ADVERTISEMENT.

In this edition of Murray's Abridgment, it has been judged expedient to insert after the definitions of each part of speech, the appropriate Exercises in Parsing, which, in all preceding Editions, have been retained in the APPENDIX. This method will be attended with less inconvenience than the one hitherto adopted, as it connects the definitions and the Exercises, which are to be learnt in succession. It is confidently believed that it will receive the approbation of teachers, especially as the same plan is recommended by the author, who, in his General Directions for using the Exercises, says, "As soon as the learner has committed to memory the definitions of the article and substantive, he should be employed in parsing those parts of speech, as they are arranged in the correspondent Exercises in the appendix. The learner should proceed in this manner through all the definitions and rules, regularly turning to, and parsing the exercises of one definition or rule before he proceeds tɩ another." By the arrange. ment in this edition, the inconvenience of recurring to the Exercises in a different part of the book, after learning the definitions, will be avoided.

English Grammar.

ENGLISH art of

INGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English language

with propriety.

It is divided into four parts, viz. I. OR THOGRAPHY, II. ETYMOLOGY, III. SYNTAX, and IV. PROSODY.

REMARKS.-Orthography teaches us how to spell words; Etymology teaches us their inflections, or how to decline, compare and conjugate them; and Syntax teaches us how to put them together, or to form them into sentences in a proper manner. Thus the 1st part of grammar treats principally of letters the 2d, of words; and the 3d, of sentences.

I. ORTHOGRAPHY.

LETTERS.

An articulate sound is the sound of the human voice, formed by the organs of speech.

Orthography teaches the nature and powers of letters, and the just method of spelling words.

A letter is the first principle, or least part,

of a word.

The letters of the English language, cal

led the English Alphabet, are twenty-six in number.

The following is a list of the Roman and Italic Characters.

Name.

Roman.

Cap. Small.

Italic.
Cap. Small.

A

a A

V

W

W W

20

P R H M N

ar

ess tee

u or you

vee

double u
eks

wy

zed

Letters are divided into vowels and consonants.

A vowel is an articulate sound,that can be perfectly uttered by itself: as a, e, o ; which are formed without the help of any other sound.

A consonant is an articulate sound, which cannot be perfectly uttered without the help of a vowel: as,b, d, f, l; which require vowels to express them fully.

The vowels are, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y.

Wand y are consonants when they begin a word or syllable; but in every other situation they are called vowels.

Consonants are divided into mutes and semi-vowels.

The mutes cannot be sounded at all, without the aid of a vowel. They are b, p, t, d, k, and c and g hard.

The semi-vowels have an imperfect sound of themselves. They are f, l, m, n, r, V, S, Z, a, and c and g soft.*

Four of the semi-vowels, namely, l, m, n, r, are also distinguished by the name of liquids, from their readily uniting with other consonants, and flowing as it were into their sounds.

**For the distinction between the nature and the name of the consonant, see Fisk's Murray, pages 35, 36.

A diphthong is the union of two vowels, pronounced by a single impulse of the voice; às, ea in beat, ou in sound.

A triphthong is the union of three vowels, pronounced in like manner; as, eau in beau, iew in view.

A proper diphthong is that in which both the vowels are sounded; as, o in voice, ou in ounce.

An improper diphthong has but one of the vowels sounded; as, ea in eagle, oa in boat.

SYLLABLES.

A syllable is a sound, either simple or compounded, pronounced by a single impulse of the voice, and constituting a word, or part of a word; as,a, an, ant.

Spelling is the art of rightly dividing words into their syllables; or of expressing a word by its proper letters.*

WORDS.

Words are articulate sounds, used by common consent, as signs of our ideas.

A word of one syllable is termed a monosyllable; a word of two syllables, a dissyllable; a word of three syllables, a trisyllable; and a word of four or more syllables, a polysyllable.

All words are either primitive or derivative.

*Dr. Johnson's Dictionary is the best standard of English orthography.