THE STRUCTURE
OF THE
ENGLISH SENTENCE
BY
LILLIAN G. KIMBALL
INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN
NEW YORK ·:· CINCINNATI ·:· CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1900
BY LILLIAN G. KIMBALL
Eng. Sentence
E-V 20
PREFACE
It has long seemed to me both unfortunate and wrong that many pupils
leave school with no keen delight in the study of English grammar,
and with the mistaken idea that it is mainly a study of rules and
definitions based upon the forms of mere words. Far from this, it
should be from the beginning a study of thought. Words should be
examined solely from the point of view of their function in the
sentence, the part they play in the communication of thought. Always
the sentence should be the unit of study, and it should be looked
at, not primarily as expressing a thought that was once in the mind
of its author, but rather as forever communicating thought to the
minds of its readers. For men would neither speak nor write without
an audience. Their aim is not to get their thought into words for
satisfaction to themselves, but to convey thought by means of words to
their fellow-men. Therefore it is that in all language study, in all
language teaching, the governing idea should be, not expression, but
communication, of thought.
It is now universally conceded that the purposes of grammar study
are three; namely, and in the order of their importance and
their realization,--1. to discipline the mind; 2. to aid in the
interpretation of speech and literature; 3. to facilitate the correct
expression of thought. It cannot, then, be denied that a rational
investigation of the structure of English sentences is far more
important than any other phase of grammar study, and for three
reasons:--1. it is a study of thought, and as such must discipline the
mind; 2. it trains the student through practice, which is the most
effective way, to interpret the thought of others; 3. by presenting to
him the best models for imitation, it aids him in communicating clearly
his own thoughts.
Believing this, and knowing from much experience that not until
students have examined the structure of sentences in relation to
the thought embodied, do they have any vital or useful knowledge of
etymology and syntax, I have long thought that a book was needed which
should deal only with the analysis of sentences, the culminating phase
of grammar study, for which all previous work is a preparation. The
book that I have prepared is not intended to supplant any text-book in
grammar, but rather to provide for a profitable continuation of grammar
study in high schools and normal schools. It is based upon the English
sentence as it has been written during the present century. No attempt
has been made to criticize any form or variation of sentence structure.
Instead, sentences are examined as they have been constructed by
reputable authors, with a view to determining the adequacy of their
structure to the communication of thought.
My highest aim and my sincerest hope have been to present worthy
matter in such a way as to require and stimulate good thinking on the
part of students, and to make them marvel and rejoice at the perfect
adaptability of the English sentence to the noble burden that it bears,
that of communicating thought.
L. G. K.
OSHKOSH, WIS., May, 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Proposition 7
II. The Classification of Propositions 11
III. The Classification of Sentences according to Structure 18
IV. The Classification of Sentences according to Form 23
V. The Adjective Clause 28
VI. The Analysis of Simple, Partially Compound, and
Complex Sentences 38
VII. The Substantive Clause 42
VIII. Analysis of Sentences containing Noun Clauses 51
IX. The Adverbial Clause of Time 53
X. The Adverbial Clause of Place 59
XI. The Adverbial Clause of Manner 62
XII. The Analysis of Sentences 66
XIII. The Adverbial Clause of Cause 68
XIV. Clauses of Purpose and Result 73
XV. The Adverbial Clause of Condition 78
XVI. The Adverbial Clause of Concession 82
XVII. The Adverbial Clause of Degree or Comparison 87
XVIII. The Compound Sentence 97
XIX. The Conjunction in some of its Uses 105
XX. The Infinitive Phrase 113
XXI. The Participial Phrase 129
XXII. The Gerund 139
XXIII. The Prepositional Phrase 146
XXIV. The Appositive Phrase 161
XXV. The Direct Object 169
XXVI. The Subjective Complement 175
XXVII. The Objective Complement 179
XXVIII. The Indirect Object 188
XXIX. The Adverbial Noun 189
XXX. Peculiar Modifications 193
XXXI. Independent Elements 201
XXXII. Sentence Modifiers 209
XXXIII. Elliptical Sentences 214
MISCELLANEOUS SENTENCES FOR ANALYSIS 228
INDEX 241
THE
STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH SENTENCE
CHAPTER I
THE PROPOSITION
In the mind of every human being there are innumerable ideas, or mental
pictures, gathered from previous experience. Whenever we perceive a
relation between any two of these ideas, we form a judgment, or, in
other words, have a thought. If we wish to communicate our thought we
ordinarily express it in words, and this verbal expression of a thought
we call a sentence.
For example, I have an idea of _children_ and an idea of the activity
called _play_; I see a relation between them, that of agent and thing
done; I affirm this relation, and have the sentence, _Children play_.
Or I detect a relation between _flower_ and _whiteness_, and say, _The
flower is white_. Or I fail to establish such a relation and so deny
the former statement by saying, _The flower is not white_. In each case
my sentence serves the great purpose of communicating thought; and it
does this by calling up in the mind of the reader the same combination
of ideas that exists in my mind.
Another name for sentences like those just formed, is _proposition_,
a proposition being the expression of one thought. But since a
proposition is the statement of a judgment, it must contain two ideas.
One of these, denoting that of which something is asserted, we call
the _subject_; the other, denoting what is said of the subject, we call
the _predicate_. The relation between these two ideas cannot always
be expressed by means of two words. If we wish to assert a relation
between _water_ and _freshness_, we must use at least three words,
_Water is fresh_; the word _is_ contains little, if any, meaning, but
is necessary for the grammatical expression of the thought.
Although a proposition must contain at least two ideas, it may contain
any number of them. For example, I may expand the proposition,
_Children play_, by additional ideas, telling (1) whose children, (2)
a characteristic of the children, (3) what they play, (4) where they
play, (5) when they play,--_My neighbor’s little children play hide and
seek in their yard every evening_. Still I have only one proposition,
for the number of propositions in a sentence depends on the number of
judgments, or thoughts, expressed,--in other words, on the number of
assertions made; and here there is but one, that made essentially by
the verb _play_.
All sentences, however, are not single propositions, for in building
sentences we often go a step further than seeing the relation between
ideas, that is, we see the relation between thoughts; and so, instead
of combining mere words, we combine whole propositions into one
sentence. Take, for example, the two propositions, _Children play_, and
_Children enjoy play_. I may see that the second fact is a cause of the
first, and, by combining the two so as to bring out this relation of
cause and effect, get the sentence, _Children play because they enjoy
it_, wherein I substitute the pronouns they and it for the already
known words _children_ and _play_.
Or take the two propositions, _The lion roared_, and _The hyena
laughed_. I may wish to tell some one that these two actions were
related in time, occurring simultaneously; I do this by saying, _The
lion roared and the hyena laughed_, where I have one sentence, but
made of two propositions, because conveying two thoughts. I might put
in other thoughts, telling (1) which lion, (2) why he roared, (3) how
long the hyena laughed,--The lion _that was kept in the cage near the
door_ roared _because the keeper did not bring his food_, and the hyena
laughed _till he had set all the animals around him in an uproar_. Here
I have one sentence containing five thoughts, therefore made up of five
propositions.
However, it is not with composition, the building up of sentences, that
we are to concern ourselves, so much as with an examination into the
structure of the finished product. Now, when we study the structure of
the human body, we look upon it first as a symmetrical whole, then we
separate it into its largest, most distinct members,--the head, the
trunk, the arms, the legs. After we have noted the relations of these
parts, we take up each part as a whole and proceed again in the same
way. In analyzing sentences we shall pursue the same method.
Every sentence is a unit just as the body is; like the body, too,
it is made up of smaller units. In studying its structure we should
first of all find the units which compose the sentence-unit. If the
sentence is a single proposition, the constituent units are, of course,
the subject and the predicate. But if the sentence is a combination
of propositions, as is oftener the case, then its chief units are
these propositions. Therefore, as a foundation for the analysis of
sentences, we must be able to determine readily how many propositions a
given sentence contains. Our first exercise will be devoted to this end.
Exercise 1
Resolve the following sentences into single propositions. Remember that
the number of propositions depends on the number of assertions made.
1. There are thousands of years between the stone hatchet and the
machine shop.--_C. W. Eliot._
2. All along the Atlantic, the country is bordered by a broad tract,
called the _tierra caliente_, or hot region, which has the usual high
temperature of equinoctial lands.--_Prescott._
3. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of
matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a
sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant
use.--_Irving._
4. Every thing around me wore that happy look which makes the heart
glad.--_Longfellow._
5. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island
on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over
rocks and hills, until we reached a garden where we saw a man
walking.--_Thackeray._
6. As a painter may draw a cloud so that we recognize its general
truth, though the boundaries of real clouds never remain the same for
two minutes together, so, amid the changes of feature and complexion,
brought about by commingling of race, there still remains a certain
cast of physiognomy, which points back to some one ancestor of marked
and peculiar character.--_Lowell._
7. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the
face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened.--_Emerson._
8. The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in
the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant
northern home and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was
pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the
Dead Sea, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland
sea from which there is no discharge of waters.--_Scott._
9. Through the black Tartar tents he passed which stood,
Clustering like bee hives on the low, flat strand
Of Oxus, where the summer floods o’erflow
When the sun melts the snow in high Pamere.
--_M. Arnold._
10. On a fine, breezy forenoon I am audaciously skeptical, but, as
twilight sets in, my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal
to anything that could be desired.--_De Quincey._
11. Although it was now well on towards dark and the sun was down an
hour or so, I could see the robbers’ road before me in a trough of the
winding hills, where the brook plowed down from the higher barrows,
and the coving banks were roofed with furze.--_Blackmore._
12. In one place the poet describes a congregation gathered to listen
to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral at night.--_Wm. James._