A Historical Study Of The Grammatical Nomenclature Pertaining To The English Verb

Author : Joint Committee on Grammat Nomenclature
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781330537688
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (376 download)

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Download or read book Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Nomenclature (Classic Reprint) written by Joint Committee on Grammat Nomenclature and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Nomenclature Two kinds of grammatical terms are effective. In one, a given term exactly sets forth the nature of that for which it stands. So the term descriptive, as applied to an adjective like "good" or "bad." In the other, the term in itself means little or nothing to the student. Thus noun, adjective, verb, indicative, subjunctive, infinitive. These serve, just as x, y, s, etc., might serve. At present, at any rate, it seems best to let them alone. But there is still a third kind. In this, the terms are intended to be exactly descriptive of that for which they stand, but are not. An example is the name imperfect, now happily superseded, in English grammars, by the name past. Terms of this kind are meant to belong to the first class, but fall short of reaching it. They form a large proportion of our accumulated and conflicting nomenclature. Yet the aim of their makers - exactness of representation - was in every case right. Nothing but praise can be given to any effort to reach this ideal. For the young student, and indeed for many a teacher, the name given to a phenomenon in the grammar which he uses - if this name has any obvious meaning at all - largely determines his conception of the phenomenon, and is a constant influence toward the building-up of a dear understanding, or of the opposite. The man who frames a working name that is a more perfect description of the force of a given grammatical phenomenon than any existing before is not only making that phenomenon more intelligible to the student, but is also reducing the work to be done. The impulse toward perfection in grammatical nomenclature is a good one; and this impulse necessarily leads to the invention of new terms. Nevertheless, the present state of things is deplorable. In the very desire for betterment, we have reached a multiplicity of terms, even for grammatical relations about the nature of which there is no real difference of opinion, as, for example, those seen in the italicized words in "John is good," "This is John," "I admire John," "We made John president." For the first of these, there are nine different names in twenty-five of the English grammars in use in the United States today, for the second ten, for the third seven, and for the fourth eighteen. Thus "good" in "John is good" is variously called, according to the grammar used, attribute complement, predicate adjective, subject complement, attribute complement or predicate adjective, subjective complement, complement of intransitive verb, predicate attribute, adjective attribute, and predicate. The result of such a state of affairs is almost hopeless confusion to the student as he takes up a new text in passing from year to year, or when a new book be adopted, or when he changes his school. Even the strongest students are bewildered. And the teacher's burden is likewise heavily increased, since he often has to deal with students who do not understand one another's answers to a grammatical question, even if every answer is right. Moreover, the teacher is obliged to break up his own phrasing, which has so passed into his subconsciousness as almost to utter itself, and watchfully build up a new one, from which he will for a long time dip back every now and then, in spite of his best efforts. The situation as we now have it is wasteful from the point of view of accomplishment, pitiable from the point of view of the needless inflictions which it puts upon the unfortunate pupil, and absurd from the point of view of linguistic science. As long as it exists, it will make the ideally successful teaching of English grammar in our public schools impossible. But even this is not the whole story. Nowhere else, it is true, has so great a variation of terminology come into existence as in the grammar of our mother tongue.