Five Findings About Grammar In “little prince”

杨世杰

After learning grammar for a long time， my brain is filled with many kinds of grammar rules.I felt that my brain is not my brain， it just likes a trash can full of mess.So I pick up a book “little prince” to calm down myself. After finishing reading the whole book， I begin to have a new view about grammar.

1.Grammar is not just rules

In my memory， I always think that Grammar is just some rules that we should obey.If we dont obey these rules，our English is wrong.Now，I have a shift in my mind，because it is Chinese traditional thinking of English grammar.In English native speakerseyes， grammar is a tool which makes the conversation more clear to understand， and in their daily life there is no grammar rules at all.For example，“She said we was related to him in some way and what he did was.” This sentense is adapted from the book “little prince” . We can know the author uses “was” instead of “were” to make the whole sentense more fluent.It is a native usage of English which in our eyes is a wrong usage of English grammar.

2.Simple words are not enough to express the emotion

Grammar is a good tool to express our emotions especially under some particular circumstances.If we dont use grammar，we will find that just simple words may not enough to convey our feelings.In the book “little prince”，we can find such sentences. “Your planet is so small that three strides will take you all the way around it.”If we remove the fixed structure “so...that...” and emit “is”， “will”，we will find the following sentense “Your planet， small ，three strides take you all the way around it.” We can know the whole sentense meaning has totally changed.So without grammar，we cant make others understand our words easily and clearly.

3.There are many ways to achieve the same function

If we want to emphasize our emotions in a sentence， we have different ways of using  grammar.For example，in the book “little prince”，we can find many emphatic sentences. “I myself own a flower.” In this sentense， we can know that the author use “myself”to emphasize the subject “I”. “It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.” In this sentense，the author use the fixed structure “It was.....that.....”to stress the former part—“where”— “in the full radiance of her beauty”. “The little prince could guess easily enough that she was not any too modest—but how moving—and exciting—she was！” Here the writer uses a dash to stress the emotion —“moving” and “exciting”. Except the former examples，the author uses more ways like “double negation”、 “inversion”、 “fronting”......and so on. You can read this book， and find the answers.

4.Different tenses in one sentense may have special meaning

As we all known，there are a lot of tenses and aspects in grammar，but different tenses in a sentense may be necessary to express the authors intention. So we should not ignore this kind of usage. For example， in this book， we can find the following sentence.“I have been silly，” she said to him， at last. “I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy.” In this sentense， the author uses many tenses—present perfect，simple past，and simple present.We can know that the flower was silly before， but now she begins to realize this problem，so the author uses the words “have been”. “she said to him” is a simple past form，because the conversation happened before the author wrote this article.And the next sentense “Try to be happy” is a imperative sentence，it suggests the flowers best wish to the prince. So we should pay attention to the change of the tense in some sentences.

5.parallelism is a good way to highlight your topic

When we write an article， we may not have a proper way to highlight our topic. But in the book “little prince”， we can know that parallelism is a good choice for us to highlight our topic. Parallelism can add the attraction of grammar，because of a series of examples.For example， “When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody，it is yours.When you discover an island that belongs to nobody，it is yours.When you get an idea before anybody else，you take out a patent on it：it is yours.So with me：I own the stars， because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them.” In these sentenses， the author uses parallelism to confirm that the businessman is reasonable to own these stars，and this can easily understood by us.At the same time，the author irons the greedy thoughts of the businessman.

Although my new views about grammar from this book “Little prince” are limited， the most important thing that I get from this book is to read the whole book with what you have learned， because only in this way can you deepen you understanding of English grammar and make your thoughts level up.So read more， think more， more inspiration will come.