The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, June 1885, No. 9

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The Chautauquan.
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.
Vol. V. JUNE, 1885. No. 9.
President , Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor , J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors , The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary , Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary , Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.
To us the unit of speech is the word; historically, the unit is the sentence. It matters little which of the theories respecting the first forms of speech we adopt; all such theories may be rejected, and still we shall find it most reasonable to believe that man’s earliest utterances were wholes, answering in value to our sentences. A revolution has been effected and we have a part of speech for our unit. We construct or build our sentences out of pieces of different meaning and value. Our simplest sentence has two of these pieces—a subject or noun, and a verb; a long sentence may have a dozen or a score of pieces. The making of sentences out of parts of speech is a kind of mechanics. The sentence has its mechanism, of which we usually learn the science by analyzing sentences. This analytical process yields what we call the principles of syntax. It must be remembered, however, that we learn to talk before we learn grammar, and that multitudes of people scarcely know any unit except the sentence. Their vocabulary is a phrase-book, in which every word has a fixed and unchangeable position. These persons abound in the illiterate countries; in Italy, for example, the majority of the people speak only in sentences having invariable forms; change the order of the words and you become unintelligible to them. The same effect is produced by employing a synonym for any word in any sentence. Our people are usually more alert to variety in expression and catch meanings in forms and arrangements to which they are unaccustomed.