Grammarian

“ And, though he has taken the liberty of a grammarian, to think for himself and write in a style of his own, he trusts it will be evident that few have excelled him in diligence of research, or have followed more implicitly the dictates of that authority which gives law to language. ”

“ For he cannot but know from what work he is taking any particular sentence or paragraph, and those parts of a grammar, which are new to the eye of a great grammarian, may very well be credited to him who claims to have written the book. ”

“ For in such a language usage is so well settled in almost every particular as to enable the grammarian to say positively what is right and what is wrong. Even in matters of divided usage, it is seldom difficult to determine which of two forms or constructions is preferred by careful writers. ”

“ The grammarian is one whose whole thought is to string words according to a set formula. The substance itself that he wishes to convey is of secondary importance. Orators who keep their thoughts upon the proper way to gesticulate in curves, impress nobody. ”

“ Is the common language of two of the largest and most enlightened nations on earth so little understood, and its true grammar so little known or appreciated, that one of the most unscholarly and incompetent of all pretenders to grammar can have found means to outrival all the grammarians who have preceded him? ”

“ From grammarians who form their ideas, and make their decisions, respecting this part of english grammar, on the principles and constructions of languages which, in these points, do not suit the peculiar nature of our own, but differ considerably from it, we may naturally expect grammatical schemes that are not very perspicuous nor perfectly consistent, and which will tend more to perplex than to inform the learner. ”

“ In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. ”

“ Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern. ”

“ How many grammars tell us, that, "The first person is the person who speaks;" that, "The second person is the person spoken to;" and that, "the third person is the person spoken of!" As if the three persons of a verb, or other part of speech, were so many intelligent beings! As if, by exhibiting a word in the three persons, (as go, goest, goes,) we put it first into the speaker, then into the hearer, and then into somebody else! Nothing can be more abhorrent to grammar, or to sense, than such confusion. ”

“ English Grammar a Logical Study.—​Because English grammar is a logical study, and deals with sentences and the positions that words occupy in them, rather than with words, and what they are in their own right, it is better that the child should begin with the sentence, and not with the parts of speech; that is, that he should learn a little of what is called analysis of sentences before he learns to parse; should learn to divide simple sentences into the thing we speak of, and what we say about it—‘The cat—sits on the hearth’—before he is lost in the fog of person, mood, and part of speech. ”

“ Besides this principal design of Grammar in our own Language, there is a secondary use to which it may be applied, and which, I think, is not attended to as it deserves. A good foundation in the General Principles of Grammar is in the first place necessary for all those who are initiated in a learned education; and for all others likewise, who shall have occasion to furnish themselves with the knowledge of modern, languages. ”

“ Words may be combined so as to express thoughts well or to express them badly. Composition is the subject that has to do with the best expression of thought by language.
But how, then, does composition differ from grammar? Grammar is really a part—a small part—of composition. Each language has certain customs with regard to the forms which words have under various circumstances, and to the order in which the parts of a sentence are placed, as well as a system of names for [3] different kinds of words and sentences and parts of sentences. This body of customs or rules we call grammar. ”

“ The hardships of children, compelled to learn what they did not understand, have been bewailed in prefaces and reviews; incredible things boasted by literary jugglers, have been believed by men of sense; and the sympathies of nature, with accumulated prejudices, have been excited against that method of teaching grammar, which after all will be found in experience to be at once the easiest, the shortest, and the best. I mean, essentially, the ancient positive method, which aims directly at the inculcation of principles. ”

“ The disposition of the human mind to generalize the objects of thought, and to follow broad analogies in the use of words, discovers itself early, and seems to be an inherent principle of our nature. Hence, in the language of children and illiterate people, many words are regularly inflected even in opposition to the most common usage.
17. It has unfortunately become fashionable to inveigh against the necessary labour of learning by heart the essential principles of grammar, as a useless and intolerable drudgery. ”

“ Modern science assigns to these their separate places, and restricts grammar, which at one period embraced all learning, to the knowledge of language, as respects its fitness to be the vehicle of any particular thought or sentiment which the speaker or writer may wish to convey by it. Accordingly grammar is commonly defined, by writers upon the subject, in the special sense of an art--"the art of speaking or writing a language with propriety or correctness."--Webster's Dict. ”

“ Hence that science which makes known the nature and structure of speech, and immediately concerns the correct and elegant use of language, while it surpasses all the conceptions of the stupid or unlearned, and presents nothing that can seem desirable to the sensual and grovelling, has an intrinsic dignity which highly commends it to all persons of sense and taste, and makes it most a favourite with the most gifted minds. That science is Grammar. ”

“ We shall thus have a comparative grammar and an historical grammar, the latter being devoted to tracing the history of grammatical forms and usages in the same language. Of course, an historical grammar is only possible where a succession of written records exists; where a language possesses no older literature we must be content with a comparative grammar only, and look to cognate idioms to throw light upon its grammatical peculiarities. ”

“ Here the art of logic, aiming solely at conviction, addresses the understanding with cool deductions of unvarnished truth; rhetoric, designing to move, in some particular direction, both the judgement and the sympathies of men, applies itself to the affections in order to persuade; and poetry, various in its character and tendency, solicits the imagination, with a view to delight, and in general also to instruct. But grammar, though intimately connected with all these, and essential to them in practice, is still too distinct from each to be identified with any of them. ”

“ Hence, too, have sprung up, in the name of grammar, many unprofitable discussions, and whimsical systems of teaching, calculated rather to embarrass than to inform the student. Mere collisions of opinion, conducted without any acknowledged standard to guide the judgement, never tend to real improvement. Grammar is unquestionably a branch of that universal philosophy by which the thoroughly educated mind is enlightened to see all things aright; for philosophy, in this sense of the term, is found in everything. ”

“ Of all the means that tradition and routine have established in teaching language, grammar is, perhaps, the most prejudicial in retarding practical knowledge. By a deplorable violation of the laws of Nature, substituting synthesis for analysis, putting precept before example, theory before practice, grammar is made the base of language. The minds of children are loaded with principles and theories, roots of words and their etymologies, as if they were all to be philologists and teachers of languages. ”

“ There is, however, as I have suggested, a certain science or philosophy of language, which has been denominated Universal Grammar; being made up of those points only, in which many or all of the different languages preserved in books, are found to coincide. All speculative minds are fond of generalization; and, in the vastness of the views which may thus be taken of grammar, such may find an entertainment which they never felt in merely learning to speak and write grammatically. ”

“ But I would persuade my readers, that an acquaintance with that grammar which respects the genius of their vernacular tongue, is of primary importance to all who would cultivate a literary taste, and is a necessary introduction to the study of other languages. And it may here be observed, for the encouragement of the student, that as grammar is essentially the same thing in all languages, he who has well mastered that of his own, has overcome more than half the difficulty of learning another ”

“ Herein the business man, stenographer, clerk, lawyer, physician, clergyman, teacher—everyone who would refresh and enrich his knowledge of English—will find, in simple statement, a clear and lucid explanation of the principles of English grammar. All that makes the study of grammar a mystery is eliminated, and the whole book is constructed so as to enable any intelligent person to find his own way, by its teachings, to a correct working knowledge of English. ”

“ The principal design of a Grammar of any Language is to teach us to express ourselves with propriety in that Language, and to be able to judge of every phrase and form of construction, whether it be right or not. ”

“ But grammar is the science of language, and as the first of the seven liberal arts it has long held sway in school as the disciplinary study par excellence. A survey of its educational value, subjective and objective, usually produces the conviction that it is to retain the first place in the future. Its chief objective advantage is, that it shows the structure of language, and the logical forms of subject, predicate, and modifier, thus revealing the essential nature of thought itself, the most important of all objects, because it is self-object. ”

“ Names are rapidly added to our list of authors, while little or nothing is done for the science. Nay, while new blunders have been committed in every new book, old ones have been allowed to stand as by prescriptive right;. and positions that were never true, and sentences that were never good English, have been published and republished under different names, till in our language grammar has become the most ungrammatical of all studies! ”

“ It is called 'How to Parse,' and is best described by the further title, 'An Attempt to apply the Principles of Scholarship to English Grammar, with Appendices on Analysis, Spelling, and Punctuation.' The little book is so sensible and so simple that the greater number of its readers will perhaps forget to observe that it is profoundly philosophical also, but it is so in the best sense of the term."—N. Y. Evening Post.
"Of all subjects of study, it may be safely admitted that grammar possesses as a rule the fewest attractions for the youthful mind. ”

“ The grammar of our books is more or less dead and more than less embalmed. The only perfect grammar is a mutable sea of laws bearing on its bosom flexible but constant relations between series of phenomena in a system of signs. ”

“ Grammar has been taught as a mere art, depending on arbitrary rules to be mechanically learned, rather than a science involving the soundest and plainest principles of philosophy, which are to be known only as developed in common practice among men, and in accordance with the permanent laws which govern human thought. ”

“ First, That we should speak and write words according to the significations which belong to them: the teaching of which now pertains to lexicography, and not to grammar, except incidentally. "Secondly, That we should observe the relations that words have one to another in sentences, and represent those relations by such variations, and particles, as are usual with authors in that language." Thirdly, That we should acquire a knowledge of the proper sounds of the letters, and pay a due regard to accent in pronunciation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Let no one therefore despise as inconsiderable the elements of grammar. Not because it is a great thing, to distinguish consonants from vowels, and afterwards divide them into semivowels and mutes; but because, to those who enter the interior parts of this temple of science, there will appear in many things a great subtilty, which is fit not only to sharpen the wits of youth, but also to exercise the loftiest erudition and science."—De Institutione Oratoria, Lib. ”

“ True grammar is founded on the authority of reputable custom; and that custom, on the use which men make of their reason. The proofs of what is right are accumulative, and on many points there can be no dispute, because our proofs from the best usage, are both obvious and innumerable. ”