The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.
before pressed. “By perseverance,” is an adjunct to weary. Him is governed by weary, and is the antecedent to whom. “Whom he could not surpass in speed,” is a relative clause, or subordinate simple member, having three principal parts—­he, could surpass, and whom.  Not and in speed are adjuncts to the verb could surpass. “He pressed on” is an other simple member, or sentence, and the chief clause here used, the others being subjoined to this.  Its principal parts are two, he and pressed; the latter taking the particle on as an adjunct, and being intransitive.  The words dependent on the nominative he, (to wit, resolving, &c.,) have already been mentioned. Till is a conjunctive adverb of time, connecting the concluding clause to pressed on. “The foot of the mountain stopped his course,” is a subordinate clause and simple member, whose principal parts are—­the subject foot, the verb stopped, and the object course.  The adjuncts of foot are the and of the mountain; the verb in this sentence has no adjunct but course, which is better reckoned a principal word; lastly, his is an adjunct to course, and governed by it.

THIRD METHOD OF ANALYSIS.

Sentences may be partially analyzed by a resolution into their SUBJECTS and their PREDICATES, a method which some late grammarians have borrowed from the logicians; the grammatical subject with its adjuncts, being taken for the logical subject; and the finite verb, which some call the grammatical predicate[330] being, with its subsequent case and the adjuncts of both, denominated the predicate, or the logical predicate.  Thus:—­

EXAMPLE ANALYZED.

“Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present.  Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession, by disgust.  Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.  From the first hint that wakens the fancy, to the hour of actual execution, all is improvement and progress, triumph and felicity.”—­DR. JOHNSON, Rambler.

ANALYSIS.—­Here the first period is a compound sentence, containing two clauses,—­which are connected by that.  In the first clause, emptiness is the grammatical subject, and “the emptiness of human enjoyment” is the logical. Is some would call the grammatical predicate, and “Such is,” or is such, the logical; but the latter consists, as the majority teach, of “the copula” is, and “the attribute,” or “predicate,” such.  In the second clause, (which explains the import of “Such,”) the subject is we; which is unmodified, and in which therefore the logical form and the grammatical coincide and are the same.

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