Principles of Grammar
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
- 8 lectures, 19 hours
- Recorded in 1981
In this course, Dr. Peikoff explores the epistemological roots of the science of grammar. In it, he illustrates how an understanding of the basic methods of combining words into sentences is essential to clear thinking and writing. Each lecture contains student exercises that should be completed prior to the end of the lecture.
Download the entire course (752 MB) to listen in the audio player of your choice—or listen online starting with Lecture One below. If listening to the course from this website, be sure to make a note of the current lecture and timestamp before leaving so that you can easily resume where you left off.
Study Guide
This course includes a study guide, featuring questions and other material designed to help you digest the course content. This material accompanies the individual lectures and is also available below as a PDF.
Lecture Guide
Summaries of the lecture content are provided below for your reference and convenience.
| Lecture 1 | In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff reviews the basic conceptual foundations of grammar and indicates the objective roots of grammatical rules. He explains the basic parts of a sentence and the parts of speech to be used in parsing sentences. |
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| Lecture 2 | This lecture explores the ways that advancing from simple to complex sentences can advance the purposes of clarity as well as meet certain cognitive needs. Dr. Peikoff explains the role of appositives, subordination and conjunction, and sentence fragments. This session also includes Dr. Peikoff’s review of the answers to the homework for the first session. |
| Lecture 3 | In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff continues his discussion of how to achieve emphasis through grammatical constructions. He describes the use of word order, repetition, correlatives, and economy as means toward this end. He reviews the homework from the second session. |
| Lecture 4 | This lecture covers some of the characteristics of verbs and how they affect meaning. Dr. Peikoff discusses the use of different tenses, moods, and voices. He concludes with clarification on the use of verbals, specifically participles and gerunds. The lecture also reviews the homework from the previous class. |
| Lecture 5 | Dr. Peikoff concludes his discussion of verbs in this lecture, with focus on the infinitive form, its uses, and how to properly apply tense considerations to it. He also explains how to avoid dangling verbals. The lecture continues with a discussion of pronouns, their types, uses, cases, and number. Dr. Peikoff stresses the need to be sure that antecedents are clear, and he concludes with a brief explanation of relative pronouns and the rules that apply to them. The homework from the previous session is reviewed. |
| Lecture 6 | In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff discusses the role of punctuation and its importance to clarity and proper thinking. He reviews the origins and purposes of punctuation. With special emphasis on the different functions of the comma, Dr. Peikoff provides much practical guidance about how properly punctuating a sentence can improve thinking. There is also some brief discussion of semicolons, parentheses, and dashes. Review of the previous session’s homework is also included. |
| Lecture 7 | In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff focuses on the topic of diction. Although not formally a part of grammar, since diction only refers to the choice of words, it is nevertheless tied to precision and clarity. Dr. Peikoff explains how to navigate questions of denotation and connotation, formal speech and colloquialisms, synonyms, and levels of abstraction in words. He concludes with a discussion of metaphor and idiom. The lecture includes a review of the previous session’s homework. |
| Lecture 8 | This lecture continues Dr. Peikoff’s discussion of diction with specific focus on the question of linguistic change. He analyzes the ways that language changes and the proper approach to assessing those changes. |