Grammar

[ Fr.grammaire; Lat. grammatic a; Gr. grammati- ke, from gramma, a letter, from grapho, to write.] The science which treats of the natural or conventional connection between ideas and words, and develops the principles which are common to all languages. which the grammatical terminology which had been carried from Athens to Alexandria flowed back to Rome, to spread from thence over the whole civilized world. We can follow the stream of grammatical science from Dionysius Thrax to our own time in an almost uninterrupted chain of Greek and Roman writers. We find M. Verrius Flaccus, the tutor of the grandsons of August us, and Quintilian, in the first century; Scaurus, A poll on i us Dyscolus, and his son He rod i an us, in the second; Probus and Donatus, the teachers of St. Jerome, in the fourth. After Const an tine had moved the seat of government from Rome, grammatical science received a new home in the academy of Constantinople. There were no le than 20 Greek and Latin grammarians who held profe orships at Constantinople. Under Just in i an, in the sixth century, the name of Priscianus gave a new lustre to grammatical studies, and his work remained an authority during the Middle Ages to nearly our own times. We ourselves have been taught G. according to the plan which was followed by Dionysius at Rome, by Priscianus at Constantinople, by Alcuin at York; and whatever may be said of the improvements introduced into our system of education, the Greek and Latin grammars used at our public schools are mainly founded on the first empirical analysis of language prepared by the philosophers of Athens, applied by the scholars of Alexandria, and transferred to the practical purpose of teaching a foreign tongue by the Greek profe ors at Rome. It is in the grammar of a language that we can trace its distinctive features. The English language, for instance, is made up of words borrowed from almost every to all attributives of the first order, i. e., which coalesce equally with verbs, participles, and adjectives, and those which are confined to verbs. Definitives are such words as serve to define and ascertain any particular object or objects as separated from others of the same cla . These are commonly called articles ; of which there are two kinds the definite and indefinite. Connectives are such words as are employed to connect other words, and of several distinct parts to make one complete whole. They are of two kinde - conjunctions and prepositions. Conjunctions are those connectives which are commonly employed to conjoin sentences. They are of two kinds, conjunctives , or such as conjoin sentences and their meanings too, and disjunctives , or such as, while they conjoin sentences, disjoin their meanings. Prepositions conjoin words which refuse otherwise to coalesce; and this they do by signifying those relations by which the things expre ed by the united words are connected in nature. Interjections are a cla of words which are to be found in perhaps all languages, but they cannot be included in any of the above cla es, for they are not subject to the rules and principles of grammar, as they contribute nothing to the communication of thought. Gramma'rian, n. [Fr. grammairien .] Anciently, a title of honor given to persons accounted learned in any art or faculty whatsoever; now, one who is skilled in or who teaches grammar. Grammaʼrianism, n. The principles or pedantie style of grammarians. (R.) Gram'marle , a . Without a knowledge of grammar.