Language is a growth, and like every other growth, is primarily dependent upon an inward vital energy. It has its origins and its development in answer to an instinctive desire of the soul to express its thoughts and feelings. The power of speech is stimulated by the presence of external objects, and takes the actual form by means of an unconscious ability to imitate the vocal symbols which chance to be made the conventional representatives of thought. It matters not to what nation or people the child mainly belong: be he English, French, German, or Chinese, it is all the same. The speech which the child hears in childhood becomes that child’s vernacular tongue, and all other languages are foreign. Place a child among the cultivated and refined, and that child employs, not knowing why, the polished speech of the child’s guardians and associates. On the other hand,  if the child is raised among the illiterate, that child as readily and surely accepts as his native language, as his mother tongue, the words and modes of expression of his guardians and associates.

Unfortunately for the teacher, the period for direct instruction and cultivation of language learning does not come until after instinct and habits have given a degree of permanency to these malformations that have grown into a vital union with all that is good in the child’s style of speaking. The task of correction had become doubly difficult, requiring the uprooting of old expressions and the planting and nurturing of new habits. Just what should be done to give the child a knowledge of a foreign language, must now be done to establish a correct and refined use of the child’s own native language. It is not abstract principles that the child wants, but rather a practical use of well- authorized expressions. These the child or student will adopt, not by repeating rules, but by discarding the informal and sometimes faulty and using more formal usage. The child learns to speak English by speaking English. He learns the use of new expressions by using them. Of what consequence, then, is the how he obtains them, whether by rule, or by direct dictation from the teacher? The time for the teacher to commence the process of cultivation is the day that the student enters school.

How unfortunate is the prevailing impression that the cultivation of the language and the study of grammar, as a science, must begin together! There is no period from the time the child begins to speak, throughout his whole life, during which his language may not be improved. On the contrary, there is a time when the technical and scientific statements of grammar are of little or no use. They become valuable when the child has reached such a degree of development as shall enable the child to comprehend their application. Shall all the earlier period of his school life be passed without a systematic effort to cultivate his power to use the language correctly?

Not a few teachers labor under a mistaken idea of the proper function of grammatical rules. Mere rules cannot correct an inveterate habit; the pupil may repeat them with entire verbal accuracy again and again, and as often violate them in his very next utterance. The rules merely inform him of a given analogy of the language.  His habit is stronger than his rule, and can be overcome only by that resolute effort and determined purpose which might have given him success at any earlier period, guided merely by the dictation of the teacher. The difference would be this: then, he would have received his law from the teacher; now, he is a law unto himself. He has the means of correction at this own command.  But it is only a persistent obedience to law, in either case, that insures success. The rules of grammar are the criteria by which he can test his own language; but it depends upon himself whether these tests shall be applied and enforced. The advantage which he enjoys over those who are ignorant of rules of grammar is  that he may always know whether he is right or wrong, while they are ever in doubt as to the correctness of their own expressions.

The following work contains a discussion of the principles of English Grammar. The fundamental rule by which the subject has been developed is  that no theory of grammar is true or reliable that cannot be abundantly verified by direct appeals to the usage of standard authors.  The grammar of a language should be derived from the language itself.  It is not the province of the grammarian to legislate in matters of language, but to classify and arrange its forms and principles by a careful study of its analogies as seen in the usage of the best writers.  The grammarian does not make the rules and definitions which express these analogies.  They had already existed, and were obeyed – unconsciously, it is true – long before he formed them into words and published them.  Nor are they authoritative because the grammarian has uttered them, but simply because they are just and faithful interpretations of the already existing laws which underlie and pervade the language itself.  The grammarian is the discoverer – not an inventor, not a dictator – but is true to his task just so far as he investigates and reinvestigates original sources found in the language itself, not, of course, rejecting the light which contemporary or previous labor has shed upon his pathway.

In the following classification of the principles of Grammar, great prominence has been given to thought and ideas in their relation to forms. The complete sentence is at first regarded as a unit – an expression of a complete thought – and that, too, whatever may be the number of propositions combined in it, or whatever may be the characteristic of the thought, as a statement, a command, an inquiry, or an exclamation. The thought determines the sentence. The classification of the sentence depends upon the specific peculiarities. Again, in separating the sentence into its parts, the element is taken as the unit, an expression of a single idea of the full thought, and that, too, whether it be a single word or a group of words. Here again the idea determines the element, while the classification depends upon some peculiarity of the element itself. Again an element of the sentence may itself contain elements which may all unite to express one of the chief ideas of the whole sentence. These, in like manner, are determined and classified. Finally, each single element is itself a word, or may be separated into the words that form it. Thus, it will be seen that the sentence is not treated at first as an assemblage of words (which is the usual way), but as an assemblage of elements variously expressed ; and in the final analysis, these elements are reduced to words. It is this peculiarity that brings learners into sympathy with the idea, itself, the vital power that determines all of the forms of the sentence. It gives us an interior view of its structure, and enables us to witness its growth and to sit in judgment with the writer in the choice of forms.

The usage of the English language will be found to contain the same classifications of sentences and elements that are enabled in the grammar analysis of the language, and in all that pertains to the classification, modification, and construction of words, it is believed , is sufficiently full.

A careful perusal of this book, it is believed, will justify the following statements of particulars:

1. It recognizes the sentence as a growth from the subject and the predicate and proceeds, step by step, to examine each accumulation around these as a center.
2. It gives the relation and effect of whole expressions; that is, it teaches how to parse these, as well as to parse single words. This is an advantage lost sight of in most treatises.
3. It teaches how to parse every kind of word. 
4. It discriminates clearly between important matter to be studied and useful matter to be only read.
5. The several subjects are developed logically and, it is believed, stated clearly.
   6. The author has not evaded or left without an opinion distinctly stated those perplexing points that often annoy the teacher.
6. It will be found to contain a great variety of models for parsing and analysis.
7. So far as a textbook can do it, the pupil is made to see and apply his knowledge as fast as he acquires it, by means of exercises that compel him to think, write, and invent for himself.
8. A copious index will enable the teacher to turn readily to any topic.
9. The mechanical execution, both as it represents printing and binding, is superior.

The author acknowledges his indebtedness to many friends for a great variety of suggestions which he has noted, and embodied in some for or other in these pages. A few changes have been made in the arrangement of the matter, and slight modifications will be found in the matter itself. As a whole, it is hoped, the work will be found both complete and convenient as a textbook of English Grammar.

Samuel S. Greene A.M.
Providence, July 1867