A GRAMMAR OF LATE MODERN ENGLISH FOR THE USE OF CONTINENTAL, ESPECIALLY DUTCH, STUDENTS, BY H. POUTSMA, English Master in the "Vierde Hoogere Burgerschool PREFACE. The object of this book, the first section of which has just left the press, is to give a survey of the most striking features of Late Modern English, as it presents itself to Continental, especially Dutch, students. Although the work professes to be concerned with the English of the last two hundred years, it is especially the literature of this and the previous generation that has been subjected to closer investigation. Occasional glimpses have been given of older stages of the language, chiefly for the purpose of accounting for otherwise unintelligible idioms or showing prototypes of the many archaisms affected by writers of the present day. Also in illustrating usages that from an early date have subsisted to the present day, instances have sometimes been taken from SHAKESPEARE and the AUTHORIZED VERSION. The way in which I have set about my task, differs from that of most other grammarians. The time-honoured system of distinguishing strictly between accidence and syntax, and discussing the former in all the intended detail before approaching the latter, little suited my purpose, and was therefore rejected from the first. Following the lead of two eminent Dutch grammarians, the late C. H. DEN HERTOG, and the late T. TERWEY, I have divided my subject into the two following parts: a) the Sentence, b) the Parts of Speech. The first part has been subdivided into two sections: 1) the Elements of the Sentence, 2) the Composite Sentence. In the first of these sections I have inserted a brief exposition of the way in which sentences may be divided as to their meaning, as a necessary introduction to an intelligible discussion of the arrangement of the elements of the sentence. I have not included derivation, word-formation, and phonetics in my programme, these subjects lying for the present outside the field of my special studies. As to the views advanced in my grammar, I may honestly say that they are the outcome of a constant endeavour to ascertain facts, and for the most part of independent investigation, often extending over a considerable length of time. In some cases, I regret so say, I have not been able to arrive at final, or even satisfactory, results, and I am fully aware 329842 |