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A Point of Tense-Sequence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

One of the services which Mr. S. A. Handford has rendered to classical teaching in this country is his adoption of the word ‘habit’, rather than ‘rule’, as applied to the sequence of tenses in Latin. 1 For to most people, and especially to the learner, the word ‘rule’ has the finality of something which must be obeyed. But ‘rules’ of grammar and rules of conduct are very different things. Grammar is the systematic analysis of phenomena observed in a language, and a grammarian's ‘rules’ are simply the formulation of habitual modes of expression which he has observed in the language which he is studying. If his observation has been faulty or incomplete, the ‘rule’ which he formulates may be inadequate or false. And so a ‘rule’ which appears to run counter to common sense must provoke suspicion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1948

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References

Page 128 note 1 The Latin Subjunctive, pp. 140 ff.

Page 128 note 2 Vorlesungen über Syntax, i, pp. 253–4.

Page 129 note 1 p. 112.

Page 129 note 2 Op. cit., p. 142.

Page 129 note 3 Epp. ad Att. iii. 20.