Ebook: A Grammar of the English Language: Volume II: Syntax

This book treats of the general principles of English expression. The attention is directed, not to words, but to the grammatical categories — the case forms, the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, the prepositional phrase, the indicative, the subjunctive, the active, the passive, the word order, the clause formations, clauses with finite verb, and the newer, terser participial, gerundival, and infinitival clauses, etc. These categories are the means by which we present our thought in orderly fashion and with precision, and are intimately associated with the expression of our inner feeling.
The story of the development of these categories constitutes the oldest and most reliable chapters in the history of the inner life of the English people. Serious efforts have been made everywhere throughout this book to penetrate into the original concrete meaning of these categories, in order to throw light upon the interesting early struggles of our people for a fuller expression of their inner life and to gain suggestions for their present struggles in this direction.
In these excursions into older English the author in his quotations from the original sources always preserves the older form, usually in the original spelling, but in the case of writings still widely read, as the Bible and Shakespeare, the spelling has been modernized in conformity to present usage.