Quotes About Grammar

There are four simple moods,—the Infinitive, the Indicative, the Imperative and the Subjunctive.

An Article is a word placed before a noun to show whether the noun is used in a particular or general sense. There are two articles, a or an and the.

A complex sentence consists of two or more simple sentences so combined that one depends on the other to complete its meaning; as; When he returns, I shall go on my vacation. Here the words, when he returns are dependent on the rest of the sentence for their meaning. A clause is a separate part of a complex sentence, as when he returns in the last example. A phrase consists of two or more words without a finite verb.

The three essentials of the English language are: Purity, Perspicuity and Precision.

the adverb as near as possible to the word it

When writing a letter the street laborer should bear in mind that only the letter of a street-laborer is expected from him, no matter to whom his communication may be addressed and that neither the grammar nor the diction of a Chesterfield or Gladstone is looked for in his language.

In order to speak and write the English language correctly, it is imperative that the fundamental principles of the Grammar be mastered, for no matter how much we may read of the best authors, no matter how much we may associate with and imitate the best speakers

comma: John, you are a good man. In numeration, commas are used to express periods of three figures: Mountains 25,000 feet high; 1,000,000 dollars. The Semicolon marks a slighter connection than the

When the first American colonies were founded, William Bradford—Webster's distinguished ancestor—spelled the same word differently in the same sentence; his orthography and grammar were regarded as legitimate expressions of his personality.

attention to the difference in tenses. The verbs believe and receive are in the present, but the verb shall have is in the future. The inspired writer is telling us something of the greatest importance by this seemingly minor difference in the grammar of the sentence.

and then tried to use it outside the classroom, you know that there are three things you must master: how the language is structured (grammar), how to name things you want to talk about (vocabulary), and the customary and effective ways

Unlike Maxine Kumin, I never learned to pay the syntax.

It's funny how "a part" and "apart" are complete opposites, yet only differ by a little space.

We already knew that people are good intuitive grammarians: at age four a child effortlessly conforms to the rules of grammar as she speaks, although she has no idea that such rules exist.

la grammaire est le premier outil de la pensée organisée et (...) la fameuse analyse logique (...) ajuste les mouvements de notre réflexion, laquelle se trouve aiguisée par le bon usage des fameuses propositions subordonnées.

Il mal di grammatica si cura con la grammatica, gli errori di ortografia con l'esercizio dell'ortografia, la paura di leggere con la lettura, quella di non capire con l'immersione nel testo, e l'abitudine a non riflettere con il pacato sostegno di una ragione strettamente limitata all'oggetto che ci riguarda, qui e ora, in questa classe, durante quest'ora di lezione, fintanto che ci siamo.

In a computer-to-human conversation, there is less surrounding context than in a natural language. So… our cognition fails us in this quiz, and the best we can do is guess. This is why careful conceptual grammar construction is the foundation of quality IxD.

What does an educated owl say?" He shrugged. "Whom," she said.

The more children focused on messages with a real-life purpose, rather than on, say, repetitive grammar drills or artificial dialogues, the more French they understood.

Noam Chomsky pointed out, the number of possible sentences is infinite in any language; there is no limit to the grammatical combination of words. Behaviorism cannot explain how, after relatively limited exposure to a mother tongue, young children acquire complex syntactic structures and begin to produce "correct" utterances never heard before, by themselves or by others. What's more, they accomplish these amazing intellectual feats without being explicitly taught.

For this reason the rules of an infinite game have a different status from those of a finite game. They are like the grammar of a living language, where those of a finite game are like the rules of debate. In the former case we observe rules as a way of continuing discourse with each other; in the latter we observe rules as a way of bringing the speech of another person to an end.

The rules, or grammar, of a living language are always evolving to guarantee the meaningfulness of discourse, while the rules of debate must remain constant.

What about school then? Favorite subjects?" "History, I guess. English too," I said when he didn't answer. "But English is going to be really boring for the next six weeks?we stopped doing literature and went back to the grammar book and now we're diagramming sentences.

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid.