دانلود کتاب A Grammar of the English Language: Volume I: Parts of Speech

This volume of the Grammar contains Parts of Speech and Accidence. The two subjects are closely related and are here treated together. The purpose of the treatise is to describe fully the parts of English speech and their changes of form to express thought. The word ‘form’ does not mean today what it did in the Old English period. It was then associated with the idea of a change of endings to express thought. Most of the old endings have disappeared. The old syntactical framework remains intact, but the grammatical forms, case and verbal endings, have been greatly reduced. This was effected by employing simpler means of expression. For instance, today we often express a change of thought, not by changing the endings, but by changing the position of the words: ‘The hunter (subject) killed the bear’ (object), but ‘The bear (subject) killed the hunter’ (object). Thus position is an important modem English grammatical form. Often, however, we now express our thought without the aid of a grammatical form: I go, you go, we go, they go. The verb here does not express person or number. We feel that the context makes our thought clear. Thus context plays a role in our modern English. In this volume the author has tried very hard to gather together and put into orderly shape everything known to him about English grammatical form or English lack of it.

The formulations of usage are presented, not as fixed rules but as the description of the means employed by English-speaking people to express their thought and feeling. These means are not represented as fixed but as ever changing and developing as the result of the long struggles of the English mind in its unfolding intellectual life to express itself more fully and more simply. Glimpses of important older developments are given here and there throughout the Grammar in order that the reader may obtain an insight into the forces that have been at work shaping English. A careful study of these older developments will enable him to understand his heritage better and will give him a clearer idea of his own relation to it. The story of these older struggles for more complete or more simple expression should be of especial interest to those who are now forming their habits of expression, for this struggle has now become theirs, and the further shaping of the language will soon lie in their hands.