Grammar

Use in the book

Every great author can have a particular grammar along with an idiom and characteristic habits. Logic is then called a kind of grammar whose relations concern ideas rather than words. The pencil-writing comparison allows grammatical writing sometimes to suffice for excellence without added colors. In teaching children, however, formally agreeing words must also agree morally. An epithet can insinuate a judgment, and the relation of a verb to its object can join courage either to carnage or to rejection of needless destruction.

These approvals and demands coexist with sharply critical fragments. General grammar is accused of producing observations and chatter without practical precepts. Excessive correctness then makes grammar the enemy of rhetoric and of an indefinable charm. The contexts distinguish grammatical order from a claim that grammatical correctness alone always makes good writing.

Places to read

1. I, p. 110, entry 10, ¶1An author can possess a particular grammar.
2. I, p. 309, entry 1, ¶1Logic is compared with a grammar of ideas.
3. I, p. 381, entry begun p. 380, no. 4, ¶5Grammatical writing can sometimes suffice without verbal color.
4. II, p. 637, entry 5, ¶1Grammatical examples transmit moral associations.
5. II, p. 670, entry 8, ¶1General grammar is criticized for practical sterility.
6. II, p. 878, entry 5, ¶2The too correct opposes an indefinable charm.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps grammar and grammatical. General grammar is the historical category, not an identified textbook. Régime in the pedagogical example is rendered grammatical relation or object according to its local role; nominative remains a technical grammatical term. The moral judgments belong to Joubert. The final fragments receive no invented qualification or finite verb.

Conjunction

French: et; mais.

And and but are themselves objects of criticism. In one sentence comparison, but reflects and and simply narrates; Joubert prefers and through an analogy of human judgment and divine intuition. In the Antiphilus translation example, however, removing the two but relations destroys grace, form and natural simplicity. These contexts prevent a universal preference for one conjunction. The English translation preserves the named relations and the two alternative translations; it does not authenticate their Greek source or supply a general ancient-versus-modern grammar.

Places to read: II, p. 879, entry 3, ¶2; II, p. 775, entry 2, ¶1.

Epithet

French: épithète; adjectif.

An epithet is called an insinuating judgment because it slips in with the word. Joubert’s proposed grammatical examples therefore concern moral as well as formal agreement: adjective and noun, subject and verb, verb and object link ideas in the learner’s mind. The English translation retains epithet as a qualifying expression, not necessarily an insult. The passage’s moral evaluations remain Joubert’s, and its unfinished final example is not expanded into a complete teaching exercise.

Places to read: II, p. 637, entry 5, ¶1.