Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/728



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX.

OBS. 1.—In the foregoing code of syntax, the author has taken the parts of speech in their order, and comprised all the general principles of relation, agreement, and government, in twenty-four leading Rules. Of these rules, eight—(namely, the 1st, of Articles; the 4th, of Possessives; the 9th, of Adjectives; the 20th, of Participles; the 21st, of Adverbs; the 22d, of Conjunctions; the 23d, of Prepositions; and the 24th, of Interjections—) are used only in parsing. The remaining sixteen, because they embrace principles that are sometimes violated in practice, answer the double purpose of parsing and correcting. The Exceptions, of which there are thirty-two, (all occasionally applicable in parsing,) belong to nine different rules, and refer to all the parts of speech, except nouns and interjections. The Notes, of which there are one hundred and fifty-two, are subordinate rules of syntax, not designed to be used in parsing, but formed for the exposition and correction of so many different forms of false grammar. The Observations, of which there are, in this part of the work, without the present series, four hundred and ninety-seven, are designed not only to defend and confirm the doctrines adopted by the author, but to explain the arrangement of words, and whatever is difficult or peculiar in construction.

OBS. 2.—The rules in a system of syntax may be more or less comprehensive, as well as more or less simple or complex; consequently they may, without deficiency or redundance, be more or less numerous. But either complexity or vagueness, as well as redundance or deficiency, is a fault; and, when all these faults are properly avoided, and the two great ends of methodical syntax, parsing and correcting, are duly answered, perhaps the requisite number of syntactical rules, or grammatical canons, will no longer appear very indeterminate. In the preceding chapters, the essential principles of English syntax are supposed to be pretty fully developed; but there are yet to be exhibited some forms of error, which must be corrected under other heads or maxims, and for the treatment of which the several dogmas of this chapter are added. Completeness in the system, however, does not imply that it must have shown the pupil how to correct every form of language that is amiss: for there may be in composition many errors of such a nature that no rule of grammar can show, either what should be substituted for the faulty expression, or what fashion of amendment may be the most eligible. The inaccuracy may be gross and obvious, but the correction difficult or impossible. Because the sentence may require a change throughout; and a total change is not properly a correction; it is a substitution of something new, for what was, perhaps, in itself incorrigible.

OBS. 3.—The notes which are above denominated Critical or General, are not all of them obvi-