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Grammar Voyage
Michael Clay Thompson
Art by Milton N. Kemnitz
Royal Fireworks Press
Unionville, New York
Grammar Voyage 1
Copyright © 2012, Royal Fireworks Publishing Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. No copying or reproduction
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Design and graphics by Michael Clay Thompson
Ship paintings by Milton N. Kemnitz
Michael Clay Thompson 2
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Level One: Parts of Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Level Two: Parts of Sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Level Three: Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Level Four: Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
How to Implement Grammar Voyage . . . . . . . . . 153
Grammar Voyage 3
INTRODUCTION
Michael Clay Thompson 4
A GRAMMAR VOYAGE
We set sail now on rolling seas
that fall on beaches far and near.
Like passengers on rusty ships,
we scan the water, trying to hear
the sound, the voice, the mystery,
the whispery report, the words,
the clear austere details.
Around the seas we search,
inspecting every port of call,
the harbors, inlets, most of all
the coastal cities on the far
horizons, distant and inviting our
arrival. In the misty night we sail,
in the sea we make our trail
until the vivid dawn reveals
our destination. Now we feel
it drawing near, we hear the sounds,
the voices, words, clamor of birds
and people walking toward the pier.
We steer, we cast our ropes,
and we are here.
Grammar Voyage 5
On any grammar voyage,
wild words pervade the world,
like freighter, storm, and cable,
later, form, affable, and able.
There are words like strike,
and flake, and croak, opaque,
and words like sudden,
sodden, and redden.
Happily is a word, and snappily,
and mug, and log, and dog.
There are names for seagulls,
and seaweeds, and seashores,
and more. The wind might roar,
a bird might soar, the knocking oar
might dip into the water of the port,
and row us to the dock.
We climb up from the rocking boat
and step into a new
world full of language.
There are voices, and tacit choices,
and faces behind the words
that rise and fall and tell us all
the secrets of the heart.
So let us start.
Michael Clay Thompson 6
FOUR WAYS OF THINKING
ABOUT LANGUAGE
When we think about language,
that is called grammar. The captain
of a ship uses grammar to command,
the man on the wharf uses grammar
as he works, and sailors on the
seawalls tell their secrets to one another—
all in grammar.
With grammar, we talk of fishing,
and talk while fishing,
and eat fish while talking.
Sometimes we fish for words.
On our grammar voyage,
we will think about language
in four ways.
These four ways
of thinking about language are called
1. parts of speech
2. parts of sentence
3. phrases
4. clauses
Grammar Voyage 7
The ship moved softly off
into the harbor mist,
into the shifting fog,
the lifting tide and smell
of sea breeze easing
the departure from the shore
to Africa, Asia, Singapore.
Michael Clay Thompson 8
We could think about language
from our windy deck, approaching
Hong Kong, Brisbane, or Abidjan.
We think of language
as we sail the Coral Sea,
or as we sail east from Manakara to Mauritius,
and we will think about
the four ways of thinking
about language more, much more,
but here, as we begin,
is a subtle hint:
1. parts of speech:
the eight kinds of words
2. parts of sentence:
the parts of ideas
3. phrases:
little groups of words
4. clauses:
making simple or complicated ideas
with subjects and predicates
All of these ideas are abstractions,
concepts we create
to understand our own language.
Grammar Voyage 9
WORD FRAGMENTS
FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD
Before we study the
four levels of grammar, let us learn
some of the ancient Latin words
or word fragments that we will see
in the grammar words we will study.
Memorize these meanings:
pre - before
ante - before
pos - put
com - together
ad - to
pro - for
nom - noun
ject - throw
inter - between
con - together
junct - join
pound - weigh
plex - twist or fold
dict - say
verbum - wordsub - under
in - notap - beside
fin - endpend - hang
de - downcede - go
co - togetherapo - beside
preposition appositive nominative dependent
antecedent independent antecedent subordinate interjection
adjective coordinating pronoun conjunction infinitive
interjection compound complex
Michael Clay Thompson 10
LEVEL ONE
PARTS OF SPEECH
There are only
eight kinds of words.
Grammar Voyage 11
LEVEL ONE:
THE EIGHT PARTS OF SPEECH
Our sails unfurl
and fill with wind,
as the world is filled with language,
and language is filled with words.
Grammar lets us think about words.
On our grammar voyage
we discover many things,
and because there are many things,
there are many words:
whale, sand, salt, wind, barracuda, shark, and ray,
eel, seal, sail, trail, nail, stark, and gray...
lights, tune, bright, moon, engine, wake, and mast,
from, hum, some, run, singing, ache, and past.
There are stormy oceans of words.
But how many KINDS
of words are there?
Michael Clay Thompson 12
THERE ARE ONLY
EIGHT KINDS OF WORDS.
These eight kinds of words are called
the eight Parts of Speech.
Our whole language is made of only
these eight kinds of parts.
You could not build a ship
with only eight kinds of parts,
or a sea port, or a marine chronometer.
But you could build a language,
even a great language like English,
with only eight kinds of parts.
Here are the names
of the eight parts we use:
NOUN pronoun adjective
VERB adverb
preposition conjunction interjection
Grammar Voyage 13
There are profound waters, rolling and blue,
and wine-dark seas that Homer knew,
and there are secrets, deep and true, like this:
Even though there are eight kinds of words,
there are only two
main kinds of words,
and the other six are helpers
that support the main two.
The two main kinds of words
are the NOUN and the VERB,
and the other six kinds of words help them.
What is the meaning of this secret?
Deep in the hidden interior of language,
there is a beautiful simplicity,
a profound simple center:
a verb about a noun.
Our vast and complicated language
has beautiful simplicity
at its core.
n/v
Michael Clay Thompson 14
Almost every sentence has a noun
(or pronoun that means it),
and every sentence has a verb.
No other part of speech
is in every sentence.
This simple image shows us
what our thinking is like.
This sublime simplicity
gives our language
its flexibility
and power.
Grammar Voyage 15
1. NOUN
Nouns name persons, places,
and things—a world of things...
The ship chugged up the torpid Congo,
gray smoke long ago passing the stern,
the sharp bow cutting unconcerned
the flowing blue, indolent crew knowing
they will see the lurid lights of Kisangani
bright beneath the vast and vivid sunset.
The word noun comes from
the Latin nomen, meaning name.
Michael Clay Thompson 16
PROPER nouns, such as Madagascar
and Titanic and Bombay,
are capitalized.
COMMON nouns, such as
fuel, dishes, foam, and horizon,
are not capitalized.
A noun naming one thing, such as
rail, or tide, or smokestack, or buoy, or quay,
is SINGULAR.
A noun naming more than one thing,
such as sails, or shores, or cultures,
or ports, or songs, or seamen,
is PLURAL.
Micronesia is a singular proper noun.
Ships is a plural common noun.
There are also POSSESSIVE nouns:
We watched John’s ship.
But many nouns
such as Micronesia and bioluminesence
are long words
and take energy and time to say, so...
we use a short word that means the noun,
and it is called the pronoun.
Grammar Voyage 17
2. PRONOUN
Pronouns are quick words, code beeps,
speedy shortcuts we use when we do not
want to repeat a long noun.
Instead of saying
Joseph Theodore Conrad,
the author of Heart of Darkness,
whose real name was
Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski,
we can just say
he.
The noun the pronoun replaces is called the ANTECEDENT.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in number:
WRONG: Some person dropped their book.
RIGHT: Some person dropped his or her book.
Michael Clay Thompson 18
There are several groups, or CASES, of pronouns.
One important group
of pronouns is
the SUBJECT pronouns:
I you he she it
we you they
He sailed west across the Pacific
toward the Solomon Islands.
•
Another important group
of pronouns is
the OBJECT pronouns:
me you him her it
us you them
She gave him the map of Polynesia
and taught him how to navigate
by the stars at night.
Grammar Voyage 19
MEMORIZE
SUBJECT PRONOUNS
singular plural
first person
I
we
second person
you
you
third person
he she it
they
OBJECT PRONOUNS
singular plural
first person
me
us
second person
you
you
third person him her it
them
You must memorize
these two groups of pronouns.
Keep repeating them until you feel
certain that you will know them
for the rest of your life.
We will think more about this later,
but do you notice anything now
about how we use these pronouns?
I saw him, and she saw me,
but we gave him and her the squid.
Michael Clay Thompson 20