COROLLARY THEOREMS NOTE
An English teacher lady, having tens of years of teaching experience, asked us about our (grammatical)
"credentials" few days ago. We suspect it is more than likely that many readers think the same;
therefore, here is the answer.
Classic English grammar, same as Mathematics or Biology, is the product of our entire Civilization.
Please read the following extract from Logically Structured English Grammar, section Credits:
"As any decent author, I like to present unique, original ideas in the books I
write. However, in this book personal additions have no place: I cannot invent new notions in English
grammar! Modern English grammar is the collective work of thousands of people during the last five hundred
years. They have defined all grammatical categories, morphology and syntax, and they are the only ones who
deserve all credits for this book--I only used their work.
My personal contribution was few years of study, some efforts to structure and to present grammatical topics
in an intelligible manner--I hope--and about 98% of the examples. While writing Logically Structured English
Grammar I began loving it, and I felt truly honored to continue the labor of so many intellectuals who have
defined English grammar for all of us. I am not referring only to those authors I mentioned in Bibliography
section; I am thinking of all teachers, writers, and researches who worked on shaping English grammar: some
of them are great, known names, though I am certain very many are not. Particularly, I have to express my
profound admiration for ..."
Note that the classic grammatical structure presented in LSEG is the same one for all Latin roots
languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Amazingly, of all Latin-roots languages, Latin itself
is the most dissimilar. This is a paradox. The notion of "Latin-roots languages" does not imply
those languages are "derived" from Latin. "Latin-roots languages" refers to languages
that have been strongly influenced by Latin culture in theories/concepts, in grammatical structure, in
words, and in semantic meanings.
Unfortunately, for some obscure nationalistic propaganda reasons, during the past 50 years many authors of
grammar books came with all sort of "simplifications". The result today is deep, if not total
confusion among students and teachers as well.
Fragment from LSEG, section Foreword:
"Many prestigious grammar books have been consulted while writing Logically
Structure English Grammar: it represents the end result of an exhausting, intensive, four-years program of
study and research. There are very many books dedicated to presenting English grammar; strangely and
perplexingly, in most instances their common characteristic is, each is different from all others! Somehow,
most writers of modern grammar books have made remarkable efforts to make their books unique and dissimilar,
by promoting all sorts of 'simplifications' and 'shortcuts', despite the fact that English grammar is--and
it will forever be--only one, great, collective work. In this book it is considered English grammar should
remain only one, good, structural unit for all native and ESL speakers as well. That is the reason this book
presents the classic structure of the English grammar, far away from any trend of 'modern simplifications'
...
... Modern simplifications proposed by some authors could be tempting for (few) experts; for beginners,
however, simplifications are very dangerous. Beginners cannot understand the logic reasons behind
simplifications; as a result, any simplifications in English grammar create, in fact, confusion."
Credentials? How about 10000 years of Human Civilization--all of it.
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Morphology is a generic word used to name any analysis performed on elementary/atomic components.
Morphology, as grammatical branch, studies the forms of the words grouped into sentence elements (also named
"parts of speech").
Within the sentence structure, sentence elements take different forms, in order to express the meaning, and
morphology is grammatical instrument needed to control them. This needs to be highlighted again: "morphology
analyses the forms of the sentence elements within the sentence structure". One sentence
element, a verb for example, may take tens of different forms in a sentence, each needed to express a
particular time-frame.
The meaning of the words in written or spoken messages is of capital importance, and morphology helps
controlling it. Before anything, however, morphology groups all lexical words into morphological sentence
elements belonging to one of the following categories:
1. nouns (principal sentence element)
2. articles
3. adjectives
4. pronouns
5. numerals
6. verbs (principal sentence element)
7. adverbs
8. prepositions
9. conjunctions
10. interjections
The above categories of sentence elements are the same for all Latin-roots languages, and English makes no
exception. Only ten sentence elements are used to form sentences in any Latin-roots language. However, in
most English grammar books there are only eight categories of sentence elements presented: the articles are
(wrongfully) considered adjectives, and the numerals are either categorized as adverbs or adjectives, or
they are simply ignored. (Though, not in Logically Structured English Grammar.)
NOTE
The book Logically Structured English Grammar does more than just
presenting sentence elements in details: it explains how to identify/detect them correctly.
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Sentence elements take different forms, and morphology is grammatical branch needed to study them. However,
sentence elements are related to one another, and they have particular functions within the sentence
structure. Another grammatical instrument named "syntax" is needed to analyze the
functions of the sentence elements.
Syntax is a generic term used to name a particular type of analysis, based on relational
functionality. As grammatical branch, syntax helps building meaningful, logic, complex structures of words.
Sentence syntax groups the words into syntactic elements, based on their relational
functionality, as follows:
1. subject (principal syntactic element)
2. predicate (principal syntactic element)
3. attribute
4. object (direct, indirect, and prepositional)
5. adverbial (there are many types of adverbials)
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The next level of grammatical analysis, a superior one, is complex sentence syntax. This time the
basic/atomic components are entire sentences, named "clauses", and the rules governing complex
sentence structures are set by complex sentence syntax. Complex sentence syntax is a difficult and complex
grammatical analysis; it is performed using analogy to morphology and analogy to sentence syntax.
A complex sentence may be formed from principal clauses in coordination relations to each other, or from
clauses in subordination relations to one principal (main) clause.
Following complex sentence syntax, there are few more important grammatical topics presented in LSEG, which
require particular attention. For example:
1. Conditional Complex Sentence
2. Forming Interrogations and Negations
3. The Sequence of Tenses
4. Direct and Indirect Style
5. Punctuation
English is a very nice language, and it is wonderful to use it fluently. However, it is far more important
to know "what is" English, because that is the only certain way to master it appropriately in both
spoken and written forms.
Many native speakers consider it is a waste of time to learn grammar, because they already know English. The
plain truth is, indeed, most native speakers converse in English perfectly well. However, once the
native-speakers step over simple sentences (as are, "How you doing?" or "Take a look at that
thing," or "It's a fine day today," or "Oh, yeah, it's great!") and they intend to
express more complex ideas, using complex sentences, they discover that they do not know how to do it!
Native speakers learn English as a set of "expressions", similar to a poem, and they are able to
express themselves using only that particular set of usual, common, frequent, stereotype sentences, which is
a great limitation. In addition, grammar is far more than just "speaking" in English; tremendously
important is writing well in English. Consider the Punctuation rules: they are one very good reason to learn
grammar. Note that, without knowing grammar, there is no way you could master Punctuation appropriately.
Due to the fact that native speakers learn English as a set of "expressions", we have today few
"regional versions" of the English language. Accordingly, there is US English, Canadian,
Australian, etc., although there is only one correct version for everybody: English. At first, it is fun to
hear atypical, regional expressions; however, when the discussion, or the thesis, is scientific or business
oriented, the use of regional versions becomes annoying, strange, "provincial", and many times
improper in expressing the meaning.
In addition, there is one more aspect that native speakers need to consider very careful, before deciding to
study grammar or not. Foreign students do learn English grammar, and some of them manage to master it
perfectly well. It is greatly embarrassing to be an English native speaker and to meet with an ESL person
who knows English better than you do.
Many people think it is difficult to learn English Grammar, and the truth is, that is almost impossible,
given the existing, vast majority of grammar books we have today. With Logically
Structured English Grammar, however, you have the chance to understand English grammar. Of
course, it will take some time to assimilate the knowledge in that book, therefore it is recommended to
start as soon as possible. The great advantage is our promise: YOU WILL LEARN ENGLISH GRAMMAR!
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