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The Rudiments Of English Grammar
''The Rudiments of English Grammar'' (1761) was a popular English grammar textbook written by the 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley. While a minister for a congregation in Nantwich, Cheshire, Priestley established a local school; it was his first successful educational venture. Believing that all students should have a good grasp of English and its grammar before learning any other language, and dismayed at the quality of the instruction manuals available, Priestley wrote his own textbook: ''The Rudiments of English Grammar'' (1761). The book was very successful—it was reprinted for over fifty years. Its humor may have contributed to its popularity; for example, Priestley illustrated the ''couplet'' with this rhyme: ::Beneath this stone my wife doth lie: ::She's now at rest, and so am I. Priestley also quoted from the most famous English authors, encouraging the middle-class association between reading and pleasure, a reading that would also, Priestley hoped, fost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Grammar
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, Sentence (linguistics), sentences, and whole texts. This article describes a generalized, present-day Standard English – a form of speech and writing used in public discourse, including broadcasting, education, entertainment, government, and news, over a range of Register (sociolinguistics), registers, from formal to informal. Divergences from the grammar described here occur in some historical, social, cultural, and regional List of dialects of the English language, varieties of English, although these are more minor than differences in English phonology, pronunciation and lexicon, vocabulary. Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional grammatical case, case system of Indo-European in favor of analytic language, analytic constructions. The personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. In Western Europe, the first work to use the term polymathy in its title () was published in 1603 by Johann von Wowern, a Hamburg philosopher. Von Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies ... ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them". Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy, and polyhistory as synonyms. The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language is from 1624, in the second edition of '' The Anatomy of Melancholy'' by Robert Burton; the form ''polymathist'' is slightly older, first appearing in the ''Diatribae upon the first part of the late Histo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in electricity and other areas of science. He was a close friend of, and worked in close association with Benjamin Franklin involving electricity experiments. Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nantwich
Nantwich ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It has among the highest concentrations of listed buildings in England, with notably good examples of Tudor and Georgian architecture. It had a population of 14,045 in 2021. History The origins of the settlement date to Roman times, when salt from Nantwich was used by the Roman garrisons at Chester (Deva Victrix) and Stoke-on-Trent as a preservative and a condiment. Salt has been used in the production of Cheshire cheese and in the tanning industry, both products of the dairy industry based in the Cheshire Plain around the town. ''Nant'' comes from the Welsh for brook or stream. '' Wich'' and ''wych'' are names used to denote brine springs or wells. In 1194 there is a reference to the town as being called ''Nametwihc'', which would indicate it was once the site of a pre-Roman Celtic nemeton or sacred grove. In the Domesday Book, Nantwich is recorded as having eight ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county town is the cathedral city of Chester, while its largest town by population is Warrington. Other towns in the county include Alsager, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Frodsham, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Middlewich, Nantwich, Neston, Northwich, Poynton, Runcorn, Sandbach, Widnes, Wilmslow, and Winsford. Cheshire is split into the administrative districts of Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East, Halton, and Warrington. The county covers and has a population of around 1.1 million as of 2021. It is mostly rural, with a number of towns and villages supporting the agricultural and chemical industries; it is primarily known for producing chemicals, Cheshire cheese, salt, and silk. It has also had an impact on popular culture, producing not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar. Fluent speakers of a language variety or ''lect'' have effectively internalized these constraints, the vast majority of which – at least in the case of one's native language(s) – are acquired not by conscious study or instruction but by hearing other speakers. Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning a language later in life usually involves more explicit instruction. In this view, grammar is understood as the cognitive information underlying a specific instance of language productio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (or open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second. Background The word "couplet" comes from the French word meaning "two pieces of iron riveted or hinged together". The term "couplet" was first used to describe successive lines of verse in Sir P. Sidney's '' Arcadia '' in 1590: "In singing some short coplets, whereto the one halfe beginning, the other halfe should answere." While couplets traditionally rhyme, not all do. Poems may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets in iambic pentameter are called '' heroic couplets''. John Dryden in the 17th century and Alexander Pope in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth ( ; 27 November 1710 – 3 November 1787) was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar. Life Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in 1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in 1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a position he retained until 1741, when he was appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry. Bishop Lowth made a translation of the Book of Isaiah, first published in 1778. The Seventh-day Adventist theologian E. J. Waggoner said in 1899 that Lowth's translation of Isaiah was "without doubt, as a whole, the best English translation of the prophecy of Isaiah". In 1750 he was appointed A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Harris (grammarian)
James Harris, FRS (24 July 1709 – 22 December 1780) was an English politician and grammarian. He was the author of ''Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar'' (1751). Life James Harris was born at Salisbury, Wiltshire, the son of James Harris (1674–1731) by his second marriage to Elizabeth (c. 1682–1744), daughter of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury. He was educated at the Salisbury Cathedral School, and Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving university he was entered at Lincoln's Inn as a student of law, though he was not intended for the Bar. The death of his father in 1733 brought him an independent fortune and Malmesbury House in Salisbury's Cathedral Close. Harris became a county magistrate. He was Member of Parliament for Christchurch from 1761 until his death, and Comptroller to the Queen from 1774 to 1780. He held political office under George Grenville: in January 1763 he became a lord of the admiralty, and in April that year a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Horne Tooke
John Horne Tooke (25 June 1736 – 18 March 1812), known as John Horne until 1782 when he added the surname of his friend William Tooke to his own, was an English clergyman, politician, and philologist. Associated with radical proponents of parliamentary reform, he stood trial for treason in November 1794. Early life and work He was the third son of John Horne, of Newport Street, Long Acre, Westminster, a member of the Worshipful Company of Poulters. As a youth at Eton College, he had claimed "that his father was an eminent Turkey merchant" implying that, rather than a dealer in poultry, he traded with the Eastern Mediterranean. Before Eton, he had been at school in Soho Square, in a Kentish village, and from 1744 to 1746 at Westminster School. He was blinded in his right eye during a schoolboy fight. History of Parliament O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noah Webster
Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible ( Book of Genesis, chapters 5–9), the Quran and Baha'i writings. Noah is referenced in various other books of the Bible, including the New Testament, and in associated deuterocanonical books. The Genesis flood narrative is among the best-known stories of the Bible. In this account, Noah labored faithfully to build the Ark at God's command, ultimately saving not only his own family, but mankind itself and all land animals, from extinction during the Flood. Afterwards, God made a covenant with Noah and promised never again to destroy all the Earth's creatures with a flood. Noah is also portrayed as a "tiller of the soil" and as a drinker of wine. Biblical narrative Tenth and final of the pre-Flood ( antediluvian) Patriarchs, son to Lamech and an unnamed mother ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
