How to parse. ...

PREFACE.

vii

language -always provided that he is well acquainted
with the particular language in its regular expressions.
Not much space is given to Analysis; but perhaps as
much as the subject deserves. If this subject is to be
taught at all - and there is much in it that constitutes
a useful mental exercise -it ought, in the opinion of
the author, to be disencumbered of its present technicalities, and to be taught more logically. For exampie, in most treatises on Analysis, it is assumed that,
in such a sentence as:"Feeling the man's hand in my pocket I turned suddenly
round,"
-the words " feeling the man's hand " are an Adjective Phrase, or " Enlargement of the Subject." But
nothing surely ought to be more obvious than that
(whatever the grammatical construction may be) I' feeling" here means " when, or because I felt," and is nearly
the same as "on feeling;" so that the words in question form really an Adverbial, and not an Adjectival
Phrase. It is almost startling that this Adjectival error
should have been gravely inculcated for a generation in
the best, as in the worst, treatises on English Grammar.
Possibly the servile imitation of Latin Grammar -the
ruin of all good English teaching —has been at work
here, as in so many other cases, assimilating the English to the Latin Active Participle, and ignoring the
extent to which the English Participle has been merged
in the English Verbal Noun.'
For these reasons, in the Chapter on Analysis, several changes have been introduced with the view of discarding technicalities: and the terms Phrase, Clause,
and Sentence, are rigidly used according to their definitions. (See Glossary and also Par. 239.)2
In the " Hints on Spelling," Paragraphs 266-291,
an attempt has been made to give explanations, or
1 See Paragraphs 585-595.
2 I gladly acknowledge my obligation to Mr. Mason for his excellent method of indicating the Subordination of Sentences by underlining.