Grammar is how you put words together to fashion a thought. And thoughts are expressed, either in speech or writing, to communicate an idea to a listener or a reader.
So grammar is, quite simply, the architecture of ideas as expressed in words. That is not half so difficult as what you remember from your school days.
- Does Marilyn Monroe have a tremendous effect on you
--or is it a tremendous effect?
- Do you lay down-- or lie down for a nap after lunch?
- Has ---- or Have----either of your children come home yet?
- Do you know when to use continual instead of continous?--- and--- Incredible instead of Incredulous? ---and--- Imply instead of Infer?---and---- Uninterested instead of disinterested?
These are vital, present, and recurrent problems. And grammar offers you a solution to all of them. If you understand English grammar's basic principles, you can be assured that your speech will never get in your way. You will know not only what to say, but perhaps why.
The world often forms its first impression of you by the way you put words together. And so I expect to explore with you --minutely, specifically, intensively,exhaustively--the proper methods of putting words together, the of expressing your ideas incorrect English.
No one in his mind, you will admit, ever stops you at a busy intersection during lunch hour to ask: "Quick, what's an adverb?" Or, "what case of the personal pronoun is used after a preposition?" Or "when do you make a verb plural?" But if you know the answers to these and similar questions, you have come a long way towards attaining a feeling of complete self-confidence whenever you open your mouth to voice a thought.
- How to know when to use me or me, he or him, she or her, we or us, and they or them.
- How to be sure of the distinctions between who and whom.
- When to say lay and when to say lie.
- When to make verbs plural and when to keep them singular. (Is or Are? Has or Have? Was or Were?)
Most literate adults are especially confused by these four broad English usage problems, making our study of grammar particularly easy. For the aspects of English covered by such problems, we will hit again and again, the ones we will spend most of our time studying and discussing and exploring and analyzing ----to the end that most of the problems you now have in English will eventually vanish.
And we will study only those aspects of formal grammar, which will help us understand and solve everyday speech problems.
Understanding and solving these problems will, I must confess, bring to our attention such abstractions as verbs and nouns and the future perfect tense and the subjunctive in conditions contrary to fact, not to mention such matters as case and number and person. But don't be alarmed. The abstractions of grammar are easy enough to understand so long as they are tied up with correct usage problems, so long as they are not studied just for themselves.
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