The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

   “Preventing fame, misfortune lends him wings,
    And Pompey’s self his own sad story brings.”
        —­Rowe’s Lucan, B. viii, l. 66.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE V.

OBS. 1.—­To this rule there are no exceptions; but to the old one adopted by Murray and others, “Active verbs govern the objective case,” there are more than any writer will ever think it worth his while to enumerate.  In point of brevity, the latter has the advantage, but in nothing else; for, as a general rule for NOUNS AND PRONOUNS, this old brief assertion is very defective; and, as a rule for “THE SYNTAX OF VERBS,” under which head it has been oftener ranked, it is entirely useless and inapplicable.  As there are four different constructions to which the nominative case is liable, so there are four in which the objective may be found; and two of these are common to both; namely, apposition, and sameness of case.  Every objective is governed by some verb or participle, according to Rule 5th, or by some preposition, according to Rule 7th; except such as are put in apposition with others, according to Rule 3d, or after an infinitive or a participle not transitive, according to Rule 6th:  as, “Mistaking one for the other, they took him, a sturdy fellow, called Red Billy, to be me.”  Here is every construction which the objective case can have; except, perhaps, that in which, as an expression of time, place, measure, or manner, it is taken after the fashion of an adverb, the governing preposition being suppressed, or, as some say, no governing word being needed.  Of this exception, the following quotations may serve for examples:  “It holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak-fashion”—­EDGEWORTH’S Castle Rackrent. p. 17.  A man quite at leisure to parse all his words, would have said, “in the fashion of a cloak.”  Again:  “He does not care the rind of a lemon for her all the while.”—­Ib., p. 108.  “We turn our eyes this way or that way.”—­Webster’s Philos.  Gram., p. 172; Frazee’s Gram., 157.  Among his instances of “the objective case restrictive,” or of the noun “used in the objective, without a governing word,” Dr. Bullions gives this:  “Let us go home” But, according to the better opinion of Worcester, home is here an adverb, and not a noun.  See Obs. 6th on Rule 7th.

OBS. 2.—­The objective case generally follows the governing word:  as, “And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him”—­Gen., xlii, 8.  But when it is emphatic, it often precedes the nominative; as, “Me he restored to mine office, and him he hanged.”—­Gen., xli, 13. “John have I beheaded.”—­Luke, ix, 9.  “But me ye have not always.”—­Matt., xxvi, 11. “Him walking on a sunny hill he found.”—­Milton.  In poetry, the objective is sometimes placed between the nominative and the verb; as,

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The Grammar of English Grammars from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.