The Mother Tongue Author:George Lyman Kittredge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ENGLISH GRAMMAR. CHAPTER I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 1. Language is the expression of thought by means of spoken or written words. Words are signs made to i... more »ndicate thought. 2. Some words express definite ideas: as, horse, sunset, run, headlong. Other words (like to, from, at, is, was, though) express thought vaguely or in a very general way. Their use in language is to connect the more definite words, and to show their relations to each other. 3. The relation in which a word stands to other words in connected speech is called its Construction. The construction of English words is shown in three ways : (1) by their form; (2) by their order; (3) by the use of little words like to, from, is, etc. 4. Inflection is a change in the form of a word which indicates a change in its meaning: as, George, George's; man, men; kills, killed. 5. Grammar is the science which treats of the Forms and the Constructions of words. 6. The rules of grammar derive their authority from custom or usage. They agree in general with the processes of thought. This chapter summarizes some of the general principles explained in the introductory chapters. chapter{Section 4CHAPTER II. THE PARTS OF SPEECH. 7. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. A study of this stanza of poetry shows that different words in it have different tasks to perform in expressing the poet's thought. Thus, tolls, wind, leaves assert or declare that somebody or something is acting in some manner. Herd,plow- man, world are the names of persons or things. Weary is not the name of anything, but it describes the way. And calls up no picture in our minds, as plowman, or...« less