The china saucer is a saucer of china.
A clothes-brush is a brush for clothes.
Mary's hat is the hat of Mary; Mary's hat belongs to Mary.
A copy-book is a book for copying.
SERIES D
Turn from the left to the right.
—Draw a line from the bottom of the paper to the top.
Draw a line from the top of the paper to the bottom.
—Go from your seat to the cabinet.
Go from the cabinet to your seat.
—Change the pen from your right hand to your left hand.
Change the pen from your left hand to your right hand.
Permutations
The child has built the first sentences on each of the slips with his cards, and he has reproduced the others by changing simply the preposition cards. In this way he has seen how the position of objects relative to each other is determined wholly and only by the use of the preposition. The preposition, therefore, determines the relation of words, the relation of a noun to some other word, here to another noun or to a verb. In the phrase,
Here are some examples of sentences in the above exercises from which the preposition has been taken away by the teacher:
Place a chair the door.
Lay the counter the box.
Place the prism the cylinder.
The china saucer is made china.
To give the child an idea of the normal position of prepositions a series of permutations may be made leaving the preposition and its object in their normal positions. In this case some meaning is still left to the sentence:
From the door to the window stretch a string.
Stretch from the door a string to the window.
From the door to the window a string stretch.
From the door stretch to the window a string.
But the child will recognize that the right sentence is the simplest and the clearest:
On the other hand if we separate the preposition from its object or invert their normal position, the meaning is entirely lost:
Stretch a string from the door window to the.
String from the stretch door to the a window.
And likewise with these other sentences:
Run wash-stand table (definition of motion lacking).
Run wash-stand from the table to the.
From the run wash-stand to the table.
Wash-stand from the to the run table.
Lessons and Commands on Prepositions
The teacher may also take groups of children and give them short lessons on the preposition to explain the meaning, selecting if possible two or three synonyms or antonyms each time. The lessons should always he practical and full of action. The child should come to understand in this case the relationship established by this or that preposition between the object (noun) and the action (verb) to be performed. As soon as this has been made clear by the teacher the commands are distributed to the children who put them into execution. Here is the material that we use:
Of (di).
—Go and get a boxful of counters. Go and get a glass of water. Bring me a piece of cloth.
near (to), next (to), beside, far away from (vicino, accosto, lontano).
—One of you boys stand in the middle of the room. Now you others go and stand near him. One of you stand next to him on the right, another beside him on the left. Now all go far away from him.
in, into, inside, out of (in, dentro, fuori).
—Rise from your chairs and go into the next room. Stay in that room a moment and then come back into this one. Go back on tip-toe and lock yourselves inside the next room. Come out of the next room into this one.
On this side of, on that side of, beyond (di là da, di qua da, oltre).
—Leave your places and form a circle on that side of the door; form a circle then on this side of the door. All of you go and stand somewhere beyond the door.
except, save (tranne, eccetto).
—All the children, except George and Mary, walk on tip-toe around the room.
—All the children, save George and Mary, walk on tip-toe around the room.
side by side with, opposite, in front of, along (di fianco, di fronte, avanti).
—Form a line side by side with each other.
—Form a line along the wall opposite the door.
—Form two lines in front of the piano.
before, behind (dirimpetto, dietro).
—Two of you come and stand before me.
—The rest of you go and stand behind me.
on, about, along (su, secondo, lungo).
—Each of you place one counter on the table. Now arrange the same counters along the far edge of the table. Now scatter the same counters about the center of the table.
between, among (fra, in mezzo a).
—One of you go and stand between the door and the piano.
—Place ten white counters on the table. Now go and scatter two or three red counters among the white ones.
from, to, as far as (da, a, fino a).
—Rise and walk from your places to the piano; wait a moment and then continue as far as the door of the next room.
around, about (attorno, intorno).
toward, against (verso, contro).
—Take your chairs and move them three steps toward the wall in front of you. Next, arrange your chairs in a row with their backs against the wall behind you.
across, through (attraverso, per).
—Roll your handkerchiefs into balls and throw them across the room.
—Pick them up as they lie and try to throw them through the door into the hall.
With, without (con, senza).
—Walk around the room with your chairs in your hands.
—Walk around the room without your chairs.
to, in order to, so as to (per).
—Wash your hands in order not to soil the cloth. Then close your eyes and feel this cloth so as to recognize it.
VIII
Analyses
Again the exercise consists of sentences analyzed by means of colored cards and commands. The grammar box contains six compartments having, like the others, the names of the different parts of speech on title cards of proper color. The card for the adverb is pink. In the rear compartment are six slips for each exercise, and in the sections the usual number of corresponding colored cards for the necessary words.
Group A
Walk rapidly to the window.
—Rise silently from your seat.
Rise noisily from your seat.
—Speak softly into the ear of your nearest comrade.
Speak loudly into the ear of your nearest comrade.
—Take five steps toward the door; turn abruptly to the left.
Take five steps toward the door; turn gradually to the left.
—Take your nearest comrade lightly by the arm.
Take your nearest comrade roughly by the arm.
—Look smilingly into the mirror.
Look scowlingly into the mirror.
Group B
Place your pencil here.
—Lay your book somewhere on the table.
Lay your book elsewhere on the table.
—Walk to the window constantly clapping your hands.
Walk to the window occasionally clapping your hands.
—Drink the water in the glass now.
Drink the water in the glass by and by.
—Carry the pink tower upstairs.
Carry the pink tower downstairs.
—Write a word on the blackboard immediately.
Write a word on the blackboard soon.
Group C
Walk along the hall swinging your arms a great deal.
—Bend your head a little.
Bend your head much.
—Walk slowly to the window.
Walk less slowly to the window.
Walk more slowly to the window.
—Place on the table your most beautiful drawing.
—Place on the table your beautiful drawing.
—Make a broad mark on the blackboard.
Make a very broad mark on the blackboard.
Group D
—Look for a piece of cloth as soft as velvet.
—Find among your colors a shade as black as the blackboard.
—Find a piece of cloth not so shiny as satin.
—Find among the plane insets a rectangle as broad as half the square.
—Bring a rod longer than your copy-book.
—Bring a rod as long as your copy-book.
—Bring a rod not so long as your copy-book.
—Find a piece of cloth less rough than the canvas.
Permutations
The sentences to be analyzed are reproduced as usual by building the first sentence on each slip; and then, by changing the adverb, the child gets the second or third sentence. One of the first permutations is to remove the adverb from those sentences where it performs the function of an adjective to the verb, thereby causing one action to be changed into another. For example take the two sentences:
Walk rapidly to the window.
Bend your head much.
Written without the adverb they indicate one action. What slight changes in the position of the head can be brought about by these adverbs! It is the adverb which really shows fine differentiations in movement!
In other sentences also where the adverb is, so to speak, an adjective to an adjective and therefore really affects the object (noun), similar permutations may be made.
Make a very broad mark on the blackboard.
Place on your table the prism which is least thick.
(Note: In English the position of the adverb is much freer than in Italian; it often stands at the end of the sentence and even between subject and verb,—something quite foreign to normal Italian usage. We retain the text entire.)
In the sentences analyzed by the child it is sufficient to recall that the adverb modifies the verb and follows the verb it modifies. Take the sentence:
Walk somewhat along the hall swinging your arms.
A little bend your head as you write, etc., etc.
Somewhat walk along the hall swinging your arms.
Walk along somewhat the hall swinging your arms, etc., etc.
On the other hand, adverbs of quantity and comparison precede the adjective:
Place on your table the prism that is least thick.
Permutation gives the following results:
Place on your table the prism which thick least is, etc., etc.
Adverbs of time and place often ring like trumpet calls to attention at the beginning of the sentence:
Now drink the water in the glass.
(Note: In English the adverb of time, placed at the end of the sentence, gains quite as much emphasis. So for adverbs of place.)
Lessons and Commands on Adverbs
—Walk into the next room and back again, meanwhile keeping your eyes closed.
—Walk to and fro across the room with your heads lowered and your hands behind your back.
—Rise abruptly from your seats.
—Shake hands cordially with your nearest neighbor.
—Raise your two hands simultaneously above your heads.
—One of you children walk around the room bowing to each pupil in succession.
—One of you call the children to the end of the room, carefully observing how they walk; judge their carriage without speaking and distribute the following cards where they belong: well, badly, fairly, best, worst.
—One of you stand in the center of the room; the others gather round him. Suddenly all of you run away from him. Then come back to him again.
—Form in line and the first four children come to me here; the rest go and stand there by the window. Now go and stand somewhere in the other room. Remain where you are a moment, then go and stand elsewhere. Finally all come back here to me.
—All of you hold your hands thus, as I am doing.
—Pick them up and throw them down again to the floor.
—Look upward to the ceiling. Now look downward to the floor.
—Ask him gently to sit down again.
—Sit sullenly in your chair with your eyes lowered.
—Smile kindly at your nearest neighbor.
A Burst of Activity:
In our own private experiments when we reached the adverb there occurred among the children a veritable explosion into a new kind of activity. They insisted on making up commands themselves. They invented them and then read them aloud to their companions or had their companions interpret the slips which they had written. All were most enthusiastic in performing these commands and they were rigorously scrupulous in acting them out down to the minutest detail. The executions came to be a literal, intensely real dramatisation: if a word was inexact or incorrect, the interpretation of the command threw the error into noisy relief, and the child who has written it saw before him an action quite different from what he had in mind. Then he realized that he had expressed his thought wrongly or inadequately and immediately set to work to correct his mistake. The revelation seemed to redouble his energy. He would hunt among his numerous words for the one necessary to translate his idea into a living scene before his eyes. Suppose a child had written the following sentence involving the use of the adverb sempre "always":
meaning that the child should all the while go on tip-toe; if the child began to walk on tip-toe and continued to do so for a long time, trying to express sempre (always—forever) he would find himself facing a serious problem. Hence the spontaneous query: "What must I do to express myself correctly?"
A little girl once wrote "Walk around the tables," meaning that the children should form a line and walk in and out around each table. Instead she saw her companions form a line and walk round the entire group of tables. Red in the face and out of breath she kept calling: "Stop, stop. That isn't the way," just as if this difference between the thought she actually had in mind and the way it was being executed were hurting her intolerably.
This is only a passing suggestion of something which, I think, will merit much further development later on, after more thorough experiment. It will suffice, however, to bring to the teacher a notion of a most fertile field for the development of the written language in its most rigorous purity. It is evident that the experiment shows the possibility not only of having spontaneous compositions without grammatical errors (just as the mechanical writing was spontaneous and without errors), but of developing a love for clearness and purity of speech which will be a potent factor in improving the literary appreciation of the masses, and popular culture generally.
When the children are seized with this passion for accurate expression of their thoughts in writing, when, spontaneously, clearness becomes the goal of their efforts, they follow the hunt for words with the keenest enthusiasm. They feel that there are never too many words to build with exactness the delicate edifice of thought. Problems of language come to them as a revelation. "How many words are there?" they ask. "How many nouns, how many verbs, how many adjectives? Is there any way for us to learn them all?" They are no longer content with their little copy-books of words. They ask for a wealth of word material which they now enjoy with all the delight of attractive and orderly interpretation. They never get tired of it.
These developments in our work suggested to us the idea of giving the children a large vocabulary comprising a sufficient number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives and containing all the words of the other parts of speech. The difference in bulk between the real content of language (substance and modification, that is, nouns with their adjectives, and verbs with their adverbs) and the other words which serve to establish relations and consolidate this content, is something very impressive to children of eight. It is for them that we tried to prepare our word charts and the dictionaries of synonyms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Here, meanwhile, are some of the commands which the children wrote themselves—things which they improvised all of a sudden, by an explosion of energy, as it were, developed as the result of inner maturity. Compare the aridity and uniformity of the commands we invented ourselves with the variety and richness of ideas appearing in the children's commands! We very evidently show the weariness the preparation of the material caused us. They, on the contrary, reveal an ardent, vivacious spirit, a life full of exuberance.
COMMANDS IMPROVISED BY THE CHILDREN
IX
Material:—The box has seven compartments marked with the colored title slips; tan for the article, black for the noun, brown for the adjective, red for the verb, violet for the preposition, pink for the adverb, and green for the pronoun. In the rear space are the slips for the sentences to be analyzed. There are, as usual, fewer cards than words. The exercise is to substitute the pronouns for nouns.
(Personal Pronouns)
George's sister was weeping. He soothed her with a kiss.
—The book fell to the floor. Emma replaced the book on the table. The book fell to the floor. She replaced it on the table.
—The children gave their mother a surprise. The children wrote a letter to their mother.
The children gave their mother a surprise. They wrote her a letter.
—The teacher said: The drawing is beautiful! Will you give the drawing to the teacher?
The teacher said: It is beautiful! Will you give it to me?
—Charles has gone into the other room. Can you find Charles?
Charles has gone into the other room. Can you find him?
(Demonstratives (questo, cotesto, quello) "this, that, these, those, this one, that one)
(As already noted for the adjective English lacks the demonstrative of the second person: that near you.)
Show a child the prisms of the brown stair; this is thicker than that; that is thinner than these.
—Let us look at the children: this child is taller than that child; that child is shorter than this child.
Let us look at the children: this one is taller than that one; that one is shorter than this one.
—Here is a cone on top of a cylinder: try to put the cylinder on top of the cone.
Here is a cone on top of a cylinder: try to put this on top of that.
—Let us show the cubes of the pink tower to a little girl: this cube is the largest; those cubes are the smallest of the series.
Let us show the cubes of the pink tower to a little girl: this one is the largest; those are the smallest of the series.
Note: The situation with the relatives is different in English: who refers to persons; which to things; that to either persons or things; whereas che and il quale are interchangeable referring to both persons and things, il quale having special rhetorical advantages over che, in addition to showing gender and number. Cui is used after prepositions; and, for the possessive Italian has il cui, la cui, etc., "whose".
Ask the children: Who wants to see my drawing?
—Ask Charles for the pencil; Charles put the pencil into the drawer.
Ask Charles for the pencil which Charles put into the drawer.
Ask Charles for the pencil that he put into the drawer.
—Thank Charles. Charles gave you the pencil.
Thank Charles who gave you the pencil.
—Look at the children. You hear the children in the next room.
Look at the children whom you hear in the next room.
—Yesterday you put the flowers into a vase: change the water in the vase.
Change the water in the vase into which you put the flowers yesterday.
Change the water in the vase where you put the flowers yesterday.
Change the water in the vase that you put the flowers into yesterday.
—Choose among the pieces of cloth the cloth most like your dress.
Choose among the pieces of cloth the one which is most like your dress.
Choose among the pieces of cloth the one that is most like your dress.
—Here is the little girl. We found her pocketbook.
Here is the little girl whose pocketbook we found.
—Here is the boy. We saw him yesterday.
Here is the boy whom we saw yesterday.
—Select an inset from the insets used for drawing.
Select an inset from those which are used for drawing.
Select an inset from those that are used for drawing.