Higher Lessons in English A work on english grammar and composition by Kellogg, Brainerd, Reed, Alonzo, 1899-

LESSON 120.

ANALYSIS AND PARSING.

+Direction.+--_Analyze the following sentences, and give the case of each noun and pronoun:_--

1. Not to know what happened before we were born is to be always a child. 2. His being a Roman saved him from being made a prisoner. 3. I am this day weak, though anointed king.

+Explanation.+--Nouns used adverbially are in the objective case because equivalent to the principal word of a prepositional phrase. (See Lesson 35.)

4. What made Cromwell a great man was his unshaken reliance on God. 5. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, was not a prophet's son. 6. Arnold's success as teacher was remarkable.

+Explanation.+--_Teacher_, introduced by _as_ and used without a possessive sign, is explanatory of _Arnold's_.

7. Worship thy Creator, God; and obey his Son, the Master, King, and Saviour of men. 8. Bear ye one another's [Footnote: For the use of _one another_, see Lesson 124.] burdens.

+Explanation.+--The singular _one_ is explanatory of the plural _ye_, or _one another's_ may be treated as a compound.

9. What art thou, execrable shape, that darest advance? 10. O you hard hearts! you cruel men of Rome! 11. Everybody acknowledges Shakespeare to be the greatest of dramatists. 12. Think'st thou this heart could feel a moment's joy, thou being absent? 13. Our great forefathers had left him naught to conquer but his country.

(For the case of _him_ see explanation of (3) above.)

14. I will attend to it myself.

+Explanation+.--_Myself_ may be treated as explanatory of _I_.

15. This news of papa's puts me all in a flutter. [Footnote: See second foot-note, page 247.] 16. What means that hand upon that breast of thine? [Footnote: See second foot-note, page 247.]

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LESSON 121.

PARSING.

+TO THE TEACHER+.--We do not believe that the chief end of the study of grammar Is to be able to parse well, or even to analyze well, though without question analysis reveals more clearly than parsing the structure of the sentence, and is immeasurably superior to it as intellectual gymnastics. We would not do away with parsing altogether, but would give it a subordinate place.

But we must be allowed an emphatic protest against the needless and mechanical quoting, in parsing, of "Rules of Syntax." When a pupil has said that such a noun is in the nominative case, subject of such a verb, what is gained by a repetition of the definition in the Rule: "A noun or a pronoun which is the subject of a finite verb is in the nominative case"? Let the reasons for the disposition of words, when given at all, be specific.

+Parsing+--a word is giving its classification, its modifications, and its syntax, _i.e._, its relation to other words.

+Direction+.--_Select and parse in full all the nouns and pronouns found in the first ten sentences of Lesson_ 120. _For the agreement of pronouns, see Lesson_ 142.

+Model for Written Parsing+.--_Elizabeth's favorite, Raleigh, was beheaded by James I_.