The Child's Own English Book; An Elementary English Grammar - Book One , livre ebook

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This scarce antiquarian book comprises a comprehensive and accessible guide written with the intention of easing children into the basic principles of English grammar. This first volume treats only the parts of speech, the growth of the simple sentence, punctuation, and common errors in English. Chapters included in this book are: The Noun, The Adjective, The Pronoun, The Verb, The Adverb, The Preposition, The Conjunction, The Interjection, Review, Errors in English, and Punctuation Mistakes. A wonderful book to use as the basis of grammar lessons for children, this rare text is a must-have for discerning parents and constitutes a great addition to any collection of antiquarian linguistic texts. We are proud to republish this book here complete with a new introduction to the subject.

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Préscolaire

Primaire

École maternelle

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Publié par	Read Books Ltd.
Date de parution	06 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	20
EAN13	9781528763103
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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LIPPINCOTT S SCHOOL TEXT SERIES
EDITED BY WILLIAM F. RUSSELL, P H .D.
DEAN, COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

THE CHILD S OWN ENGLISH BOOK
AN ELEMENTARY ENGLISH GRAMMAR
ALICE E. BALL
FORMERLY HEAD OF THE INTERMEDIATE DEPARTMENT, HATHA WAY-BROWN SCHOOL, CLEVELAND, OHIO AUTHOR OF A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
E. H. SUYDAM
BOOK ONE
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Introduction to English Grammar
English grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. There are many historical, social and regional variations of English, but there are eight main word classes or parts of speech, that are traditionally distinguished: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Other important grammatical categories are negation, clause and sentence structure; including questions, imperatives and dependent clauses.
The first published English grammar was a Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), written by William Bullokar. It had the stated goal of demonstrating that English was just as rule-based as Latin. Bullokar s grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily s Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), used in English schools at that time, having been prescribed for them in 1542 by Henry VIII. (This point interestingly relates to current debates about prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to grammar: the former prescribes how English should be spoken-e.g. a teacher showing students how to write; the latter describes how English is spoken- e.g. a sociolinguist studying word use in a population. It comes as no surprise that the Tudor monarch was of the former camp). Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a reformed spelling system of his own invention; but many English grammars, for much of the century after Bullokar s effort, were written in Latin, especially by authors who were aiming to be scholarly. John Wallis s Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1685) was the last English grammar written in Latin.
It was really during the nineteenth century that modern-language studies became systematized though. In the case of English, this happened first in continental Europe, where it was studied by historical and comparative linguists. In 1832, Danish philologist, Rasmus Rask, published an English grammar, Engelsk Forml re as part of his extensive comparative studies in the grammars of Indo-European languages. German philologist, Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, included English grammar in his monumental grammar of Germanic languages, Deutsche Grammatik (1822-1837). And the German historian, Eduard Adolf Maetzner published his 1,700 page Englische Grammatik between 1860 and 1865. Although such works contributed little in terms of fresh approaches to the intrinsic study of English grammar, they nonetheless showed that English was being seriously studied by professional linguists.
As phonology became a fully-fledged field, spoken English began to be studied scientifically, generating by the end of the nineteenth century an international enterprise investigating the structure of the language. This enterprise comprised scholars at various universities, their students who were training to be teachers of English, and journals publishing new research. All the pieces were in place for new large-scale English grammars which combined the disparate approaches of the previous decades. The first work to lay claim to the new scholarship was British linguist Henry Sweet s A new English grammar: logical and historical , published in two parts (1892-6). The title suggests not only continuity and contrast with the work of scholars like Maetzner, but also kinship with the contemporary A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (begun 1884), and later, the Oxford English Dictionary (1895).
Despite such efforts, numerous English grammatical constructions are still in dispute. Examples of such irritations are the Generic you , e.g., Brushing your teeth is a good habit , as opposed to Brushing one s teeth is a good habit. Split infinitives , e.g., To boldly go where no one has gone before , as opposed to To go boldly where no one has gone before and the use of like as a conjunction, e.g., Like I said , as opposed to As I said. There are numerous circumstances, largely peculiar to the English language, which add to such problems, namely that there is no central grammatical authority. Unlike some languages, such as French, which has the Academie fran aise, Italian, which has the Accademia della Crusca, or Spanish, with the Real Academia Espa ola, English has no authoritative governing academy. For this reason, different works of reference can be considered authoritative. Some people argue that, lacking a recognized authority, correctness is defined by common use. That is, once its use is sufficiently prevalent, a certain construction or use becomes correct. Older or better-established constructions-or those perceived as such- are considered superior by some (even those constructions that are little used anywhere but in the most formal writing and therefore considered obsolete by many). Thus, English grammar, and the debates resulting from it, is an area still very much alive. It is hoped that the current reader enjoys this book.
PREFACE
O UR semi-grammarless age-a period of conflicting opinions regarding the teaching of English in lower schools-has resulted in confusion of mind to many pupils, and in discouragement to many upper-class teachers.
Because of the writer s firm conviction that the difficulties with the subject in disrepute are largely owing to wrong methods of presentation, an attempt is now made to approach it from a new angle. Two of the strongest factors in child-growth-love of play and a strong dramatic instinct-are used to assist in bringing life to what has usually seemed a dead language, or, at best, a cordially disliked subject.
The query of the anti-grammar group is always, Of what use to a fifth- or sixth-grade child is knowledge of a noun? The pro-grammar adherents agree that unless such knowledge is made a part of the child s experience in a vital, organic way, it is futile; but they believe that, as preparation for more advanced, critical study in later years, it is as essential to know early the fundamental structure of the English tongue, as it is to know geographical nomenclature, or the simple elements of arithmetic.
The use of games in teaching spelling and correct habits of oral speech has been proved of value; it is the purpose of this book to apply similar methods to the study of grammar. Many of the lessons in this text-book have been used successfully in the fifth and sixth grades of the Hathaway-Brown School of Cleveland. The lesson on the noun was presented to a fourth-primary class.
The writer has long been aware that word-games have intense interest to children during the age previous to adolescence, when their alert senses and eager curiosity, their active imaginations and retentive memories make acquisition of language a natural process. It is then that the foundations for the later, more formal study of English grammar may be laid, while there are opportunities for the frequent and necessary drills that a crowded curriculum later prohibits.
After adolescence, interest in word-games and drills declines, though it is the period when the greater part of such work is attempted. When the children grow older, more difficult, more complex phases may be presented successfully, though much of what was formerly assigned to grammar-schools is now believed to lie within the provinces of high-schools and colleges.
In the elementary work of the past, stress was first laid upon parsing, and later upon excessive analysis. The subject has usually been approached from an adult s point of view, instead of inductively, synthetically, and from the standpoint of the child s interest and development. Unsatisfactory results are the direct outcome of such unscientific procedure.
This first volume treats only of the parts of speech, the growth of the simple sentence, punctuation, and common errors in English. No attempt has been made to treat subdivisions of the subject, except where necessary to make clear the function of a part of speech. Grammatical terminology has been greatly simplified. Writers of text-books on grammar are likely to forget that much concrete material must be supplied to immature minds; for abstract grammar presents as serious difficulties to many children as do Greek and Sanskrit to older students.
A second volume is to follow, treated in a method similar to that employed in this first book.
T HE A UTHOR .
A UGUST , 1920
CONTENTS
I. T HE N OUN
II. T HE A DJECTIVE
III. T HE P RONOUN
IV. T HE V ERB
V. T HE A DVERB
VI. T HE P REPOSITION
VII. T HE C ONJUNCTION
VIII. T HE I NTERJECTION
S UMMARY
IX. R EVIEW
X. E RRORS IN E NGLISH
XI. P UNCTUATION M ARKS
PART ONE
THE NOUN
I
D ID you ever think how strange the world would seem if you could not talk, and if no one could talk to you? It is quite possible that you might make many of your wants known by means of gestures, and you might make yourself understood in some measure. You may find that out for yourself, if you will try some day to see how many things you can make a playmate understand by using gestures only.
But think of