Easy Lessons in English Grammar

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... 277. When two or more Simple sentences of equal importance are joined together by a conjunction, they make up what is commonly called a Compound Sentence. Thus, Birds fly, fishes swim, and reptiles creep, is called a Compound sentence, to distinguish it from a Complex sentence. In such Compound sentences, the Simple sentences are all of equal importance; there is no Principal sentence amongst them. They are therefore called Co-ordinate clauses. But the distinction is of little value, as in analysis and parsing they may be regarded as separate Simple sentences. LESSON XXIX. Farts of Syntax. 278. Syntax contains Rules for constructing and analysing sentences, and these Rules are of two kinds, viz., Rules of Concord, and Rules of Government. 279. Concord is the agreement of words in the same sentence in Person, Number, Gender, or Case. 280. There are four principal Concords: --(1.) Of a Verb with its Subject or Nominative case. (2.) Of a Noun or Pronoun with another Noun or Pronoun in the sentence. (3.) Of a Relative Pronoun with its Antecedent.' (4.) Of an Adjective with the Noun which it qualifies. 281. In English the relation of the Adjective to its Noun cannot in strictness be called a Concord, because as the Adjective does not vary its form for person, number, gender, or case, it cannot be said to agree with its Noun in any of these respects. The Pronominal Adjectives This and That, which agree with their nouns in number, are the only exceptions. 282. Government is the power which some words have of obliging a noun or pronoun in the sentence to be in the Possessive or Objective case or a verb to be in the Infinitive mood. " 283. There are four principal Governments: --(I.) Of a Transitive Verb over its Object; (2.) Of a Transitive...