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A TREATISE

ON THE

STRUCTURE

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE;

OR THE

ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION

OF

SENTENCES AND THEIR COMPONENT PARTS

WITH

ILLUSTRATIONS AND EXERCISES,

ADAPTED

TO THE USE OF SCHOOLS

BY SAMUEL S. GREENE A. M

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PROVIDENCE, AND PROFESSOR OF THE
NORMAL DEPARTMENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY.

PHILADELPHIA:

COWPERTHWAIT & CO.

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Katered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846
By SAMUEL S. GREENK.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

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PREFACE

Tar following treatise contains, as its title indicates, a system for analyzing sentences. In the preparation of the work, it has been the aim of the author, first, to determine the number and the nature of the elements which can enter into the structure of a sentence, and, secondly, to ascertain their various forms and conditions. Notwithstanding the almost infinite variety of sentences with which the language abounds, it is worthy of remark that the number of different elements in any sentence can never exceed five. It is equally remarkable that the offices which these elements perform are few and uniform, although they may assume an endless variety of forms.

As to the forms of the elements, it would seem, at first, a hopeless task to attempt a classification of them; yet they are found to differ essentially from each other only in three respects. An element may be a word joined to another without a connective, or it may be a word joined by means of a preposition, both together forming a phrase; or it may be a subordinate proposition, joined by a connective, and constituting a clause. Any element may also be subject to three different states or conditions. It may be simple, that is, unmodified or uncompounded; it may be complex, that is, modified by another simple element; or it may be compound, that is, it may consist of two or more simple elements, which in no way modify each other. The same distinction prevails in entire sentences. A sentence containing but one proposition is simple; a sentence containing two propositions, one of which modifies the other, is complex; a sentence containing two propositions which in no way modify each other, is compound.

Some of the numerous advantages arising from studying grammar, or rather language, through the structure of sentences, are the following:-(I.) As a sentence is the expression of a thought, and as the elements of a sentence are expressions for the elements of thought, the pupil who is taught to separate a sentence into its elements, is earning to analyze thought, and consequently to think. (2.) The relations between different forms of thought and appropriate forms of expression, are seen most clearly by means of analysis and construction. (3.) A large proportion of the elements of sentences are not single words, cut combinations or groups of words. These groups perform the office of the substantive, the adjective, or the adverb, and, in some one of

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