Higher Lessons in English by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg (popular books to read TXT) 📕

>+Explanation+.—Each other may be treated as one term, or each may be made explanatory of bees.

10. The lamp of a man’s life has three wicks—brain, blood, and breath.

+Explanation.+—Several words may together be explanatory of one.

11. The turtle’s back-bone and breast-bone—its shell and coat of armor—are on the outside of its body.

back-bone shell ============= ======== ‘ ‘ | are and’ ==========(====== ‘and =)=|======= ‘ urtle’s its ‘ | breast-bone ‘ The ' coat

=============/ ========/

12. Cromwell’s rule as Protector began in the year 1653 and ended in 1658.

+Explanation+.—_As, namely, to wit, viz., i.e., e.g.,_ and that is may introduce explanatory modifiers, but they do not seem to connect them to the words modified. In the diagram they stand like as in Lesson 30. Protector is explanatory of Cromwell’s.

13. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, three powerful nations, namely, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, united for the dismemberment of Poland. 14. John, the beloved disciple, lay on his Master’s breast. 15. The petals of the daisy, day’s-eye, close at night and in rainy weather.

 

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LESSON 34.

COMPOSITION—NOUNS AS ADJECTIVE MODIFIERS.

+COMMA—RULE.—An Explanatory Modifier, when it does not restrict the modified term or combine closely with it, is set off by the comma.+ [Footnote: See footnote, Lesson 18]

+Explanation+.—_The words I and O should be written in capital_ letters. The phrase I and O restricts words, that is, limits its application, and no comma is needed.

Jacob’s favorite sons, Joseph and Benjamin, were Rachel’s children. The phrase Joseph and Benjamin explains sons without restricting, and therefore should be set off by the comma.

In each of these expressions, I myself, we boys, William the Conqueror, the explanatory term combines closely with the word explained, and no comma is needed.

+Direction+.—_Give the reasons for the insertion or the omission of commas in these sentences_:—

1. My brother Henry and my brother George belong to a boat-club. 2. The author of Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan, was the son of a tinker. 3. Shakespeare, the great dramatist, was careless of his literary reputation. 4. The conqueror of Mexico, Cortez, was cruel in his treatment of Montezuma. 5. Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, was a Spaniard. 6. The Emperors Napoleon and Alexander met and became fast friends on a raft at Tilsit.

+Direction+.—_Insert commas below, where they are needed, and give your reasons_:—

1. The Franks a warlike people of Germany gave their name to France. 2. My son Joseph has entered college. 3. You blocks! You stones! 0 you hard hearts! 4. Mecca a city in Arabia is sacred in the eyes of Mohammedans. 5. He himself could not go. 6. The poet Spenser lived in the reign of Elizabeth. 7. Elizabeth Queen of England ruled from 1558 to 1603.

+Direction.+—_Compose sentences containing these expressions as explanatory modifiers_:—

The most useful metal; the capital of Turkey; the Imperial City; the great English poets; the hermit; a distinguished American statesman.

+Direction.+—_Punctuate these expressions, and employ each of them in a sentence_:—

See Remark, Lesson 21. Omit or, and note the effect.

1. Palestine or the Holy Land –-. 2. New York or the Empire State –-. 3. New Orleans or the Crescent City –-. 4. The five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch –-.

+Remember+ that (_’s_) and (_’) are the possessive signs—(‘_) being used when s has been added to denote more than one, and (_’s_) in other cases.

+Direction.+—_Copy the following, and note the use of the possessive sign_:—

The lady’s fan; the girl’s bonnet; a dollar’s worth; Burns’s poems; Brown & Co.‘s business; a day’s work; men’s clothing; children’s toys; those girls’ dresses; ladies’ calls; three years’ interest; five dollars’ worth.

+Direction.+—_Make possessive modifiers of the following words, and join them to appropriate nouns_:—

Woman, women; mouse, mice; buffalo, buffaloes; fairy, fairies; hero, heroes; baby, babies; calf, calves.

+Caution.+—Do not use (_’s_) or (_’) with the pronouns its, his, ours, yours, hers, theirs_.

 

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LESSON 35.

NOUNS AS ADVERB MODIFIERS.

+Introductory Hints.+—_He gave me a book_. Here we have what many grammarians call a double object. Book, naming the thing acted upon, they call the direct object; and me, naming the person toward whom the act is directed, they call the +indirect+, or dative, +object+.

You see that me and book do not, like Cornwallis and army, in Washington captured Cornwallis and his army, form a compound object complement; they cannot be connected by a conjunction, for they do not stand in the same relation to the verb gave. The meaning is not, He gave me and the book.

We treat these indirect objects, which generally denote the person to or for whom something is done, as equivalent to phrase modifiers. If we change the order of the words, a preposition must be supplied; as, He gave a book to me. He bought me a book; He bought a book for me. He asked me a question; He asked a question of me. When the indirect object precedes the direct, no preposition is expressed or understood.

Teach, tell, send, promise, permit, and lend are other examples of verbs that take indirect objects.

Besides these indirect objects, +nouns denoting measure+, quantity, weight, time, value, distance, or direction are often used adverbially, being equivalent to phrase modifiers. We walked four miles an hour; It weighs one pound; It is worth a dollar a yard; I went home that way; The wall is ten feet six inches high.

The idiom of the language does not often admit a preposition before nouns denoting measure, direction, etc. In your analysis you need not supply one.

+Analysis.+

1. They offered Caesar the crown three times.

They | offered | crown ========|========================== | times the ––- three Caesar

–––—

+Oral Analysis.+—Caesar and times are nouns used adverbially, being equivalent to adverb phrases modifying the predicate offered.

2. We pay the President of the United States $50,000 a year. 3. He sent his daughter home that way. 4. I gave him a dollar a bushel for his wheat, and ten cents a pound for his sugar. 5. Shakespeare was fifty-two years old the very day of his death. 6. Serpents cast their skin once a year. 7. The famous Charter Oak of Hartford, Conn., fell Aug. 21, 1856. 8. Good land should yield its owner seventy-five bushels of corn an acre. 9. On the fatal field of Zutphen, Sept. 22, 1586, his attendants brought the wounded Sir Philip Sidney a cup of cold water. 10. He magnanimously gave a dying soldier the water. 11. The frog lives several weeks as a fish, and breathes by means of gills. 12. Queen Esther asked King Ahasuerus a favor. 13. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great philosophy. 14. The pure attar of roses is worth twenty or thirty dollars an ounce. 15. Puff-balls have grown six inches in diameter in a single night.

 

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LESSON 36.

REVIEW.

TO THE TEACHER.—See suggestions, Lesson 16.

+Direction.+—_Review from Lesson 28 to Lesson 35, inclusive_.

Give the substance of the “Introductory Hints” (for example, show clearly what two things are essential to a complete predicate; explain what is meant by a complement; distinguish clearly the three kinds of complements; show what parts of speech may be employed for each, and tell what general idea—action, quality, class, or identity—is expressed by each attribute complement or objective complement in your illustrations, etc.). Repeat and illustrate definitions and rules; explain and illustrate fully the distinction between an adjective complement and an adverb modifier; illustrate what is taught of the forms I, we, etc., me, us, etc.; explain and illustrate the use of the possessive sign.

 

Exercises on the Composition of the Sentence and the Paragraph.

(SEE PAGES 156-159.)

TO THE TEACHER.—See suggestions to the teacher, pages 30, 150.

 

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LESSON 37.

VERBS AS ADJECTIVES AND AS NOUNS—PARTICIPLES.

+Introductory Hints.+—_Corn grows; Corn growing._ Here growing differs from grows in lacking the power to assert. Growing is a form of the verb that cannot, like grows, make a complete predicate because it only assumes or implies that the corn does the act. Corn may be called the assumed subject of growing.

Birds, singing, delight us. Here singing does duty (1) as an adjective, describing birds by assuming or implying an act, and (2) as a verb by expressing the act of singing as going on at the time birds delight us.

By singing their songs birds delight us. Here singing has the nature of a verb and that of a noun. As a verb it has an object complement, songs; and as a noun it names the act, and stands as the principal word in a prepositional phrase.

Their singing so sweetly delights us. Here, also, singing has the nature of a verb and that of a noun. As a verb it has an adverb modifier, sweetly, and as a noun it names an act and takes a possessive modifier.

This form of the verb is called the +Participle+ (Lat. pars, a part, and capere, to take) because it partakes of two natures and performs two offices—those of a verb and an adjective, or those of a verb and a noun. (For definition see Lesson 131.)

Singing birds delight us. Here singing has lost its verbal nature, and expresses a permanent quality of birds—telling what kind of birds,—and consequently is a mere adjective. The singing of the birds delights us. Here singing is simply a noun, naming the act and taking adjective modifiers.

There are two kinds of participles; [Footnote: Grammarians are not agreed as to what these words that have the nature of the verb and that of the noun should be called. Some would call the simple forms doing, writing, and injuring, in sentences (1), (6), and (7), Lesson 38, Infinitives. They would also call by the same name such compound forms as being accepted, having been shown, and having said in these expressions: “for the purpose of being accepted;” “is the having been shown over a place;” “I recollect his having said that.” But does it not tax even credulity to believe that a simple Anglo-Saxon infinitive in -an, only one form of which followed a preposition, and that always to, could have developed into many compound forms, used in both voices, following almost any preposition, and modified by the and by nouns and pronouns in the possessive? No wonder the grammarian Mason says, “An infinitive in -ing, set down by some as a modification of the simple infinitive in -an or -en, is a perfectly unwarranted invention.”

Others call these words modernized forms of the Anglo-Saxon Verbal Nouns in -ung, -ing. But this derivation of them encounters the stubborn fact that those verbal nouns never were compound, and never were or could be followed by objects. These words, on the contrary, are compound, as we have seen, and have objects. That they are from nouns in -ung is otherwise, and almost for the same reasons, as incredible as that they are from infinitives in -an.

Others call these words Gerunds. A gerund in Latin is a simple form of the verb in the active voice, never found in the nominative, and