold, spoken and written, so that the term, language, now signifies, any series of sounds or letters formed into words and employed for the expression of thought.
Of the composition of language we have also two kinds, prose and verse; the latter requiring a certain number and variety of syllables in each line, but the former being free from any such restraint.
The least parts of written language are letters; of spoken language, syllables; of language significant in each part, words; of language combining thought, phrases; of language subjoining sense, clauses; of language coördinating sense, members; of language completing sense, sentences.
A discourse, or narration, of any length, is but a series of sentences; which, when written, must be separated by the proper points, that the meaning and relation of all the words may be quickly and clearly perceived by the reader, and the whole be uttered as the sense requires.
In extended compositions, a sentence is usually less than a paragraph; a paragraph, less than a section; a section, less than a chapter; a chapter, less than a book; a book, less than a volume; and a volume, less than the entire work.
The common order of literary division, then, is; of a large work, into volumes; of volumes, into books; of books, into chapters; of chapters, into sections; of sections, into paragraphs; of paragraphs, into sentences; of sentences, into members; of members, into clauses; of clauses, into phrases; of phrases, into words; of words, into syllables; of syllables, into letters.
But it rarely happens that any one work requires the use of all these divisions; and we often assume some natural distinction and order of parts, naming each as we find it; and also subdivide into articles, verses, cantoes, stanzas, and other portions, as the nature of the subject suggests.
Grammar is divided into four parts; namely, Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.
Orthography treats of letters, syllables, separate words, and spelling.
Etymology treats of the different parts of speech, with their classes and modifications.
Syntax treats of the relation, agreement, government, and arrangement of words in sentences.
Prosody treats of punctuation, utterance, figures, and versification.
OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.--In the Introduction to this work, have been taken many views of the study, or general science, of grammar; many notices of its history, with sundry criticisms upon its writers or critics; and thus language has often been presented to the reader's consideration, either as a whole, or with broader scope than belongs to the teaching of its particular forms. We come now to the work of analyzing our own tongue, and of laying down those special rules and principles which should guide us in the use of it, whether in speech or in writing. The author intends to dissent from other grammarians no more than they are found to dissent from truth and reason; nor will he expose their errors further than is necessary for the credit of the science and the information of the learner. A candid critic can have no satisfaction merely in finding fault with other men's performances. But the facts are not to be concealed, that many pretenders to grammar have shown themselves exceedingly superficial in their knowledge, as well as slovenly in their practice; and that many vain composers of books have proved themselves despisers of this study, by the abundance of their inaccuracies, and the obviousness of their solecisms.
OBS. 2.--Some grammarians have taught that the word language is of much broader signification, than that which is given to it in the definition above. I confine it to speech and writing. For the propriety of this limitation, and against those authors who describe the thing otherwise, I appeal to the common sense of mankind. One late writer defines it thus: "LANGUAGE is any means by which one person communicates his ideas to another."--Sanders's Spelling-Book, p. 7. The following is the explanation of an other slack thinker: "One may, by speaking or by writing, (and sometimes by motions,) communicate his thoughts to others. The process by which this is done, is called LANGUAGE.--Language is the expression of thought and feeling."--S. W. Clark's Practical Gram., p. 7. Dr. Webster goes much further, and says, "LANGUAGE, in its most extensive sense, is the instrument or means of communicating ideas and affections of the mind and body, from one animal to another. In this sense, brutes possess the power of language; for by various inarticulate sounds, they make known their wants, desires, and sufferings."-- Philosophical Gram., p. 11; Improved Gram., p. 5. This latter definition the author of that vain book, "the District School," has adopted in his chapter on Grammar. Sheridan, the celebrated actor and orthoëpist, though he seems to confine language to the human species, gives it such an extension as to make words no necessary part of its essence. "The first thought," says he, "that would occur to every one, who had not properly considered the point, is, that language is composed of words. And yet, this is so far from being an adequate idea of language, that the point in which most men think its very essence to consist, is not even a necessary property of language. For language, in its full extent, means, any way or method whatsoever, by which all that passes in the mind of one man, may be manifested to another."--Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 129. Again: "I have already shown, that words are, in their own nature, no essential part of language, and are only considered so through custom."--Ib. p. 135.
OBS. 3.--According to S. Kirkham's notion, "LANGUAGE, in its most extensive sense, implies those signs by which men and brutes, communicate to each other their thoughts, affections and desires."--Kirkham's English Gram., p. 16. Again: "The language of brutes consists in the use of those inarticulate sounds by which they express their thoughts and affections."--Ib. To me it seems a shameful abuse of speech, and a vile descent from the dignity of grammar, to make the voices of "brutes" any part of language, as taken in a literal sense. We might with far more propriety raise our conceptions of it to the spheres above, and construe literally the metaphors of David, who ascribes to the starry heavens, both "speech" and "language," "voice" and "words," daily "uttered" and everywhere "heard." See Psalm xix.
OBS. 4.--But, strange as it may seem, Kirkham, commencing his instructions with the foregoing definition of language, proceeds to divide it, agreeably to this notion, into two sorts, natural and artificial; and affirms that the former "is common both to man and brute," and that the language which is peculiar to man, the language which consists of words, is altogether an artificial invention:[83] thereby contradicting at once a host of the most celebrated grammarians and philosophers, and that without appearing to know it. But this is the less strange, since he immediately forgets his own definition and division of the subject, and as plainly contradicts himself. Without limiting the term at all, without excluding his fanciful "language of brutes," he says, on the next leaf, "Language is conventional, and not only invented, but, in its progressive advancement, varied for purposes of practical convenience. Hence it assumes any and every form which those who make use of it, choose to give it."--Kirkham's Gram., p. 18. This, though scarcely more rational than his "natural language of men and brutes," plainly annihilates that questionable section of grammatical science, whether brutal or human, by making all language a thing "conventional" and "invented." In short, it leaves no ground at all for any grammatical science of a positive character, because it resolves all forms of language into the irresponsible will of those who utter any words, sounds, or noises.
OBS. 5.--Nor is this gentleman more fortunate in his explanation of what may really be called language. On one page, he says, "Spoken language or speech, is made up of articulate sounds uttered by the human voice."--Kirkham's Gram., p. 17. On the next, "The most important use of that faculty called speech, is, to convey our thoughts to others."--Ib., p. 18. Thus the grammarian who, in the same short paragraph, seems to "defy the ingenuity of man to give his words any other meaning than that which he himself intends them to express," (Ib., p. 19,) either writes so badly as to make any ordinary false syntax appear trivial, or actually conceives man to be the inventor of one of his own faculties. Nay, docs he not make man the contriver of that "natural language" which he possesses "in common with the brutes?" a language "The meaning of which," he says, "all the different animals perfectly understand?"--See his Gram., p. 16. And if this notion again be true, does it not follow, that a horse knows perfectly well what horned cattle mean by their bellowing, or a flock of geese by their gabbling? I should not have noticed these things, had not the book which teaches them, been made popular by a thousand imposing attestations to its excellence and accuracy. For grammar has nothing at all to do with inarticulate voices, or the imaginary languages of brutes. It is scope enough for one science to explain all the languages, dialects, and speeches, that lay claim to reason. We need not enlarge the field, by descending
"To beasts, whom[84] God on their creation-day Created mute to all articulate sound."--Milton.[85]