Longman's Briefer Grammar

5. Exercise 35 should be worked more than once, and when similar sentences occur in the reading lesson the children should be asked to pick out the Verbs.

6. Young teachers should avoid the common error of saying that the Verb be tells what a thing is. In the sentence "Sugar is sweet," is certainly does not say what sugar is. In logic, sweet is the Predicate and is the Copula.

7. The system of diagraming developed in this book has the advantages of accuracy and clearness. A diagram is a graphic representation of the relations of the parts of a sentence, and it should show unmistakably the nature and use of every element. Such graphic representation is economical of time and space, and it is, if not overdone, an excellent means of showing complete grammatical grasp of a sentence. It conduces to the better understanding, and therefore to the better use, of written English.

8. These sentences may prove rather confusing to children, but they will become quite clear if the teacher will make two pupils stand out and personate Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown.

9. The definition of a Pronoun given in paragraph 66 would not satisfy a logician, but a definition which would satisfy a logician would not satisfy a teacher of young children, for it would be unintelligible to them.

10. The method of elementary parsing shown in the text is taken (with a slight alteration) from "How to tell the Parts of Speech." Dr. Abbott strongly (and no doubt rightly) maintains that a child should first be taught to see what a word does and thence infer what it is.

11. The word article is from the Latin articulus, a small joint. Dr. Abbott ("How to Parse,” p. xix.) defines Article as “A

name

(a) Correctly given by the Greeks to their Article, because
it served as a joint uniting several words together.
(b) Then loosely applied by the Latins (as was natural,
seeing they had no Article) to any short word,
whether Verb, Conjunction, or Pronoun.

12. "The words yes, yea, aye, no are called Adverbs and seem to have an Adverbial force. Many [other Adverbs] may be detached in the same way from the sentence that they qualify; for example, certainly, surely, indeed, etc. The Adverb then stands alone by an obvious ellipsis."- BAIN: "A Higher English Grammar," p. 73.

13. Children should not be taught to trust to mechanical rules for determining what part of speech a word is, but the peculiarities mentioned in the text are worth noting.

14. The classification of the words mentioned in paragraph 234 bristles with difficulties. The chief merit of the method given for dealing with these words is its simplicity; that should commend it to teachers, though grammarians may find fault with it.

15. The method of dealing with Relative Pronouns adopted in the text was suggested by Dr. Abbott's "How to tell the Parts of Speech."

16. "The author is utterly at a loss to conceive on what principle the introduction of faulty sentences for correction can be objected to. Specimens of bad spelling for correction are injurious, because, in English, spelling is not reducible to fixed rules, but is for the most part a matter of simple recollection, and if the eye gets accustomed to the look of ill-spelt words, it is often difficult to recollect the correct mode of spelling them. Syntactical errors are of a totally different kind. They admit of being corrected on fixed principles; and as the learner is pretty sure to meet with numerous examples of faulty sentences, both in conversation and in reading, it seems desirable that he should have some practice in the correction of those mistakes which are of most frequent occurThose who object to exercises of this kind should, to be consistent, exclude from books on logic all specimens of fallacies given for the purpose of correction. Yet those who have studied and taught logic are aware that few exercises are more beneficial."-MASON: "English Grammar," ed. 1861, p. 173.