Interjections have no dependent construction; they are put absolute, either alone, or with other words.

GENERAL OR CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SYNTAX.

OBS. 1.—­An explanation of the relation, agreement, government, and arrangement, of words in sentences, constitutes that part of grammar which we call Syntax.  But many grammarians, representing this branch of their subject as consisting of two parts only, “concord and government” say little or nothing of the relation and arrangement of words, except as these are involved in the others.  The four things are essentially different in their nature, as may be seen by the definitions given above, yet not so distinct in practice that they can well be made the basis of any perfect division of the rules of syntax.  I have therefore, on this occasion, preferred the order of the parts of speech; each of which will form a chapter in the Syntax of this work, as each forms a chapter in the Etymology.

OBS. 2.—­Agreement and concord are one and the same thing. Relation and agreement, though different, may yet coincide, and be taken together.  The latter is moreover naturally allied to the former.  Seven of the ten parts of speech are, with a few exceptions, incapable of any agreement; of these the relation and use must be explained in parsing; and all requisite agreement between any of the rest, is confined to words that relate to each other.  For one word may relate to an other and not agree with it; but there is never any necessary agreement between words that have not a relation one to the other, or a connexion according to the sense.  Any similarity happening between unconnected words, is no syntactical concord, though it may rank the terms in the same class etymologically.

OBS. 3.—­From these observations it may be seen, that the most important and most comprehensive principle of English syntax, is the simple Relation of words, according to the sense.  To this head alone, ought to be referred all the rules of construction by which our articles, our nominatives, our adjectives, our participles, our adverbs, our conjunctions, our prepositions, and our interjections, are to be parsed.  To the ordinary syntactical use of any of these, no rules of concord, government, or position, can at all apply.  Yet so defective and erroneous are the schemes of syntax which are commonly found in our English grammars, that no rules of simple relation, none by which any of the above-named parts of speech can be consistently parsed, are in general to be found in them.  If there are any exceptions to this censure, they are very few, and in treatises still marked with glaring defects in regard to the syntax of some of these parts of speech.