Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
It seems the invariable tendency of any complicated system of linguistic forms, when made a subject of study, to cut itself off from the living processes which gave rise to it, and become in the student's mind mere matter, an arbitrary thing-in-itself, dead and meaningless. The danger of this tendency has been abundantly recognized in recent text-books of English grammar and composition, which have attempted by various methods to recall the meaning to the form, to re-connect the word on the page with the thought which created it and the situation which shaped and modified it.
Among these attempts the present treatise must be enrolled. It can claim no great originality of conception, since its fundamental postulates of the social function and the organic structure of language have been long familiar to advanced students of philosophy and linguistics. The practical application of these fundamental postulates to the concrete problems of language-teaching is, however, not yet complete. Continued experimentation to this end, in the fields both of grammar and of composition, must be fruitful not only for more vital teaching, but for a sounder pedagogic theory of these subjects.
The desire to treat language-form throughout as directly conditioned by language-function, will explain the order of subjects adopted. Since the sentence, whether simple or elaborate, represents the typical act of thought-communication from speaker to hearer, the business of grammar is to define successively every member of the sentence, every word and every inflection, on the basis of its individual contribution to this act of communication. Thus the sentence is both the beginning and the end of grammatical study; and sentence-analysis, in the largest sense of the term, is its entire subject-matter.
Since this book is designed for the pupil rather than for the teacher, all suggestions as to the teaching of English grammar have been conveyed rather by implication than by specific recommendation. The text itself is, however, designed to indicate a general method of presentation, variable in detail at the will of the individual teacher. Each chapter, it will be evident, presents not the material for any fixed number of class recitations, but rather a single subject, divisible according to the available time, the capacity of the students, and other practical considerations. These conditions will necessarily determine the particular assignment for any given recitation; but they should not be allowed to destroy the essential unity of a subject. The summary and definitions following each lesson may well be used by the teacher to test the students' knowledge of that subject as a whole. Passages printed in brevier are supplementary and subordinate in importance, and hence may be used or omitted at discretion. The questions and exercises are suggestive merely, inviting both modification and supplement by the teacher.
