Higher Lessons in English by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg (small books to read TXT) 📖

8. Give and illustrate the principles which guide in the use of the mode and tense forms, and of the person and number forms.—Lessons 140, 141,

142.

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LESSON 143.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

Lesson 112.—What are Modifications? Have English words many inflections? Have they lost any? What is Number? Define the singular and the plural number. How is the plural of nouns regularly formed? In what ways may the plural be formed irregularly? Illustrate.

Lesson 113.—Give the plural of some nouns adopted from other languages. How do compounds form the plural? Illustrate the several ways. How do letters, figures, etc. form the plural? Illustrate.

Lesson 114.—Give examples of nouns having each two plurals differing in meaning. Some which have the same form in both numbers. Some which have no plural. Some which are always plural. What is said of the number of collective nouns?

Lesson 116.—In what four ways may the number of nouns be determined? Illustrate.

Lesson 117.—What is Gender? Define the different genders. What is the difference between sex and gender? The gender of English nouns follows what? Have English nouns a neuter form? Have all English nouns a masculine and a feminine form? In what three ways may the masculine of nouns be distinguished from the feminine? Illustrate. Give the three gender forms of the pronoun.

Lesson 118.—How is gender in grammar important? When is the pronoun of the masculine gender used? When is the neuter pronoun it used? By the aid of what pronouns are inanimate things personified? In personification, when is the masculine pronoun used, and when is the feminine? Illustrate. What is the Caution relating to gender?

Lesson 119.—What is Person? Is the person of nouns marked by form? Define the three persons. When is a noun in the first person? In the second person? What classes of words have distinctive person forms? Why is person regarded in grammar? What is Case? Define the three cases. What is the case of a noun used independently? Of an explanatory modifier? Of an objective complement? Of a noun or pronoun used as attribute complement? Illustrate all these.

Lesson 121.—What is Parsing? Illustrate the parsing of nouns.

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LESSON 144.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

Lesson 122.—How many case forms have nouns, and what are they? How is the possessive of nouns in the singular formed? Of nouns in the plural? Illustrate. What is the possessive sign? To which word of compound names or of groups of words treated as such is the sign added? Illustrate. Instead of the possessive form, what may be used? Illustrate.

Lesson 123.—In what case alone can mistakes in the construction of nouns occur? Illustrate the Cautions relating to possessive forms.

Lesson 124.—What is Declension? Decline girl and tooth. Decline the several personal pronouns, the relative and the interrogative. What adjective pronouns are declined wholly or in part? Illustrate.

Lesson 125.—What words in the language have each three different case forms? What are the nominative, and what the objective, forms of the pronouns?

Lesson 127.—What one modification have adjectives? What is Comparison? Define the three degrees. How are adjectives regularly compared? What are the Rules for Spelling? Illustrate them. How are adjectives of more than one syllable generally compared? How are degrees of diminution expressed? Can all adjectives be compared? Illustrate. How are some adverbs compared? Illustrate the irregular comparison of adjectives and adverbs.

Lesson 128.—To how many things does the comparative degree refer? What does it imply? Explain the office of the superlative. What word usually follows the comparative, and what the superlative? Give the Cautions relating to the use of comparatives and superlatives, and illustrate them fully.

Lesson 129.—What is Voice? Of what class of verbs is it a modification? Name and define the two voices. When is the one voice used, and when the other? Into what may the passive form be resolved? Illustrate. What may be mistaken for a verb in the passive voice? Illustrate.

Lesson 130.—In changing a verb from the active to the passive, what does the object complement become? How may an intransitive verb sometimes be made transitive? Illustrate.

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LESSON 145.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

Lesson 131.—What is Mode? Define the four modes. What is Tense? Define the six tenses. Define the infinitive. Define the participle. Define the classes of participles. What are the number and person of a verb?

Lesson 132.—What is Conjugation? Synopsis? What are auxiliary verbs? Name them. What are the principal parts of a verb? What are redundant and what are defective verbs?

Lesson 134.—How many inflectional forms may irregular verbs have? How many have regular verbs? What is said of the subjunctive mode? Of to with the infinitive? How is a verb conjugated in the emphatic form?

Lesson 136.—How is a verb conjugated in the progressive form? How is a transitive verb conjugated in the passive voice? Give an example of a verb in the progressive form with a passive meaning. What does the progressive form denote? Can all verbs be conjugated in this form? Why? Give all the participles of the verbs choose, break, drive, read, lift.

Lesson 137.—How may a verb be conjugated interrogatively? Negatively? Illustrate. How may a question with negation be expressed in the indicative and potential modes?

Lesson 138.—Into what may the compound, or periphrastic, forms of the verb be resolved? Illustrate fully. What is said of the participle in have written, had written, etc.? Give and illustrate the several uses of the six tenses.

Lesson 140.—Show how the general Caution for the use of the verb is frequently violated. When does a conditional or a concessive clause require the verb to be in the indicative? Illustrate. When is the subjunctive used? Illustrate the many uses of the subjunctive.

Lesson 141.—Give and illustrate the general Caution relating to mode and tense forms. Give and illustrate the Caution in regard to will and would, shall and should.

Lesson 142.—Give and illustrate the Cautions relating to the agreement of verbs and pronouns. Illustrate the exceptions and the Remarks.

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ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES FOR ANALYSIS.

+Suggestions for the Study of the following Selections.+

+TO THE TEACHER+.—The pupil has now reached a point where he can afford to drop the diagram—its mission for him is fulfilled. For him to continue its use with these “Additional Examples,” unless it be to outline the relations of clauses or illustrate peculiar constructions, is needless; he will merely be repeating that with which he is already familiar.

These extracts are not given for full analysis or parsing. This, also, the pupil would find profitless, and for the same reason. One gains nothing in doing what he already does well enough—progress is not made in climbing the wheel of a treadmill. But the pupil may here review what has been taught him of the uses of adjective pronouns, of the relatives in restrictive and in unrestrictive clauses, of certain idioms, of double negatives, of the split infinitive, of the subjunctive mode, of the distinctions in meaning between allied verbs, as lie and lay, of certain prepositions, of punctuation, etc. He should study the general character of each sentence, its divisions and subdivisions, the relations of the independent and the dependent parts, and their connection, order, etc. He should note the +periodic structure+ of some of these sentences—of (4) or (19), for instance—the meaning of which remains in suspense till near or at the close. He should note in contrast the +loose structure+ of others—for example, the last sentence in (20)—a sentence that has several points at any one of which a complete thought has been expressed, but the part of the sentence following does not, by itself, make complete sense. Let him try to see which structure is the more natural, and which is the more forcible, and why; and what style gains by a judicious blending of the two.

Especially should the pupil look at the thought in these prose extracts and at the manner in which it is expressed. This will lead him to take a step or two over into the field of literature. If the attempt is made, one condition seems imperative—the pupil should thoroughly understand what the author says. We know no better way to secure this than to exact of him a careful reproduction in his own words of the author’s thought. This will reveal to him the differences between his work and the original; and bring into relief the peculiarity of each author’s style—the stateliness of De Quincey’s, for instance, the vividness of Webster’s, the oratorical character of Macaulay’s, the ruggedness of Carlyle’s, the poetical beauty of Emerson’s, the humor of Irving’s, and the brilliancy of Holmes’s—the last lines from whom are purposely stilted, as we learn from the context.

The pupil may see how ellipses and transpositions and imagery abound in poetry, and how, in the use of these particulars, poets differ from each other. He may note that poems are not pitched in the same key—that the extracts from Wordsworth and Goldsmith and Cowper, for example, deal with common facts and in a homely way, that the one from Lowell is in a higher key, while that from Shelley is all imagination, and is crowded with audacious imagery, all exquisite except in the first line, where the moon, converted by metaphor into a maiden, has that said of her that is inconsistent with her in her new character.

1. It is thought by some people that all those stars which you see glittering so restlessly on a keen, frosty night in a high latitude, and which seem to have been sown broadcast with as much carelessness as grain lies on a threshing-floor, here showing vast zaarahs of desert blue sky, there again lying close, and to some eyes presenting

“The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest,”

are, in fact, gathered into zones or strata; that our own wicked little earth, with the whole of our peculiar solar system, is a part of such a zone; and that all this perfect geometry of the heavens, these radii in the mighty wheel, would become apparent, if we, the spectators, could but survey it from the true center; which center may be far too distant for any vision of man, naked or armed, to reach.—_De Quincey_

2. On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [our fathers] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared—a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.—_Webster_.

3. In some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying, “These are my Jewels.”—_Ruskin_.

4. And, when those who have rivaled her [Athens’s] greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when,