Brainerd Kellogg

“ A writer's meaning is never distributed evenly among his words; more of it lies in some words than in others. Under the influence of strong feeling, one may move words out of their accustomed place, and, by thus attracting attention to them, give them additional importance to the reader or hearer.
When any word or phrase in the predicate stands out of its usual place, appearing either at the front of the sentence or at the end, we have what we may call the +Transposed Order+. I dare not venture to go down into the cabin—Venture to go down into the cabin I dare not. You shall die—Die you shall. ”

“ When we see one word of a frail man on the throne of France tearing a hundred thousand sons from their homes, breaking asunder the sacred ties of domestic life, sentencing myriads of the young to make murder their calling and rapacity their means of support, and extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? ”

“ In "I found the man dead," the condition is not the result of the act, and so grammarians say that in this second example dead should be treated simply as an "appositive" adjective modifying man. While dead does not belong to man as expressing the result of the act, it is made to belong to man through the asserting force of the verb, and therefore is not a mere modifier of man. Dead helps found to express the act. Not found, but found-dead tells what was done to the man.
If we put the sentence in the passive form, "The man was found dead," it will be seen that dead is more than a mere modifier ”

“ When a student who has acquired a knowledge of the English sentence comes to the translation of a foreign language, he finds his work greatly simplified. If in a sentence of his own language he sees only a mass of unorganized words, how much greater must be his confusion when this mass of words is in a foreign tongue! ”

“ To, as indicated by the () , is not treated as a part of the verb. Writers on language are generally agreed that when to introduces an infinitive phrase used as an adjective or an adverb, it performs its proper function as a preposition, meaning toward, for, etc.; as, I am inclined to believe; I came to hear. When the infinitive phrase is used as a noun, the to expresses no relation; it seems merely to introduce the phrase. When a word loses its proper function without taking on the function of some other part of speech, we do not see why it should change its name. ”

“ Knowing the sex of the thing or its lack of sex, you know the gender of the noun in English that names it; for in our language gender follows the sex. But in such modern languages as the French and the German, and in Latin and Greek, the gender of nouns naming things without reference to sex is determined by the likeness of their endings in sound to the endings of words denoting things with sex. ”

“ All good writing consists of good sentences properly joined. Since the sentence is the foundation or unit of discourse, it is all-important that the pupil should know the sentence. He should be able to put the principal and the subordinate parts in their proper relation; he should know the exact function of every element, its relation to other elements and its relation to the whole. He should know the sentence as the skillful engineer knows his engine, that, when there is a disorganization of parts, he may at once find the difficulty and the remedy for it. ”

“ Their names will forever live on the lips of the people—Their names will, on the lips of the people, forever live.
When the word or phrase moved to the front carries the verb, or the principal word of it, before the subject, we have the extreme example of the transposed order; as, A yeoman had he. Strange is the magic of a turban. The whole of a verb is not placed at the beginning of a declarative sentence except in poetry ”

“ But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. ”

“ The part of speech to which a word belongs is determined only by its function in the sentence, and inflections simply mark the offices and relations of words. Unless the pupil has been systematically trained to discover the functions and relations of words as elements of an organic whole, his knowledge of the parts of speech is of little value. It is not because he cannot conjugate the verb or decline the pronoun that he falls into such errors as "How many sounds have each of the vowels?" ”

“ You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg and borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and impotent. ”

“ Birds, singing, delight us. Here singing does duty (1) as an adjective, describing birds by assuming or implying an act, and (2) as a verb by expressing the act of singing as going on at the time birds delight us.
By singing their songs birds delight us. Here singing has the nature of a verb and that of a noun. As a verb it has an object complement, songs; and as a noun it names the act, and stands as the principal word in a prepositional phrase. ”

“ LESSON 96. CONSTRUCTION OF PREPOSITIONS. +To the Teacher+.—Most prepositions express relations so diverse, and so delicate in their shades of distinction that a definition of them based upon etymology would mislead. A happy and discriminating use of prepositions can be acquired only by an extended study of good authors. We do below all that we think it prudent or profitable to do with them. He should he a man of wide and careful reading who assumes to teach pupils that such prepositions, and such only, should be used with certain words. Nowhere in grammar is dogmatism more dangerous than here. ”

“ Next year you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being.—Holmes. ”

“ A very large per cent of these adverbs modify the verb. That is to say, it is largely through the adverb that what the predicate expresses is declared not to be true of the thing named by the subject. It is very suggestive that much of what is said consists of denial—is taken up in telling not what is true of things but what is not true of them.
"The negative particle in our language is simply the consonant +n+. In Saxon it existed as a word +ne+; but we have lost that word, and it is now a letter only, which, enters into many words, as into no, not, nought, none, neither, nor, never."—Earle. ”

“ This form of the verb is frequently the principal word of a phrase used as a subject or as an object, complement; as, To read good books is profitable; I like to read good books. Here also the form with to is equivalent to the participle form reading. Reading good books is profitable.
As this form of the verb names the action in an indefinite way, without limiting it to a subject, we call it the +Infinitive+ (Lat. infinitus, without limit) . For definition, see Lesson 131. The infinitive, like the participle, may have what is called an assumed subject. ”

“ LESSON 8. CLASSES OF WORDS. NOUNS. +Introductory Hints+.—We have now reached the point where we must classify the words of our language. But we are appalled by their number. If we must learn all about the forms and the uses of a hundred thousand words by studying these words one by one, we shall die ignorant of English grammar.
But may we not deal with words as we do with plants? If we had to study and name each leaf and stem and flower, taken singly, we should never master the botany even of our garden-plants. ”

“ The inflection of words, being distinct from their classification, makes a separate division of the work. If the chief end of grammar were to enable one to parse, we should not here depart from long-established precedent.
+Sentences in Groups—Paragraphs+.—In tracing the growth of the sentence from the simplest to the most complex form, each element, as it is introduced, is illustrated by a large number of detached sentences, chosen with the utmost care as to thought and expression. These compel the pupil to confine his attention to one thing till he gets it well in hand. ”

“ Any name which belongs in common to all things of a class we call a +Common Noun+; and any particular name of an individual, distinguishing this individual from others of its class, we call a +Proper Noun+. The "proper, or individual, names" which in Rule 1, Lesson 8, you were told to begin with capital letters are proper nouns.
Such a word as wheat, music, or architecture does not distinguish one thing from others of its class; there is but one thing in the class denoted by each, each thing forms a class by itself; and so we call these words common nouns. ”

“ From such forms as Let us sing, Let them talk, some grammarians make a first and a third person imperative. But us is not the subject of the verb-phrase let-sing, and let is not of the first person. Us is the object complement of let, and the infinitive sing is the objective complement, having us for its assumed subject. ”