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PART IV.-RULES OF CONSTRUCTION IN THE SIMPLE SENTENCE.

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RUDIMENTS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR

AND COMPOSITION.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE SIMPLE SENTENCE.

1. Look round the room, and, as your eye falls on some person or thing, make a note of that, which you see: thus

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The words on the right of the line are names of persons and things; and we call them Nouns.

2. Next, try to describe some of the persons and things around you by a single word, expressing some quality (as of size, colour, state) that you observe in them: thus

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The words on the right of the line denote qualities of the persons and things described; and we call such words Adjectives.

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3. I press my hand against a wall, and the wall resists the pressure: I say, "The wall is hard." I press my hand on a pillow, and the pillow yields to the pressure: I say, "The pillow is soft." The words hard and soft are Adjectives, denoting qualities, which we name hardness and softness. Such names of qualities are called Abstract Nouns.

4. A Pronoun is a word used instead of a Noun. For example: the speaker names himself by the Pronoun I, the person to whom he speaks by the Pronoun Thou or the Pronoun You, and the person of whom he speaks by one of the Pronouns He or She: and all these words are called Personal Pronouns.

A Pronoun differs from a Noun in having a wider range of meaning: I, for instance, is the name that every speaker gives to himself.

5. When we put words together, to make a statement, as Snow is white; to ask a question, as Are you ready? or to give an order, as Ring the bell, we form a Sentence. We will first consider sentences expressing simple statements of fact. 6. To form a sentence we must have

(1) Something to speak about: this is called the Subject.

(2) Something to say of it: this is called the Predicate. Thus in the sentence, Snow is white, the Noun snow is the subject, the Adjective white is the predicate, and the word is, connecting the subject and the predicate, is called the Copula, or Link.

7. A Verb is a word used to make a statement about the condition or action of the subject, of which we are speaking.

8. There are two great classes of Verbs:

(1) Those that make a statement about the condition of the subject.

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