The chronicles of Grammar

UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS

DEPARTMENT: ENGLISH

COURSE TITLE: ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR
PROJECT TOPIC: THE CONCEPT OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR

BY

OLUWADARE AYOKUNLE SAMUEL

Abstract
Grammar is the spinal cord of any language and the user’s mastery of it determines his competence and performance in the language. This paper focuses on the meaning of grammar, types of grammar and application of grammar to language study. By providing a sample of text analysis from the different models of grammar examined, the paper illustrates how this approach can be helpful to language learner.


What is Grammar?
The word grammar is a polysemous word with different related senses and its usage has been broadened to include various aspects of a language. Due to the extension of its meaning, some linguists view grammar to be ambiguous and difficult to describe in succinct terms. This is not so because the meaning of grammar is not ambiguous but very complex and can best be understood through an analysis of its context of use. The study of grammar in languages is as old as traditionalism which focused on prescriptivism. In this period, the study of grammar was not only concerned with grammaticality but it was concerned with the profoundness of language use.

The study of grammar in the traditional era provides the bedrock for the definition of grammar till date. In the traditional sense, grammar is defined as the set of structural rules that govern the ordering of words in a sentence. Because the study of grammar was based on the study of the structural patterns of classical languages like ancient Greek and Latin, the rules that were prescribed by traditional grammarians were inadequate to capture other aspects of grammar in other languages. Traditionalists prescribed opaque rules like:

• 
  A sentence must not start or end with a preposition
  
• 
  The use of ‘shall’ for first person and ‘will’ for others in normal utterance, except for emphatic purposes
  
• 
  An infinitive ‘to’ must not be separated from its verb
  

As the study of grammar took a more definitive path, linguists began to study grammar as a science. Grammar for linguists is the level of their scientific analysis of linguistic structures which concerns the organisation of words in sentences. Leith (1997)
Grammar is now explicit in nature and exhaustively describes the grammatical constructions of a language. Modern grammarians choose to examine grammar using the descriptive technique of the study of a language, contrary to the prescriptive. The descriptive approach examines grammar of a language as it actually exists and is being used, rather than judging whether a sentence is grammatical based on laid down rules. This is in contrast to the prescriptive approach that was favoured by traditional grammarians and based the description of languages on prescriptive rules.
While the traditional study of grammar was inadequate and inconsistent, it provided the basis of the study of grammar today. Hence traditional grammarians are credited for classifying words into eight (8) categories, coming up with grammatical terms such as tense, aspect, voice, mood, case, gender, person and inflection. The classical definition of grammar as being the set of structural rules that govern the structuring and ordering of words in a sentence is still applicable. However, since the rules were based on the study of the structures of Latin and Greek, it was incapable of capturing the varying aspects of what constitutes the study of grammar. Hence, over time grammar has come to mean more than prescription of rules. It should be noted that grammar is the foundation of self expression. Grammar is the basic tool needed for us to express ourselves; the more we are aware of how grammar functions, the more we will be able to monitor how we use it in interaction with others.
Therefore grammar is the empirical study of all aspects of a language that deal with words, their formation, production, organization, function, grouping, denotative meanings, contextual meanings, connotative meanings and varying usages in terms of societal acceptability and restrictions.
In the contemporary study of language, grammar has become all encompassing and accommodating that almost every aspect of the study of language can be conveniently placed under grammar. This makes the definition above a contemporary definition of grammar. In modern language study, grammar does not focus only on the structuring of words into phrases, clauses and sentence (Syntax) but it also includes other fields of language such as semantics, phonology, morphology, pragmatics and discourse analysis.
According to Crystal (2004), Grammar has become all encompassing not only because it consists of various linguistic units as stated above but also because “it can help foster precision, detects and eliminate ambiguity and exploit the richness of expressions available in English.”
In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, grammar is explained as a noun with various meanings and because the meanings are polysemous, they are placed under a single entry. It defines grammar as:

1. 
   the rules in a language for changing the form of words and joining them into sentences
   

Examples: I understand the rules of grammar

2. 
   a person’s knowledge and use of a language
   

Example: His grammar is appalling

3. 
   a book containing the description of the rules of a language
   

Example: I bought David Crystal’s Grammar

4. 
   a particular theory that is intended to explain the rules of a language and of languages in general
   

Example: I completely understand Chomsky’s Generative Grammar
Other usages of the word grammar are:

• 
  As the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence
  
• 
  A study of what is to be preferred and what avoided in inflection and syntax
  
• 
  The characteristic system of inflections and syntax of a language
  
• 
  The principles or rules of an art, science, or technique
  

Example: a grammar of the theatre
Some of these definitions consider grammar to be the study of syntax; this suggests that there is a difference between grammar and syntax. Both terms (grammar and syntax) have to do with the rules of sentence formation. However, syntax is roughly about word order, grammar has overlapping meanings. Grammar has to do with word ordering and every other thing about words and how languages work. Grammar is polysemous in nature this is because it deals with the relationship between the internal economy of words (morphology) and the external morphology of words (syntax).
Viewing some linguists perspectives on the definition of the word grammar, Purpura (2004) examined the distinction between grammar and pragmatics. According to him, grammar encompasses grammatical forms and meanings whereas pragmatics is a separate but related component of language. He further asserted that grammatical knowledge, along with strategic competence, constitutes g rammatical ability of an individual.
Covell (1852) described grammar as the science of language and the act of putting it into use. He divided grammar into theoretical and practical grammar, where theoretical grammar is the digest of the principles common to all languages and practical grammar is a digest of the principles common to a language. According to Covell, while grammar is the collective principles of a language, English grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language correctly. He further stated that grammar is divided into four parts: orthography, etymology, syntax and prosody. The first two treat the formation of words and the other two treat the formation of sentences.
Butterfield (2008) states that grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to.
The basic elements of grammar that has survived the several modification of grammar are: Sentences (complete, run-on, and fragments)
Tenses (present, past, future, present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect.)
Pronouns (personal, indefinite, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, reflexive, intensive, reciprocal)
Possessives (‘s for singulars and s’ for plurals)
Leech et al (1982) view grammar as an important component that relates phonology and semantics, or sound and meaning. Huddleston (1988) sees grammar as consisting of morphology and syntax. Morphology deals with forms of words while syntax deals with the ordering of the words to form sentences. Hudson (1992) is in the opinion that grammar embraces any kind of information about words since there are no boundaries around grammar. Cobbett (1984) regards grammar as constituting rules and principles that help a person to make use of words or manipulate and combine words to give meaning in a proper manner. It concerns with form and structure of words and their relationships in sentences. This means that as the word order or form in a sentence changes, the meaning of the sentence also changes.
In line with Noam Chomsky’s transformational generative theory on the study of language, M.T Lamidi (2007) defines grammar as the study of the ideal native speaker-hearer’s competence in the use o a language. He views grammar as the innate and unconscious knowledge possessed by the speaker that enables the speaker to judge sentences as grammatical or ungrammatical.