Author: John Williams

Publisher:

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9781332175932

Excerpt from The Parser's Manual: Embracing Classified Examples in Nearly Every Variety of English Construction: Designed for Schools and for the Use of Private Students The text-books of English Grammar are universally deficient in two particulars: the first is, that the parsing exercises are not sufficiently varied; and the second is, that the exercises lack in point of copiousness. Difficult constructions are often left unnoticed; important principles are frequently illustrated by only a single example, and that not designed to be parsed; and when a formal exercise in parsing is given, the examples are hardly ever sufficiently numerous. As a consequence of this paucity of examples in the text-books, and the deficiency in drill resulting therefrom, students generally fail to become adepts in this department of learning. But few of the pupils in our best taught schools ever acquire the ability to tell, in many instances, to what part of speech a word in a given sentence belongs. There is not one in a hundred of those who have graduated in the study of English Grammar, that can recognize adjectives with certainty when they stand immediately after the nouns to which they relate. There is not one in a thousand who ever masters the subject of the participles, or becomes familiar with the subjunctive and infinitive modes in all their phases. The list of prepositions being small, most students learn to call at sight the more common words belonging to this part of speech; but there is hardly one in ten thousand who can distinguish a preposition by its office, or who, when he meets with an unusual preposition, will recognize it as belonging to this class of words. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.