Page 350 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes 27.5 Summary
• But for a long time this term has been used very loosely to incorporate the whole study of
language. The Greeks considered grammar to be a branch of philosophy concerned with ‘the
art of writing’. By the Middle Ages grammar had come to be regarded as a set of rules, usually
in the form of a text-book, dictating ‘correct’ usage. So in the widest and the traditional sense,
grammar came to mean a set of normative and prescriptive rules in order to set up a standard
of ‘correct usgage’. And grammar was both the art and the science of language. The grammarian
until the nineteenth century was the law-giver. Though it is still a valid interpretation for a lay
man, no contemporary or modern linguist will accept this definition of grammar in our age.
• Linguists like Chomsky and Fillmore make a distinction between Transformational-Generative
Grammar and a pedagogical grammar. Grammars designed for teaching purposes are often
called pedagogical grammar: they are performance-based. Grammars investigating language
in general or a specific language, may be called scientific grammars. Within the transformational-
generative framework such a grammar is competence based, and is economical, explicit and
predictive. Grammars may be synchronic, i.e. describing the language of a particular period, or
diachronic.
• There are various kinds of grammar. Some major types of these have already been discussed.
But those already discussed were the recent phenomena. We will discuss now the old or
traditional and the new grammar and the major differences between the two.
• The traditional grammar has a long tradition behind it. There are ideas about sentence structure
deriving from Aristotle and Plato, ideas about the part of speech deriving from the Stoic
grammarians, there are ideas about meaning stemming from the scholastic debates of the Middle
Ages, ideas about the relationship between language and mind deriving from the seventeenth
century philosophical controversies between rationalists and empiricists, ideas about correctness
in language coming from the eighteenth century grammars of English, and ideas about the
history of language deriving from the nineteenth century emphasis on comparative philology.
• ‘Formal grammar is grammar that both in theory and in method is concerned solely with the
observable forms, structural functions, and interrelations of the components of sentences or
stretches of utterance’. Modern grammatical theory is frequently said to be ‘formal’, in contrast
with traditional grammar, which was ‘notional’. According to Jesperson, ‘notional’ grammar
starts from the assumption that there exist ‘extralingual categories which are independent of
the more or less accidental facts of existing languages’ and are ‘universal in so far as they are
applicable to all languages, though rarely expressed in them in a clear and unmistakable way’.
27.6 Key-Words

1. Structuralism : It means that each language is regarded as a system of relations (more
precisely, a set of interrelated system), the elements of which—sound,
words,
2. ‘Formal grammar : It is grammar that both in theory and in method is concerned solely with
the observable forms, structural functions, and interrelations of the
components of sentences or stretches of utterance’.
27.7 Review Questions

1. What is grammar? Give one traditional, one structural and one generative definition of grammar.
2. What are the major misconceptions about grammar?
3. What are the major kinds of grammar?
4. What are the major characteristics and assumptions as well as achievements of the following:
(i) Traditional Linguistics (Grammar) (ii) Structural Linguistics (Grammar)
5. Mention the major weaknesses of
(i) Traditional Grammar, and (ii) Structural Linguistics.

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