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THE ELEMENTS

OF

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

OF

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

BY

GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND LECTURER IN ENGLISH,
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON

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PREFACE

THIS book is designed to serve as an introduction to the systematic study of grammar. It is intended for pupils who are making, for the first time or in review, a connected study of the elements of grammar. The author has assumed the privilege of defining his subject according to this purpose. It seems more sensible to define grammar as the study of the structure of the sentence, since in its elements it is that and nothing more, than to give it any of the vague and broad definitions, such as the science of lan-. guage, or a systematic description of language, so commonly found in elementary grammars. Grammar as the science of language is an impossible subject for elementary study, and to define it so is either meaningless or positively misleading. On the other hand the structure and analysis of the sentence is a clearly limited and realizable subject, one also which offers a sufficiently large field of study.

From the nature of the case pupils who take up the study of formal grammar are already able, in speech and also in writing, to, use sentences of considerable length and complexity. They should not be allowed, therefore, to labor under the misapprehension that grammar means something new and strange, a different kind of English from that which they have been using. On the contrary,

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