[Sidenote:  What grammar is.]

Coming back, then, from the question, What ground should grammar cover? we come to answer the question, What should grammar teach? and we give as an answer the definition,—­

English grammar is the science which treats of the nature of words, their forms, and their uses and relations in the sentence.

[Sidenote:  The work it will cover.]

This will take in the usual divisions, “The Parts of Speech” (with their inflections), “Analysis,” and “Syntax.”  It will also require a discussion of any points that will clear up difficulties, assist the classification of kindred expressions, or draw the attention of the student to everyday idioms and phrases, and thus incite his observation.

[Sidenote:  Authority as a basis.]

A few words here as to the authority upon which grammar rests.

[Sidenote:  Literary English.]

The statements given will be substantiated by quotations from the leading or “standard” literature of modern times; that is, from the eighteenth century on.  This literary English is considered the foundation on which grammar must rest.

[Sidenote:  Spoken English.]

Here and there also will be quoted words and phrases from spoken or colloquial English, by which is meant the free, unstudied expressions of ordinary conversation and communication among intelligent people.

These quotations will often throw light on obscure constructions, since they preserve turns of expressions that have long since perished from the literary or standard English.

[Sidenote:  Vulgar English.]

Occasionally, too, reference will be made to vulgar English,—­the speech of the uneducated and ignorant,—­which will serve to illustrate points of syntax once correct, or standard, but now undoubtedly bad grammar.

The following pages will cover, then, three divisions:—­

Part I. The Parts of Speech, and Inflections.

Part II.  Analysis of Sentences.

Part III.  The Uses of Words, or Syntax.

PART I.

THE PARTS OF SPEECH.

NOUNS.

1.  In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master.—­GIBBON.

[Sidenote:  Name words]

By examining this sentence we notice several words used as names.  The plainest name is Arabs, which belongs to a people; but, besides this one, the words sons and master name objects, and may belong to any of those objects.  The words state, submission, and will are evidently names of a different kind, as they stand for ideas, not objects; and the word nation stands for a whole group.