An English Grammar and Analysis: For Students and Young Teachers

Excerpt from An English Grammar and Analysis: For Students and Young Teachers

Notwithstanding the numerous grammars already published, no apology is need for issuing another. English Grammar, as a science, seems yet to lack the chief feature of a science, namely, "organisation of knowledge." It consists of a great mass of facts imperfectly classified and correlated, and consequently lacks unity and cohesion, and gives to a young student the impression that many of its distinctions and rules are purely arbitrary. This is a serious defect which greatly diminishes the educational value of the study of language, in itself the most general and the most powerful educational instrument the experience and ingenuity of man have devised.

It seemed, therefore, worth while to attempt some improvement in the methods usually followed, and some advance on the results attained. For this purpose the language itself has been made to furnish its facts in such a way as to assist in the classification of them, and in the establishment of principles; and no distinction has been recognised in this work which the language itself does not require.

The end proposed has necessitated rather more independence and freedom in dealing with the subject than has been usual; but without some departure from custom no advance would have been possible. Whether the freedom claimed was necessary or justifiable the reader must judge.

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