A Compend of English Grammar (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Compend of English Grammar

The unit of study in grammar is the sentence. It is true that grammar has much to say about words, but it deals with them only as elements of sentences. It is the function of a word in a sentence that determines what part of speech it is, and, if it is inflected, what form it shall take.

As language is only the garment in which thought clothes itself, grammar has both a logical and a formal side. On the former, it deals with the various logical relations that underlie the sentence; on the latter, it deals with the external forms through which these relations are expressed. These forms differ in different languages. And in the same language at different periods; but the relations underlying them are universal and unchangeable. They are the basic facts of grammar. In our study of grammar, therefore, we shall proceed from the thought to the form in which, in the English lan guage, it embodies itself.

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