Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/468

 together.

RULE XIV.--FINITE VERBS.

Every finite Verb must agree with its subject, or nominative, in person and number.

RULE XV.--FINITE VERBS.

When the nominative is a collective noun conveying the idea of plurality, the Verb must agree with it in the plural number.

RULE XVI.--FINITE VERBS.

When a Verb has two or more nominatives connected by and, it must agree with them jointly in the plural, because they are taken together.

RULE XVII.--FINITE VERBS.

When a Verb has two or more nominatives connected by or or nor, it must agree with them singly, and not as if taken together.

RULE XVIII.--INFINITIVES.

The Infinitive Mood is governed in general by the preposition TO, which commonly connects it to a finite verb.

RULE XIX.--INFINITIVES.

The active verbs, bid, dare, feel, hear, let, make, need, see, and their participles, usually take the Infinitive after them without the preposition TO.

RULE XX.--PARTICIPLES.

Participles relate to nouns or pronouns, or else are governed by prepositions.

RULE XXI.--ADVERBS.

Adverbs relate to verbs, participles, adjectives, or other adverbs.

RULE XXII.--CONJUNCTIONS.

Conjunctions connect words, sentences, or parts of sentences.

RULE XXIII.--PREPOSITIONS.

Prepositions show the relations of words, and of the things or thoughts expressed by them.

RULE XXIV.--INTERJECTIONS.

Interjections have no dependent construction; they are put absolute, either alone, or with other words.

GENERAL OR CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SYNTAX.

OBS. 1.--An explanation of the relation, agreement, government, and arrangement, of words in sentences, constitutes that part of grammar which we call Syntax. But many grammarians, representing this branch of their subject as consisting of two parts only, "concord and government" say little or nothing of the relation and arrangement of words, except as these are involved in the others. The four things are essentially different in their nature, as may be seen by the definitions given above, yet not so distinct in practice that they can well be made the basis of any perfect division of the rules of syntax. I have therefore, on this occasion, preferred the order of the parts of speech; each of which will form a chapter in the Syntax of this work, as each forms a chapter in the Etymology.

OBS. 2.--Agreement and concord are one and the same thing. Relation and agreement, though different, may yet coincide, and be taken together. The latter is moreover naturally allied to the former. Seven of the ten parts of speech are, with a few exceptions, incapable of any agreement; of these the relation and use must be explained in parsing; and all requisite agreement between any of the rest, is confined to words that relate to each other. For one word may relate to an other and not agree with it; but there is never any necessary agreement between words that have not a relation one to the other, or a connexion according to the sense. Any similarity happening between unconnected words, is no syntactical concord, though it may rank the terms in the same class