Well is an adverb,

qualifying the verb 'leaps.'

it is a word which may be used to modify an action, or the force o any qualifying word;

of

in this case it is used to modify the action expressed by the word 'leaps.'

What is contained in the right-hand column is the same in meaning exactly as that in the left; but how elaborately expressed in the one case compared with the other!

This is a good exercise for school or home. Parsing without technical terms is an admirable exercise. It may be practised at home, and the work brought next day for inspection; or it may form a desk occupation occasionally in the school-room. It will teach the pupils to think upon the nature of what they say about each word, and it will prove to them that, although technical terms can be wholly dispensed with, yet it is chiefly by their aid that we are enabled to express ourselves with brevity.

The chief difficulty of parsing is in determining the meaning of the passage. A glance at the forms of parsing already given will show that the difficulty is almost entirely with the meaning of the passage. There is, of course, the difficulty which beginners always feel in naming correctly and in proper order the several parts of each word, and in pointing out the dependence of one word upon another—a difficulty which they feel even when the words are arranged in the simplest logical order; but when once this, which may be called the mechanical portion of parsing, is overcome, the difficulties experienced arise from determining the meaning of the passage itself.

Failure from not being able to discover the sense.

Most

teachers fail in parsing a sentence from mistaking its sense. Passages from Milton, Shakspeare, and others, are, to many of them, as so much Greek, and of course they are wholly unable to construe them. If these wish to succeed, the remedy is in their own hands. They should not, as they generally do, have recourse to a treatise on grammar, for the purpose of studying its rules anew, but they should rather take up standard works both of prose and verse, and read them attentively and thoughtfully, noting the peculiarities of style adopted in each. If these books are not within their reach, books which contain well-selected extracts will suffice. The Reading Books ordinarily used in schools contain several very good specimens, but I do not know of any better book for this purpose than the 'Selections from the British Poets,' published by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. These selections are made with great taste and judgment, and are well calculated to make the student acquainted with the style of

ANALYSIS OF SENTENCES.

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the various authors quoted from. A person who studies these volumes carefully will rarely fail in determining the meaning of a passage placed before him, and therefore will rarely fail in parsing it.

Analysis and filling up ellipses. The meaning of any passage will be easily detected by children if they are in the habit of filling up ellipses, analysing, and transposing sentences, under the immediate superintendence of their teachers. Before parsing, they should be called upon to supply all words left out, and to analyse and transpose the parts of the sentence so as to disclose their true grammatical or logical order, and make the meaning clear.

Advantage of analysis. Analysis, when properly carried out, makes the parsing exercises intelligent; it makes thought definite; and it gives precision and accuracy in the use of language. By it we acquire the power of dealing with the logical construction of propositions, and with the various grammatical forms, and of applying them to the discovery of the meaning of what we hear or read. Analysis is, in fact, a most important agent for the discovery of the true force of words in accordance with the order in which they are arranged, and an acquaintance with it is essentially necessary, not only for parsing, but for making language effectual as a means of communicating ideas.

6

Learned terms unnecessary. The learned and cumbrous terms, however, which are so often met with in treatises upon the Analysis of Sentences, are in all cases unnecessary and hurtful. Such expressions as the 'subject enlarged,' the adjunct,' the 'complete predicate,' the 'predicate itself,' 'accessory sentences,' 'subordinate accessory sentences,' 'illative sentences,'' antithetical sentences,' 'subordinate adverbial sentences,' ' abridged subordinate adverbial sentences,' are not only difficult to understand and remember, but they are, happily, quite unnecessary. They are not essential to the real and proper analysis of sentences-they are, in fact, mere conventional expressions, which a pupil may know without being able to explain what it is they are intended to convey, and which many may be entirely ignorant of who yet may employ the principles of analysis efficiently and effectually to the discovery of the meaning of each passage. A child, for instance, may be able to see that the sentence, Although clever, he makes no progress,' is equivalent to Although he is clever, he makes no progress,' without burdening his understanding with the fact that such a sentence is called by some writers 'an abridged subordinate adverbial sentence.'

Jargon instead of sense. Pupils who are taught these terms very often know nothing clearly of what they really mean. Mr.

Alderson, after showing that their extensive use is an evil in the case of boys, says, 'With regard to females, such a course is certainly injurious. The female mind is prone to take refuge from precise or concentrated thought in a haze of vague generalities and cloudy phrases; and this tendency is fostered to a dangerous extent by the technical language with which they come in contact in the analysis of sentences.'

91

Proper order in which words ought to be parsed. All that is really required is to help the children to collect the true meaning by arranging the clauses in their natural order. There is not the slightest use, in the majority of cases, to give any name either to the clauses themselves, or to their subdivisions or arrangements. And to practise them in this arrangement, I recommend that the words of each sentence should be parsed, not as they actually occur, but as they would occur if logically arranged. Take, for instance, the following sentence: 'Rice, we are told, grows luxuriantly in portions of America.' 'We are told' should be parsed first; rice,' next; 'grows luxuriantly' next; in portions of America' last.

says:

In the earlier

When small words may be passed over. classes every word should be parsed; but as the pupils advance, words of frequent occurrence need not be parsed more than once. Dr. Woodford treats of this matter so fully and so well, that I cannot do better than quote his words. He 2 The common method of parsing is to give every word straight on, with all its repetitions, with or without mention of its syntactical relation. Now, the constant recurrence of " THE," the definite article, "A" or "AN," the indefinite article, AND, a conjunction, and OF, a preposition, occupies much more time than could be supposed without calculation.

'In four pages and two lines of M'Culloch's "Course of Reading," in passages not likely to exceed the average use of these words, the total number of words, including repetitions, is 1,439; of this number "the" is 107, "a" or "an" 45, "and" 52, and "of" 82; that is, the is more than a thirteenth part of the whole, a or an a thirtysecond part, and more than a twenty-seventh, and of more than a seventeenth and, combinedly, the repetition of these words is more than one-fifth of the whole. Now, supposing the parsing exercise of a class to occupy half an hour daily, for five days in the week, this class will be engaged half an hour weekly in proclaiming "THE" the definite article, "A" the indefinite article, "AND" a conjunction, and "OF" a preposition. If to "and" we add but, if, or, &c., and to "of " to, for, with, &c., it will be found that the use

Min. of Council, 1860-1, p. 177.

2 Ibid 1852-3, p. 1108. See also his remarks, 1855-6, p. 651.

TEXT-BOOKS NOT PROPERLY USED. 209

less repetition of such familiar words occupies about one-third of the whole time spent in parsing. Now,' he adds,' after the first week of general parsing, it might be sufficient to parse each of the conjunctions and prepositions, as they occur, once in each lesson, and seldomer as the class advances, and requires to be rendered familiar with additional steps.'

Present methods of teaching grammar are unsatisfactory. Up till now I have been giving suggestions for the teaching of grammar in accordance with the plans most generally approved of, and did I also think that these plans were the most correct, there would be but little else for me to add in this chapter; but, as I am of opinion that even these plans, though decided improvements upon those they superseded, are still by no means the best, it becomes my duty before closing to point out what I consider are their defects, and to suggest remedies.

to memory

Text-books not properly used. Although the use of the textbook is properly deferred now until the pupils have acquired, by oral teaching, the ability to understand and profit by what it contains, yet, when they are permitted to study the book, they are allowed to do so very much in the same way that they were in the former system. They begin at the first page, and commit all of it until the end, and thus waste much time upon Orthography and other portions of the subject that appear to me to have but little to do in attaining the great end in view. They are obliged to commit to memory, for instance, a great many rules about vowels, consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, mutes, liquids, labials, nasals, palatals, gutturals, monosyllables, dissyllables, &c. ; but how can these possibly help a child to speak or write his language with propriety,' which, in common school education, is all that grammatical instruction should aim at! Children may know these rules, and in fact all that is treated of under the head of Orthography, and yet still say 'John and James is here,' 'Them's his books,' 'The hare has ran away,' or 'They done it.'

I certainly am inclined to think, though in this of course I may be wrong, that very few of the many admired speakers in Parliament, or even in the Church or at the Bar, could repeat correctly and readily the letters called semi-vowels. Why, therefore, should children, on pretence of teaching them to speak as purely as these men, be obliged to learn what these men have thrown aside as useless? If, indeed, this knowledge were essentially necessary in order to understand those parts of grammar that are practically valuable, then indeed we might have a reason for teaching it; but it has no connection whatever with Etymology, or with Syntax. Orthography is, in fact, a part of grammar, only in the most extended signification of that term. The forms and sounds of the

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letters, and their classification, belong to a regular treatise on language, and they have as much right to be included in a practical school grammar—a work designed to teach us to speak and write correctly, that is, in accordance with certain recognised forms contained in the rules of Syntax-as the alphabet itself has. To teach us these appears to me to be as wide of the practical object in view as if a writer on Political Economy, before treating of the laws of demand and supply, gave a classification of the different sorts of paper, silk, or cotton, &c.

Parts of Etymology should also be left out. With regard to Etymology, some knowledge of it is clearly requisite, for, without it, we could not understand the rules of Syntax. For instance, to say that a noun in any given number requires that form of the verb which is in the same number and person (which is one of our guides in speaking), would convey no idea to our minds unless what was meant by the terms noun, verb, number, and person was understood; and although we might express the same sense without the use of these words, yet it would be at the expense of too much time and clearness. But there are several parts of Etymology just as inapplicable in primary school teaching as Orthography is. Thus, what has the division of nouns into real and abstract, participial, collective, and diminutive, or what have certain rules about the words very, rather, exceedingly, compound substantives, compound adjectives, cardinal and ordinal numbers, &c., which are found under the head of Etymology in most grammars, to do with teaching us to frame a correct sentence? We may know them, and speak badly: we may not know them, and yet speak well. They should, therefore, be omitted; and, for the same reason, so also should be the whole chapter on Derivations, on English Etymologies, on the History of the English Language, and on Latin and Greek Roots: all these should be included in a work on Language, but not in a practical school grammar.

Parts of Etymology should be reclassed. On the other hand, however, there are many things included under the head of Etymology that should be grouped, with the present rules of Syntax, under one division, which might be called 'Rules of Speech.' For instance, the rules to guide us as to the selection of the article, or the following rules: The word "news" takes a singular verb;' 'Sciences whose names end in ics generally take a plural;' or the rules about personification, about the use of shall and will, about the prepositions which certain words require after them, &c., should all be removed from the head of Etymology and placed as Rules of Speech.'

Syntax should be enlarged. Syntax should be enlarged, and should be made the most prominent part of the book, as it is in