316 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



able designation for a word group. Intelligent reading would, then, 

 .signify the rapid — almost instinctive — recognition of the successive 

 logical terms in a sentence. 



I shall endeavour to show that to acquire this power is not so 

 difficult as it might at first appear. For the original and fundamental 

 terms, in Indo-Gerraanic languages at least, fall into a certain number 

 of well-marked categoi'ies. The use of these has been, no doubt, widely 

 extended by analogy ; but the type is readily recognisable. 



The study of word groups (or logical terms, as it is proposed to 

 call them) belongs to the domain of S3'ntax — that part of grammar 

 which treats of the functional relationships of words in a sentence. 

 At the present day the principles of syntax are taught in school 

 mainly under the form of analysis of sentences. This grammatical 

 exercise was introduced into Scotch schools from German}'^ some fifty 

 years ago, largely through the influence of Professor Bain of Aberdeen, 

 a man who has left a deep impress on all our grammatical teaching. 

 It soon came to be a very important part of the English lesson, being 

 regar'ded as peculiarly valuable for the cultivation of clear thinking and 

 logical expression. And it is a valuable exercise for these purposes ; 

 but most educationists would agree that there grew up a good deal of 

 pedantry and formality in connection with it, so that the actual result 

 of the analysis for the pupil was sometimes to darken what it had been 

 intended to illuminate. 



I go further than this, for I think that the fundamental doctrine 

 of the old analysis — the division of the sentence into subject and 

 predicate — is not wholly correct, and that this analysis is applicable 

 to only one type of sentence, and that not of the greatest importance. 

 But to this I shall recur later on. 



A new analysis of the primitive syntactical conceptions is put 

 forward in this paper. An attempt is made to apply the facts and 

 ideas of the theory of mental development to the theory of syntax and 

 to exhibit in a concrete and realistic manner the original scheme of 

 syntactical relationships -the primitive categories of the human under- 

 standing as I think the}^ might be called — on which the logic of early 

 speech was based. I hope in this way to recoAer for our fundamental 

 grammatical ideas some of that original freshness of feeling which has 

 been dulled by the continued use of such abstract and formless terms 

 as subject, indirect object, adverbial extension of predicate, adjectival 

 enlargement of subject, etc. 



The analysis of the simple sentence is considered in the first part 

 of the paper, and the complex sentence is briefly dealt with in the 

 second part. 



I. The Simple Sentence. 



In analysis the point of attack is all important, and for the 

 student of syntax a consideration of the nature of the verb is the best 

 .starting-point. The reason is easily given. The verb expresses action, 

 doing, movement ; and action, doing, movement are what our bodies 



