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but, to this extent, it cannot be reduced to settled rules, and is not the subject of grammatical explanation.

66. The interchange of thought, by a system of signs employed by deaf mutes, throws additional light on the subject of language, as connected with the operations of the mind. This new path of science is constantly leading to farther developments, under able teachers, and its principles are, doubtless, capable of extensive application. It is a new sort of artificial or conventional language; addressed to the eye, instead of the ear, and is of inestimable value to the class of persons for whose use it was designed.

GRAMMAR.*

67. Grammar is an explanation of the principles on which language is formed. The use of grammar, as a science, is to guard against deviations from the settled rules of speech.

A dispute of very little utility has been maintained, whether the word grammar applies, in strictness, to the essential principles of language, or the system of rules to explain them. If the explanatory system is just, the two things are virtually the same, and the application of the term grammar

* In this treatise the technical terms long used, are retained as far as they will apply. It is not the purpose to introduce a new set of words, but to endeavor to lay a basis for rectifying false principles.

to either, is within those moderate bounds of metonomy which must be allowed in every language.

68. Grammar is general when it treats of the leading principles common to all languages; comparative, in pointing out the coincidences, analogies, and differences between one form of speech and an other; and particular, when its investigations are confined to a single tongue. It is the design of the present work to attend to these three considerations, according to their relative impor

tance.

69. Grammar is confined in its investigations to the formation of single sentences, and in this does not necessarily include the idea of the best diction. It has reference to the orderly arrangement of words, according to their several classes and relations.

70. It belongs to the science of rhetoric, to teach the choice of the best words, and arrange them so as to produce the highest effect.

Thus it is a perfectly grammatical expression to say, "virtue and vice are equally commendable.” Here the words are duly placed, according to their relation and dependence on each other; and, within the bounds of grammar rules, there is no impropriety. It is for the rhetorician to show that virtue and vice are contradictory qualities, not equally commendable, and that it is our duty to promote one and restrain the other.

71. But if we assert that "an oyster is a very sprightly animal;" it is good both in grammar and rhetoric; for the sentence is perfectly correct,

so far as mere language is concerned; though it asserts what is not true in natural history: it is not the business of writers on language, in character as such, to settle doctrines in science, morals, or metaphysics: though it is necessary to the effect which the speaker or writer would produce, that his principles should be at least apparently just.

72. One of the great defects of many writers on grammar, seems to be the want of proper distinction between the effect which words may have, by their relation and use in a sentence, and that which results only from the specific import of the single word. The classification of the different parts of speech depends, not on the absolute meaning of words, but their manner of meaning.

73. An other error of mischievous tendency springs from the gross ignorance which is constantly multiplying grammar rules, to explain what needs no other explanation than the proper definition of the numerous words absurdly represented as having no meaning. In this way the theories respecting articles, particles, and auxiliaries; disjunctive conjunctions, and postpositive prepositions, result from vain attempts of grammarians to supply the deficiency of lexicographers.

74. Grammar is divided into four parts, Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.

Orthography means correct spelling. It teaches the letters with their sounds, and their combinations into syllables and words.

The part of grammar which teaches the derivations, changes, definition, and classification, of single words, is called Etymology.

Syntax is the orderly arrangement of words in a

sentence.

Prosody teaches the distribution of accents best calculated to produce harmony, and relates chiefly to the measure of poetry.

ORTHOGRAPHY.

75. This first division of grammar relates entirely to written language. It treats of the letters used in writing, the various sounds which they represent, and the combinations of these elements to form significant words.

76. In a language properly written, each letter should represent one uniform sound, and every sound should have its appropriate letter: but in the imperfection of human skill, this regularity is not to be expected. All languages have taken their original structure chiefly from the immediate circumstances and the wants of men, and not from philosophic arrangement. The number of letters used in writing has greatly varied, from 16 to 200 and upwards. Their forms also have been greatly altered, and the same letter is, at different times and places, made to represent sounds the most dissimilar.

The characters employed in the English written language are twenty-six, divided into vowels and

consonants.

The vowels are a, e, i or y, o, and u or w: the remaining letters are consonants.

A true vowel is a perfectly pure and simple

sound. Two vowels both sounded in the same syllable, are called a dipthong.

Consonants are sounded only in connexion with vowels.

77. One of the greatest difficulties in language, is the fluctuation and uncertainty to which the sounds of letters have always been liable. Mr. De Kemplin, a mechanician at Vienna, bestowed great pains, for several years, on an attempt to form an instrument which should imitate various sounds and combinations of the human voice. This he professes to have done, to a very considerable extent; but his own details of the process which he followed,. show that his design was more curious than useful. He attempted too much.

One attainment which there is some reason to believe practicable, would be of vast importance to the literary world. This is the formation of a graduated standard machine, or what might, not improperly, be called a pitchpipe of simple vowel sounds. Such an instrument, if produced, might be regulated with great accuracy; transmitted from one country to an other, and handed down to future times. Those who have been at the pains accurately to learn new sounds, in different languages, within the period of their clear recollection, will need no argument in favor of the utility of what is here proposed. The necessity of such an acquisition might be farther shown, by half a dozen learned men, from as many nations, reading, each in turn, a page of Latin, as taught at their respective universities.

The notes of singing birds are imitated, with great accuracy, by machinery; and a transmissible standard of the human articulation would, next to the invention of letters, and the art of printing, be the greatest step in the advancement of language.

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