Hello children, welcome to Spring Branch Academy where we are seeking to instill wisdom and inspire worship in every student to the glory of God. This is the topic of language. We memorize a lot of things throughout the school year. This audio will actually put them all together. I'm going to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to the work of Tammy Peters and Daniel Copeland in their book, The Well-Ordered Language, The Curious Student's Guide to Grammar, published by Classical Academic Press. I received help from this work, and this is the compilation of a variety of different sources, but I wanted to particularly mention that one with gratitude. Let's begin. What is education? It is the arts and sciences. The arts are skills and the sciences are knowledge. Well, what are the liberal arts? Well, these are the skills that pertain to a free man and that enable you to act freely. What are those skills? Well, the liberal arts consist of the trivium and the quadrivium. What is the trivium? Well, that's skills with words. There are three subjects in the trivium. There's grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Grammar gives you the sentence. Logic gives you an argument. Rhetoric gives you a speech. So what are the three subjects of the Trivium? And what are the Trivium? The three R's of traditional education. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. And in our school, we have writing, which is the verbal skills of the Trivium. We have arithmetic, which is the mathematical skills of the Quadrivium. And we have reading, which gives us the big picture of history in the Bible and knowledge of God that we wouldn't get by just observing his world. Well, how do we learn a foreign language? What are the three things we need to remember? A pile of words and play by the rules and practice, practice, practice. We need vocabulary, syntax, and practice. Vocabulary are words, syntax are rules, and practice is reading, listening, and talking. A pile of words and play by the rules and practice, practice, practice. What are the eight parts of speech? Nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, adjectives and interjections, prepositions and conjunctions, nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, adjectives and interjections, prepositions, and conjunctions. What is a noun? A person, place, or thing. And what is a proper noun? Oh, that's a noun with a capital letter, meaning it refers to either a person or a place, a very specific person, a very specific place. What is a pronoun? That's a word that stands in place of a noun. And so we have the first person personal pronouns, second person personal pronouns, and third person personal pronouns. In the singular, first person is I, second person is you, third person is he, she, or it. Objectively, it would be me, you, him, her, and it. In the plural, first person is we, second person is you, third person is they, and in the objective it would be us, y'all, and them. I say y'all because plural in the South, in the second person is y'all. And so what is a pronoun again? It's a word that stands in place of a noun. And we have personal pronouns, and we actually have several pronouns, but we're just memorizing the personal pronouns. What is a verb? An action or a state of being. What are the action verbs? Well, they can either be transitive in form or intransitive. Some of them can be both, depending on the sentence. A transitive verb takes a direct object. An intransitive verb lacks a direct object. And so, if you were to say to somebody, I eat, you left it without the object. But if you said what you eat, then you have a direct object and that's a transitive use of that action verb. Well, since a verb is an action or a state of being, what are the state of being or state of verbs? Well, they are the be verbs, am, are, is, was, and were. And they are the linking verbs, which can replace a be verb. So you can say, I am tired, or you are tired, or he is tired. Or you can replace it with, I feel tired, you look tired, or he looks tired. And so these linking verbs replace a be verb. There are five properties of verbs. Can you name them? Well, there's person, first, second, third, we talked about that. There's number, either singular or plural, one or many, we talked about that. There's also tense, which pertains to time, past, present, and future, and completion, either incomplete or complete, imperfect or perfect. There's voice, either you are doing it with its active or it's being done to you, the subject, which is passive. And then there's mood, which reflects the human will. Imperative would be a good example of this, of I impose my will upon you. The indicative just points and does not involve the human will. And so the five properties of verbs are person, number, tense, voice, mood. Person, number, tense, voice, mood. Person, number, tense, voice, mood. The auxiliary verbs change the mood, tense, or emphasis. And so we have a little ditty that helps us with the auxiliary verbs. Can you, could you, will you, would you, shall you, should you name these verbs? Do and does and did are one, have and has and had are two, may and might and must are three, am, are, is, was, were, and be. How much faster can you be? Can you, could you, will you, would you, shall you, should you name these verbs? Do and does and did are one, have and has and had are two, may and might and must are three, am, are, is, was, were, and be. And I don't know if I can say that any faster. Can you? What are the four principal parts of an English verb? You have present and past, present participle, and past participle. Present and past, present participle, and past participle. An example would be sink, sank, sinking, sunk. Sink, sank, sinking, sunk. Adverbs are words that modify a verb. They often end in L-Y. They answer the questions how or when or where. I bet you can think of an adverb that ends in L-Y. Adjectives modify nouns. They answer the questions how many, whose, which one, what kind. The article adjective is the definite article, the, and the indefinite article, a or an. An precedes a word that starts with a vowel in English. Again, adverbs modify a verb and often end in ly. You add them to a verb, as it were. Adjectives modify a noun and you add them to nouns to modify them. And I should say, I believe adverbs can modify even more things, but I'm talking in general terms. And then the article adjective is the, the definite article, or a or an, the indefinite article. So either get the book, a definite book, or get a book, any book would do. An interjection is an unconnected emotional word. Alas! Oh! Wow! Conjunctions connect words or clauses. They are the words like because, when, in order to, therefore, after. Prepositions are words that precede a position, literally, and so they come before an object, and I like to think of a preposition of what a squirrel can do to a tree. It can go up the tree, down the tree, in the tree, out of the tree, away from the tree, toward the tree, next to the tree, alongside the tree, beside the tree, and you get the picture. So you can probably think of a lot more prepositions than what I mentioned. What is a sentence? A sentence is a group of words with a complete thought. Well, to be a complete sentence, you need a subject and a predicate. A subject is what the sentence is about, and the predicate is what you preach or assert about the subject. So pick a subject. Hot dog. And then you say, you preach something about hot dog. A hot dog deserves ketchup. That's kind of a silly subject, but we could have very lofty subjects too. God. Preach something about God. God made me and deserves worship. There are four kinds of sentences. Can you name them? Declarative. imperative interrogative exclamatory a declarative points an imperative calls it out an interrogative finds it out it asks the question an exclamatory makes a shout so a declarative points it out an imperative calls it out gives a command, an interrogative finds it out, it asks a question, an exclamatory makes a shout, it ends in an exclamation point. What are the three groups of words? A phrase, a clause, and a sentence. A phrase lacks a subject or a predicate. It doesn't have a subject and predicate. It's just a group of words clustered together that kind of point to something. A clause, though, has a subject and a predicate. A clause could be a sentence. It would be a simple sentence. But you can combine one or more clauses to make a complete thought, in which case you would have a main clause and connect it with a conjunction to a subordinate clause. So, let's talk about the two main kinds of clauses. You have a main clause and a subordinate clause. The main clause gives us the main thought. The subordinate clause adds information. Again, what are the two clauses? Main clause Subordinate clause. Some other clauses are relative clause, an adverb clause, a noun clause, and I'm tempted to say Santa clause, but that's for another day and another topic and someone that doesn't exist. Four sentence structures. What are the four ways to make a sentence in its structural form? Well, I mentioned one, simple. There's also compound, complex, and compound complex. Simple, compound, complex, and compound complex. A simple clause is a main clause only. A compound sentence has two main clauses connected by, say, and. A complex sentence has a main clause with a subordinate clause or clauses. And a compound complex sentence has two main clauses with subordinate clause or clauses. Phew! So sentences, making a sentence is an art in itself, children. And I hope you appreciate the beauty of a well-crafted sentence. Jesus could craft a sentence very, very well. Sentence errors, wow. There's two main ones that I see as a teacher. There's the run-on sentence when you go for more than two main clauses and it just goes on and on and on and I say, there needs to be a period. You completed a thought long ago and there's no break. Punctuation tells me as a reader when to make the break. And so put a period after one or two clauses or your compound complex sentences even. A fragment is a subordinate clause that lacks a main clause. A fragment would be saying, because he looks tired. And if I leave it like that, you would say, because he looks tired what? So a fragment is a subordinate clause often beginning with a conjunction and it just hangs there. It has no main clause. A run-on sentence is when you go beyond two main clauses. Let's switch to logic. That was grammar. Now let's move to logic. What is logic? The art of reasoning well. And what is reasoning? to make inferences from one thing that you assert to something else that you are now asserting. You start with premises and you end with conclusions. That's a deductive form of reasoning. Or you start with data and you end with conclusions. That's an inductive form of reasoning. And so if we do a logic tree and kind of what kind of logic do we have, Well, underneath the heading logic, we have formal logic or informal logic. Under formal logic, we study deduction or induction. And then under informal logic, we tend to focus on the fallacies, the things that where the conclusion does not follow the premise. In deductive logic, you have statements. A statement is a true or false sentence. In other words, a sentence that can be true or false. I got this information from Canon Press's textbook on logic and it was very helpful. An argument is when you start with premises and you lead to a conclusion. An argument can be valid or invalid. An argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises. But please note, validity is not the same thing as truth. I could assert that I am 10 feet tall, therefore I can dunk a basketball. And I would dare say that the conclusion follows from the premise. The problem is the premise isn't true. I'm not 10 feet tall. And I can't dunk a basketball. So both statements are false, even though the argument is actually valid. The conclusion would follow from the premise. So please note the difference between validity and truth. A syllogism is a special form of deductive logic. A syllogism has a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. What makes a major premise the major premise is it has the major term and the minor premise has the minor term and the conclusion always has the form the minor term is the major term. And so I could say, you know, human beings are made in the image of God. Bill is a human being. Therefore, Bill is made in the image of God. Bill is the minor term. Image of God is the major term. With inductive logic, we have to do Basically, there's two kinds of inductive logic. There's the modern statistical inductive logic that we use in science, where we have a statistical significance that we need to reach. We sample enough data and it's diverse, and then we draw a generalized conclusion. The Bible teaches us, though, that people's experience leads to another kind of inductive logic, and that's a proverb, a general statement And so a pithy, memorable statement of general truth that comes from broad experience. Please note a proverb is not a promise. It would just be a statement of logic. All things considered equal, if A is present, you can expect B to also be true. Now, to falsify either deductive logic or inductive logic, we look for falsification criteria. In deductive logic, we look for a faulty assumption because if the premise is faulty, the conclusion also does not need to be true. It may be true on other grounds, but it doesn't necessarily follow. And in inductive logic, we look for just one counterexample. And so if somebody were to say to me that the dead do not rise, I would just need one counterexample to say that inductive conclusion is actually false. And children, I hope you understand and know what is the classic counterexample to that claim, the dead do not rise. Praise the Lord, Jesus rose from the dead. Then logical fallacies. We have three main kinds. Do you know what the three main kind of logical and fallacies are or logical fallacies? The fallacies of distraction, the fallacies of ambiguity, and the fallacies of form. An example of distraction would be a red herring. It is irrelevant to the topic at hand. An example of ambiguity would be equivocation, when you change the meaning of a term and you didn't notify your audience. And a fallacy of form would be something like affirming the consequence, or in geometry we call it the converse. And so if P implies Q, I can't say then that if I find Q, I must also have P. There may be other reasons why Q exists. Abduction is a special form though of a logical fallacy. Maybe I could say that if P implies Q, Q also then implies P if there is only one known cause for Q. An example might be a solar eclipse. On a beautiful blue sky day, all of a sudden it turns dark. Well, we only know one cause for that apart from a miracle, and that would be a solar eclipse. Another kind of logic is moral logic, and this is something I developed from the Bible. What is right conforms to what is true, and what is true corresponds to reality as God defines reality. Ultimately, I look to God's Word for truth. Again, moral logic is what is right conforms to what is true, and what is true corresponds to reality as God defines reality. And a good example of this is the Shema. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That is reality, and so the statement is true. The assertion there's only one God is true because in reality only one God is true and living. And what is right to conform to what is true is the next verse in Deuteronomy, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Why would that be then the conclusion? Well, love God with all your being because there's only one God. That's what makes it right to love him with everything. The last topic in the trivium is rhetoric. What is the art of rhetoric or what is rhetoric? It is the art of persuasion. Now, it's interesting to compare logic and rhetoric. Logic is the art of reasoning well and rhetoric is the art of speaking well or the art of persuasion. And so in logic, you start with assumptions and you end with assertions. In rhetoric, you start with your audience and you end with action, something your audience needs to do. And so in a logic presentation, you actually have a debate. You make assertions based on assumptions, but in rhetoric, you end with speeches. You are talking to living people and you start with their knowledge and their concerns, make that connection, And then you end with something that they now need to do based on hopefully what you have persuaded them rightly to do. So rhetoric is an interesting topic. Aristotle is famous for his three means of persuasion, ethos, ethos, excuse me, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the character of the speaker Pathos is the emotion of the audience, and logos is the reasoning of the argument. And all three factors play into the effectiveness of a speech. Whether the person who's speaking can be trusted, whether the emotions of the audience can be moved, and whether the reasoning involved is truthful. And lastly, One of the last things here is the five canons of rhetoric. These also come from classical times. Invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. What are the five canons of rhetoric? Invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Invention is when we come up with ideas, things to say. Arrangement is when we put them in a certain order that where the audience would naturally think this should follow this and we anticipate where their mind would go, perhaps with objections, needs of clarity by giving an example or an illustration. The style is the dress. You're going to dress it up or keep it plain. The memory is when you basically know the speech so well, you can fix your eyes on the audience and talk to them and not just keep fixing your eyes on notes. And delivery is your manner of presentation. And when we're in rhetoric class, we need to learn to use gestures, eye contact, to vary our voice in its pitch, its speed, and its volume. Well, students, children, this is our topic of language, the skills in language. involves the trivium of the liberal arts. And so we started with a large section on grammar as we looked at the eight parts of speech and what's associated with them. Then we moved to logic. The art of persuade or the art of reasoning well. And we looked at the two kinds of logic, basic formal logic and then some fallacies. And now we've considered briefly some things in rhetoric, which is the art of persuasion or the art of speaking well. So children, I hope this is helpful. Lord bless you as you pursue the knowledge of how God made the world, but even more importantly, as you pursue discernment and wisdom in how to use it for his glory and the good of your neighbor. And so God bless you in that. Amen.