Paregoric

“ SENTENCE CORRECTNESS
The language spoken and written by educated persons and by trained writers in all parts of the English-speaking world has certain forms and usages to which everyone must conform if he wishes to be recognized as a well-educated man or woman. Conformity to the word-forms and to the sentence structure of this widespread language is called correctness.
300. Use the nominative case for the subject of every finite verb. I, thou, he, she, we, they, who, are nominatives. ”

“ To produce the agreement and right disposition of words in a sentence, the following rules (and observations?) should be carefully studied.
RULE I.
A verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person: as "I perceive." "Thou hast been to Boston." "Apes chatter." "Frenchmen gabble."
Certain liberties are sometimes taken with this rule: as, "I own I likes good beer." "You'm a fine fellow, aint yer?" Such modes of speaking are adopted by those who neither know nor care anything about grammatical correctness ”

“ In the first sentence the adjective parva is separated from its noun by the verb and stands in the predicate. It is therefore called a predicate adjective. In the second sentence the adjectives parva and bonam are closely attached to the nouns puella and deam respectively, and are called attributive adjectives.
a. Pick out the attributive and the predicate adjectives in the following:
Do you think Latin is hard? Hard studies make strong brains. Lazy students dislike hard studies. We are not lazy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this idiom, the preposition is treated like an ending attached to the verb to make it transitive. In other words, laugh at, pass upon, etc., are treated as compound verbs, and the object of the preposition is, in effect, the object of the compound. In the passive, this object becomes the subject and the preposition (now lacking an object) remains attached to the verb. The passive construction is well established, but not always graceful.
252. The passive of some verbs of choosing, calling, naming, making, and thinking may be followed by a predicate nominative (§ 88, 2) . ”

“ The car looks cheap.
He is in the house.
Home is where the heart is.
In these sentences, red, a house, cheap, in the house, and where the heart is, are parts of the predicate, though they characterize the subject. Such elements are called complements because they complete the assertion of the verb; if adjectives, they are called adjective [47] complements, or better, predicated adjectives; if nouns, they are called noun complements, or predicated nouns; if clauses or phrases, they are called complements, or predicated phrases or clauses. ”

“ But, in a subsequent chapter, I include under this name the first participle of the passive verb; and this, in our language, is always a compound, and the latter term of it does not end in ing: as, "In all languages, indeed, examples are to be found of adjectives being compared whose signification admits neither intension nor remission."--CROMBIE, on Etym. and Syntax, p. 106. According to most of our writers on English grammar, the Present or Imperfect Participle Passive is always a compound of being and the form of the perfect participle: as, being loved, being seen. ”

“ John becomes a noun, and is the subject of the sentence; love becomes a verb, and is the predicant; father a noun, and is the object; and we now have an organized sentence. A sentence requires parts of speech, and parts of speech are such because they are used as the organic elements of a sentence.
The criteria of rank in languages are, first, grade of organization, i.e., the degree to which the grammatic processes and methods are specialized, and the parts of speech differentiated ”

“ Grammar, then, may be said to concern itself with two main subjects,—inflection and syntax.
English belongs to a family of languages—the Indo-European Family1—which is rich in forms of inflection. This richness may be seen in other members of the family,—such as Greek or Latin. The Latin word homo, “man,” for example, has eight different inflectional forms,—homo, “a man”; hominis, “of a man”; homini, “to a man,” and so on. Thus, in Latin, the grammatical construction of a word is, in general, shown by that particular inflectional ending (or termination) which it has in any particular sentence. ”

“ If we know the present tense form, the past, and the perfect participle of any verb, we can tell to which conjugation it belongs, and can give all its inflections of person, number, tense, and mode, therefore the present tense form, the past and the perfect participle, are called the principal parts of the verb. When we give all the inflections of a verb, or indicate them by the principal parts, we conjugate it. ”

“ The parts of which a compound sentence consists, are called Members or Clauses. In every compound sentence there are either several subjects and one attribute, or several attributes and one subject, or both several subjects and several attributes; that is, there are either several nominatives applied to the same verb, or several verbs applied to the same nominative, or both. Every verb marks a judgment or attribute, and every attribute must have a subject. There must, therefore, be in every sentence or period, as many propositions as there are verbs of a finite mode. ”

“ To the same class of words belong pains, news, and perhaps some others. Every person who has read good English authors, or lived where the language is spoken in purity, must have observed that the word pains is usually preceded by much, and followed by a verb in the singular number; much pains was taken. If the word is a plural noun, it should neither be followed by a singular verb, nor preceded by much; for we never prefix much to plurals. The most untutored ear would be offended at much papers, much labors. But do we not always say much pains? ”

“ For such a word, the form of parsing should be like this: "Peace is a common noun, personified proper; of the third person, singular number, feminine gender, and nominative case." Here the construction of the word as a proper noun, and of the feminine gender, is the result of the personification, and contrary to the literal usage.
MODIFICATIONS.
Nouns have modifications of four kinds; namely, Persons, Numbers, Genders, and Cases.
PERSONS.
Persons, in grammar, are modifications that distinguish the speaker, the hearer, and the person or thing merely spoken of. ”

“ The degrees in which qualities may exist in nature, are infinitely various; but the only degrees with which the grammarian is concerned, are those which our variation of the adjective or adverb enables us to express--including, as of course we must, the state or sense of the primitive word, as one. The reasoning which would make the positive degree to be no degree, would also make the nominative case, or the casus rectus of the Latins, to be no case. ”

“ Verbs of choosing, calling, naming, making, and thinking may take two objects referring to the same person or thing.
The first of these is the direct object, and the second, which completes the sense of the predicate, is called a predicate objective.
We chose Oscar president. [Oscar is the direct object of chose; president is the predicate objective.] I call John my friend. They thought the man a coward. Make my house your home. The predicate objective is often called the complementary object or the objective attribute. It is classed as a complement. ”

“ In grammar we commonly attach a much more restricted meaning to the terms ‘subject,’ ‘predicate,’ and ‘sentence.’ For instance, when the predicate is a noun, we demand that the normal sentence should express the comprehension of the subject in a wider class ”

“ There are some niceties in spelling and style that have to be passed with slight notice. The formation of foreign words in the plural number, obsolete or little-used forms of past tenses and participles, and the use of accents and diacritical marks for words in English, belong to grammar rather than to typography. ”

“ The elements which make up a sentence are: (1) the simple subject; (2) the simple predicate; (3) modifiers; (4) the complements,—direct object, predicate objective, predicate adjective, predicate nominative; and (5) the so-called independent elements,—the interjection, the vocative (or nominative of direct address) , the exclamatory nominative, and various parenthetical expressions (§ 501) .
449. The absolute essentials for a sentence are a substantive as subject and a verb as predicate (§ 35) . ”

“ The verb may consist of one word—as in the examples given—or it may consist of a group of words, called a verb-group, containing sometimes as many as five words. This verb group consists of one, two, three, or four auxiliary verbs, followed by a form of the verb expressing the meaning or sense. The form of the sense-verb is an infinitive, a present participle, or a past participle.
The moon will rise. ”

“ The progressive form is a verb-phrase made by prefixing to the present participle some form of the verb to be.
So in the other tenses:
257. In the passive, the progressive forms are confined to the present and the past tense.
He is being helped by his brother. [Present.] I am being trained by Arthur Ray. [Present.] When I called, tea was being served. [Past.] 258. In subordinate clauses, the verb is (in its various forms) with its subject is often omitted in progressive phrases. ”

“ A peculiarity of their language that renders it easy to master is the absence of irregular verbs; the verb root is never altered for voice, mode, tense, number, or person, distinctions that are achieved by the use of several simple, auxiliary words. ”

“ A word is related by inflection when the office of the word in the sentence is pointed out thereby; thus, nouns are related by case inflections; verbs are related by inflections for gender, number, and person. All inflection for agreement is inflection for relation.
In English, three of the grammatic processes are highly specialized.
Combination is used chiefly for derivation, but to some slight extent for qualification and relation in the paradigmatic categories. ”

“ The double nature of the infinitive (as both verb and noun) and the participle (as both verb and adjective) almost justifies one in classifying each as a distinct part of speech (so as to make ten parts of speech instead of eight) . But it is more convenient to include them under the head of verbs, in accordance with the usual practice.
SIMPLE AND COMPLETE SUBJECT AND PREDICATE 34. Our survey of the eight parts of speech has shown, (1) that these have very different offices or functions in the sentence, and (2) that their functions are not of equal importance. ”

“ The comparative degree is made, by means of the secondary noun အ​ထက်, or အောက်, and a verb, as အိမ်​ထက်​ကြီး​သည်, to be greater than the house, or by a circumlocution of verbs, as သာ​၍​ကြီး​သည်, to exceed in greatness, or be greater. ”

“ A participle is a hybrid part of speech; a kind of mongrel-cross, between a noun and a verb. It is two parts verbs, and four parts noun; wherefore its composition may be likened unto the milk sold in and about London, which is usually watered in the proportion of four to two. The properties of the noun belonging to it, are, number, gender, case, and declension; those of the verb, tense, and signification.
55
As a horse hath four legs, so hath a verb four participles. ”

“ In parsing, the learner must remember that the rules of government are not to be applied to the governing words, but to those which are governed; and which, for the sake of brevity, are often technically named after the particular form or modification assumed; as, possessives, objectives, infinitives, gerundives. These are the only things in English, that can properly be said to be subject to government; and these are always so, in their own names; unless we except such infinitives as stand in the place of nominatives. ”

“ Paronyms. Again, things are called paronyms which, though differing in case, have their appellation (according to name) from some thing, as "a grammarian" is called so from "grammar," and "a courageous man" from "courage."
Chap. II.—Of the logical division of Things and their Attributes. [5]
1. Subjects of discourse complex and incomplex. Of things discoursed upon, some are enunciated after a complex, others after an incomplex, manner; the complex as "a man runs," "a man conquers," but the incomplex as "man," "ox," "runs," "conquers." 2. Varieties of predication. ”

“ Another passive progressive form, consisting of the verb be completed by the present passive participle, has recently appeared in our language—The house is being built, or was being built. Although condemned by many linguists as awkward and otherwise objectionable, it has grown rapidly into good use, especially in England, Such a form seems to be needed when the simpler form would be ambiguous, i.e., when its subject might be taken to name either the actor or the receiver ”