grammar, rules of alanguage governing the sounds, words, sentences, and other elements, as well as their combination and interpretation. The word grammar alsodenotes the study of these abstract features or a book presenting these rules. In a restricted sense, the term refers only to the study of sentence and word structure (syntax and morphology), excluding vocabulary and pronunciation.

A brief treatment of grammar follows. For full treatment,seelinguistics.

Conceptions of grammar

A common contemporary definition of grammar is the underlying structure of a language that any native speaker of that language knows intuitively. The systematic description of the features of a language is also a grammar. These features are thephonology (sound),morphology (system of word formation),syntax (patterns of word arrangement), andsemantics (meaning). Depending on the grammarian’s approach, a grammar can beprescriptive (i.e., provide rules for correct usage),descriptive (i.e., describe how a language is actually used), orgenerative (i.e., provide instructions for the production of aninfinite number of sentences in a language). The traditional focus of inquiry has been onmorphology andsyntax, and for some contemporary linguists (and many traditional grammarians) this is the only proper domain of the subject.

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Ancient and medieval grammars

In Europe theGreeks were the first to writegrammars. To them, grammar was a tool that could be used in the study of Greek literature; hence their focus on the literary language. The Alexandrians of the 1st centurybc further developed Greek grammar in order to preserve the purity of the language.Dionysus Thrax of Alexandria later wrote an influentialtreatise calledThe Art of Grammar, in which he analyzed literary texts in terms of letters, syllables, and eight parts ofspeech.

TheRomans adopted the grammatical system of the Greeks and applied it toLatin. Except forVarro, of the 1st centurybc, who believed that grammarians should discover structures, not dictate them, most Latin grammarians did not attempt to alter the Greek system and also sought to protect their language from decay. Whereas the model for the Greeks and Alexandrians was the language of Homer, the works of Cicero and Virgil set the Latin standard. The works ofDonatus (4th centuryad) andPriscian (6th centuryad), the most important Latin grammarians, were widely used to teach Latin grammar during the EuropeanMiddle Ages. Inmedieval Europe,education was conducted in Latin, and Latin grammar became the foundation of theliberal arts curriculum. Many grammars were composed for students during this time.Aelfric, the abbot of Eynsham (11th century), who wrote the first Latin grammar in Anglo-Saxon, proposed that this work serve as an introduction to English grammar as well. Thus began the tradition of analyzing English grammar according to a Latin model.

Themodistae, grammarians of the mid-13th to mid-14th century who viewed language as a reflection of reality, looked to philosophy for explanations of grammatical rules. Themodistae sought one “universal” grammar that would serve as a means of understanding the nature of being. In 17th-century France a group of grammarians fromPort-Royal were also interested in the idea ofuniversal grammar. They claimed that common elements of thought could be discerned in grammatical categories of all languages. Unlike their Greek and Latin counterparts, the Port-Royal grammarians did not study literary language but claimed instead that usage should be dictated by the actual speech of living languages. Noting their emphasis on linguistic universals, the contemporary linguist Noam Chomsky called the Port-Royal group the first transformational grammarians.

Modern and contemporary grammars

By 1700 grammars of 61vernacular languages had been printed. These were written primarily for purposes of reforming, purifying, or standardizing language and were put topedagogical use. Rules of grammar usually accounted for formal, written, literary language only and did not apply to all the varieties of actual, spoken language. Thisprescriptive approach long dominated the schools, where the study of grammar came to be associated with “parsing” and sentence diagramming. Opposition to teaching solely in terms of prescriptive and proscriptive (i.e., what must not be done) rules grew during the middle decades of the 20th century.

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The simplification of grammar for classroom use contrasted sharply with the complex studies that scholars of linguistics were conducting about languages. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the historical point of view flourished. Scholars who realized that every living language was in a constant state of flux studied all types of written records of modern European languages to determine the courses of their evolution. They did not limit their inquiry to literary languages but includeddialects and contemporary spoken languages as well. Historical grammarians did not follow earlier prescriptive approaches but were interested, instead, in discovering where the language under study came from.

As a result of the work of historical grammarians, scholars came to see that the study of language can be either diachronic (its development through time) or synchronic (its state at a particular time). The Swiss linguistFerdinand de Saussure and other descriptive linguists began studying the spoken language. They collected a large sample of sentences produced by native speakers of a language and classified their material starting withphonology and working their way to syntax.

Generative, ortransformational, grammarians of the second half of the 20th century, such asNoam Chomsky, studied the knowledge that native speakers possess which enables them to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences. Whereas descriptivists like Saussure examined samples of individual speech to arrive at a description of a language, transformationalists first studied the underlying structure of a language. They attempted to describe the “rules” that define a native speaker’s “competence” (unconscious knowledge of the language) and account for all instances of the speaker’s “performance” (strategies the individual uses in actual sentence production).Seegenerative grammar;transformational grammar.

The study of grammatical theory has been of interest to philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and literary critics over the centuries. Today, grammar exists as a field within linguistics but still retains a relationship with these otherdisciplines. For many people, grammar still refers to the body of rules one must know in order to speak or write “correctly.” However, from the last quarter of the 20th century a more sophisticated awareness of grammatical issues has taken root, especially in schools. In some countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, new English curricula have been devised in which grammar is a focus of investigation, avoiding the prescriptivism of former times and using techniques that promote a lively and thoughtful spirit of inquiry.