COMPOSITION OF SENTENCES 9 Or take the two propositions, The lion roared, and The hyena laughed. I may wish to tell some one that these two actions were related in time, occurring simultaneously; I do this by saying, The lion roared and the hyena laughed, where I have one sentence, but made of two propositions, because conveying two thoughts. I might put in other thoughts, telling (1) which lion, (2) why he roared, (3) how long the hyena laughed, The lion that was kept in the cage near the door roared because the keeper did not bring his food, and the hyena laughed till he had set all the animals around him in an uproar. Here I have one sentence containing five thoughts, therefore made up of five propositions. However, it is not with composition, the building up of sentences, that we are to concern ourselves, so much as with an examination into the structure of the finished product. Now, when we study the structure of the human body, we look upon it first as a symmetrical whole, then we separate it into its largest, most distinct members, the head, the trunk, the arms, the legs. After we have noted the relations of these parts, we take up each part as a whole and proceed again in the same way. In analyzing sentences we shall pursue the same method. Every sentence is a unit just as the body is; like the body, too, it is made up of smaller units. In studying its structure we should first of all find the units which compose the sentence-unit. If the sentence is a single proposition, the constituent units are, of course, the subject and the predicate. But if the sentence is a combination of propositions, as is oftener the case, then its chief units are these propositions. Therefore, as a foundation for the analysis of sentences, we must be able to determine readily how many propositions a given sentence contains. Our first exercise will be devoted to this end. Exercise I Resolve the following sentences into single propositions. Remember that the number of propositions de-, pends on the number of assertions made. 1. There are thousands of years between the stone hatchet' and the machine shop. - C. W. Eliot. 2. All along the Atlantic, the country is bordered by a broad tract, called the tierra caliente, or hot region, which has the usual high temperature of equinoctial lands. - Prescott. 3. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. — Irving. 4. Every thing around me wore that happy look which makes the heart glad. - Longfellow. 5. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills, until we reached a garden where we saw a man walking. — Thackeray. 6. As a painter may draw a cloud so that we recognize its general truth, though the boundaries of real clouds never remain the same for two minutes together, so, amid the changes of feature and complexion, brought about by commingling of race, there still remains a certain cast of physiognomy, which points back to some one ancestor of marked and peculiar character. Lowell. 7. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened. - Emerson. 8. The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had HOW PROPOSITIONS DIFFER I I left his distant northern home and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea from which there is no discharge of waters. Scott. 9. Through the black Tartar tents he passed which stood, Clustering like bee hives on the low, flat strand Of Oxus, where the summer floods o'erflow - M. Arnold. 10. On a fine, breezy forenoon I am audaciously skeptical, but, as twilight sets in, my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. De Quincey. II. Although it was now well on towards dark, and the sun was down an hour or so, I could see the robbers' road before me in a trough of the winding hills, where the brook plowed down from the higher barrows, and the coving banks were roofed with furze. Blackmore. 12. In one place the poet describes a congregation gathered to listen to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral at night. — Wm. James. CHAPTER II THE CLASSIFICATION OF PROPOSITIONS How Propositions differ in Nature. — In studying the human body we cannot help seeing that all the prominent members are not equally important. Some could exist independently of others, while some are joined directly to a more important part, and, if separated from it, would have no use or life. So, in studying a sentence, we notice that all the propositions are not equal in rank. Some are complete sentences in themselves; others would not make sense if they were obliged to stand alone. Hence there arise two classes of propositions, - principal and subordinate, or independent and dependent. In every sentence there is at least one primary thought which it is the author's main purpose to communicate, and this will always be found in the principal proposition. There may be modifying circumstances of time, place, manner, condition, etc., which he wishes to embody in his sentence, but he brings these in by means of words and phrases, which are elements of the principal proposition, or else, if the language affords no adequate words and phrases, by means of subordinate propositions. In the following sentence from Carlyle," How true is that old fable of the Sphinx, who sat by the wayside propounding her riddle to the passengers," there are plainly two propositions. It is also plain that the thought which the author wished most to convey is this, The old fable of the Sphinx is true. In fact, it was the prime importance of this thought that led him to put it in the principal proposition. He chose to add the thought expressed in the second proposition, but he showed its minor importance by constructing the proposition so that it serves as a mere modifier of the word Sphinx. From a grammatical point of view the first proposition is complete, it could stand alone and make sense; hence it is called independent. On the other hand, the second proposition, if separated from the first, would lose its meaning; it is therefore said to be dependent. Consider these sentences: I. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he shouts his death song. - Macaulay. INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT PROPOSITIONS 13 2. No success is worthy of the name unless it is won by honest industry and a brave breasting of the waves of fortune. - Huxley. 3. That country is the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest minds. Emerson. If we separate each of these sentences into its two propositions and apply the test, which proposition is by itself grammatically complete? we shall see that the first proposition in each sentence is independent and the second dependent. But it may be said that in each case the dependent proposition is necessary for the truth of the sentence, that its thought must have been in the author's mind not as an addition to the main thought but as something indispensable. This is perfectly true; logically the truth of the independent proposition does depend on the thought in the dependent proposition, but grammatically the dependence is the other way. Notice that in each of these sentences the second proposition denotes a modifying circumstance of the main thought, and therefore takes rank in the sentence merely as an idea, — telling in the first sentence when the Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife, in the second under what condition success is unworthy, in the third which country is the fairest. Now, had the author so chosen, these modifications might all have been expressed by phrases, though possibly not so clearly. Tests for Independent and Dependent Propositions. From the foregoing we may deduce the following tests for propositions. I. For the independent proposition. — (a) It contains the main thought that the author wished to convey. (b) |