Plain English Part 56

Relief Achievement Reprieve Lien Siege

PLAIN ENGLISH

LESSON 16

Dear Comrade:

We have been tracing the development of written speech in order that we might have a clearer understanding of our own language. We have found how our earliest ancestors communicated with each other by signs and an articulate speech that was probably a little better than that of some animals of today. They gradually developed this articulate speech and then began to have need for some form of written speech. That which distinguishes man from the animals primarily is his power to remember and to a.s.sociate one idea with another. From this comes his ability to reason concerning the connection of these ideas. Without this power of a.s.sociative memory we would not be able to reason. If you could not recall the things that happened yesterday and had not the power of imagination concerning the things that may happen tomorrow, your reasoning concerning today would not be above that of the animals.

So man soon found it necessary to have some way of recalling accurately, in a manner that he could depend upon, the things that happened yesterday and the day before and still farther back in time. So that his first step was the invention of simple aids to memory such as the knotted strings and tally sticks. Then he began to draw pictures of the objects about him which he could perceive by the five senses, the things which he could see and hear and touch and taste and smell.

But man, the Thinker, began to develop and he began to have ideas about things which he could not see and hear and touch and taste and smell. He began to think of abstract ideas such as light and darkness, love and hate, and if he was to have written speech he must have symbols which would express these ideas. So we have found that he used pictures of the things he perceived with his five senses to symbolize some of his abstract ideas, as for example; a picture of the sun and moon to represent light; the bee to symbolize industry; the ostrich feather to represent justice. But as his ideas began to develop you can readily see that in the course of time there were not enough symbols to go around and this sort of written speech became very confusing and very difficult to read.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and so this need of man forced him to invent something entirely new--something which had been undreamed of before. He began now to use pictures which were different in sense but the names of which had the same sound. You can find an example of this same thing on the Children's Puzzle Page in the rebus which is given for the children to solve. As for example: A picture of an eye, a saw, a boy, a swallow, a goose and a berry, and this would stand for the sentence, I saw a boy swallow a gooseberry.

Perhaps you have used the same idea in some guessing game where a mill, a walk and a key stands for Milwaukee. And so we have a new form of picture writing. Notice in this that an entirely new idea has entered in, for the picture may not stand for the whole word but may stand for one syllable of the word as in the example given above. The mill stands for one syllable, walk for another and key for another. This was a great step for it meant the division of the word into various sounds represented by the syllables.

What a new insight it gives us into life when we realize that not only our bodies but the environment in which we live, the machines with which we work and even the language which we use has been a product of man's own effort. Man has developed these things for himself through a constant and steady evolution. It makes us feel that we are part of one stupendous whole; we belong to the cla.s.s which has done the work of the world and accomplished these mighty things. The same blood flows in us; the same power belongs to us. Truly, with this idea, we can stand erect and look the whole world in the face and demand the opportunity to live our own lives to the full.

Yours for Freedom,

THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

WORDS ADDED TO VERBS

+279.+ We have just finished the study of adjectives and we have found that adjectives are words added to nouns to qualify or to limit their meaning. Without this cla.s.s of words it would be impossible for us to express all of our ideas, for we would be at a loss to describe the objects about us. Adjectives enable us to name the qualities or tell the number of the objects with which we come in contact.

The verb, we have found, expresses the action of these objects; in other words, the verb tells what things do. So with adjectives and verbs we can describe the objects named by the nouns and tell what they do. For example, I may say, _Men work_. Here I have used simply a noun and a verb; then I may add various adjectives to this and say, _Strong, industrious, ambitious men work_. By the use of these adjectives, I have told you about the kind of men who work; but I have said nothing about the action expressed in the verb _work_. I may want to tell you _how_ they work and _when_ they work; _where_ they work and _how much_; in other words, describe fully the action expressed in the verb _work_, so I say:

The men work busily.

The men work late.

The men work well.

The men work inside.

The men work hard.

The men work here.

The men work now.

The men work more.

Words like _busily_, _hard_, _late_, _here_, _well_, _now_, _inside_, and _more_, show _how_, _when_, _where_ and _how much_ the men work.

We could leave off these words and still have a sentence, since the other words make sense without them, but these words describe the action expressed in the verb.

Words used in this way are called adverbs because they are added to verbs to make our meaning more definite, very much as adjectives are added to nouns.

+280.+ The word adverb means, literally, _to the verb_, and one would suppose from this name that the adverb was strictly a verb modifier, but an adverb is used to modify other words as well. An adverb may be used to modify an adjective; for example, we might say: _The man was very busy_. _This lesson is too long._ Here _very_ and _too_ are added to the adjectives _busy_ and _long_ to qualify their meaning.

+281.+ You remember in the comparison of adjectives, we used the words _more_ and _most_ to make the comparative and superlative degrees. Here _more_ and _most_ are adverbs used with the adjectives to qualify their meaning. Adverbs used in this way will always answer the question, _how much_, _how long_, etc. In the sentence, _The man is very busy_, _very_ is used to answer the question _how_ busy. And in the sentence, _The lesson is too long_, the adverb _too_ answers the question _how_ long.

An adverb is also added to another adverb sometimes to answer the question _how_. For example; we say, _The man works very hard_. Here the adverb _hard_ tells _how_ the man works and _very_ modifies the adverb _hard_, and answers the question _how hard_. So we have our definition of an adverb:

+282.+ +An adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of a verb, an adjective or another adverb.+

Remember that adjectives are used only with nouns or p.r.o.nouns, but the adverb may be used with a verb or an adjective or another adverb. You remember that we had in our first lesson, as the definition of a word, that, _a word is a sign of an idea_. The idea is a part of a complete thought. See how all of these various words represent ideas, and each does its part to help us express our thoughts.

HOW TO TELL ADVERBS

+283.+ We need not have much difficulty in always being able to tell which words in a sentence are adverbs, for they will always answer one of the following questions: _How?_ _When?_ _Where?_ _Why?_ _How long?_ _How often?_ _How much?_ _How far?_ or _How little?_ etc. Just ask one of these questions and the word that answers it is the adverb in your sentence. Take the following sentence:

He _always_ came _down too rapidly_.

The word _always_ answers the question _when_. So _always_ is an adverb, describing the time of the action expressed in the verb _came_--He _always_ came. _Down_ answers the question _where_. So _down_ is the adverb describing the _place_ of the action. _Rapidly_ answers the question _how_, and is the adverb describing the _manner_ of the action.

_Too_ also answers the question _how_, and modifies the adverb _rapidly_.

Exercise 1

Underscore the adverbs in the following sentences and tell which word they modify:

1. He writes correctly.

2. She answered quickly.

3. A very wonderful future awaits us.

4. You should not speak so hastily.

5. You can speak freely here.

6. He could never wait patiently.

7. We very often make mistakes.

8. She very seldom goes there.

9. He usually walks very rapidly.

10. I have read the lesson quite carefully.

11. We would willingly and cheerfully give our all for the cause.

12. He frequently comes here but I do not expect him today.

13. If we work diligently and faithfully we will soon learn to speak correctly and fluently.

14. I am almost sure I can go there tomorrow.

15. It was more beautifully painted than the other.

16. We eagerly await the news from the front.

17. He always gladly obeyed his father.

18. She spoke quite simply and met with a very enthusiastic reception.

19. The difficulty can be easily and readily adjusted.

Exercise 2

Use the following adverbs in sentences to modify verbs: