Traditional grammar
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Traditional grammar (also known as classical grammar) is a framework for the description of the structure of a
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
or group of languages. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
philologists. The formal study of
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
based on these models became popular during the Renaissance. Traditional grammars may be contrasted with more modern theories of grammar in
theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics that, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to the theory of language, or the branch of linguistics that inquires into the ...
, which grew out of traditional descriptions. While traditional grammars seek to describe how particular languages are used, or to teach people to speak or read them, grammar frameworks in contemporary linguistics often seek to explain the nature of language knowledge and ability common to all languages. Traditional grammar is often prescriptive, and may be regarded as unscientific by those working in linguistics. Traditional Western grammars classify words into parts of speech. They describe the patterns for word
inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
, and the rules of
syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
by which those words are combined into sentences.


History

Among the earliest studies of grammar are descriptions of
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, called . The Indian grammarian
Pāṇini (; , ) was a Sanskrit grammarian, logician, philologist, and revered scholar in ancient India during the mid-1st millennium BCE, dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th and 4th century BCE. The historical facts of his life ar ...
wrote the , a descriptive grammar of Sanskrit, sometime between the 4th and the 2nd century BCE. This work, along with some grammars of Sanskrit produced around the same time, is often considered the beginning of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
as a descriptive science, and consequently wouldn't be considered "traditional grammar" despite its antiquity. Although Pāṇini's work was not known in Europe until many centuries later, it is thought to have greatly influenced other grammars produced in Asia, such as the , a Tamil grammar generally dated between the 2nd and 1st century BCE. The formal study of grammar became popular in Europe during the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
. Descriptive grammars were rarely used in Classical Greece or in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
through the Medieval period. During the Renaissance, Latin and
Classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...
were broadly studied along with the literature and philosophy written in those languages. With the invention of the
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
and the use of Vulgate Latin as a
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
throughout Europe, the study of grammar became part of language teaching and learning. Although complete grammars were rare, Ancient Greek
philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
s and Latin teachers of
rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
produced some descriptions of the structure of language. The descriptions produced by classical grammarians (teachers of philology and rhetoric) provided a model for traditional grammars in Europe. According to linguist William Harris, "Just as the Renaissance confirmed Greco-Roman tastes in poetry, rhetoric and architecture, it established ancient Grammar, especially that which the Roman school-grammarians had developed by the 4th entury CE as an inviolate system of logical expression." The earliest descriptions of other European languages were modeled on grammars of Latin. The primacy of Latin in traditional grammar persisted until the beginning of the 20th century. The use of grammar descriptions in the teaching of language, including foreign language teaching and the study of language arts, has gone in and out of fashion. As education increasingly took place in
vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...
languages at the close of the Renaissance, grammars of these languages were produced for teaching. Between 1801 and 1900 there were more than 850 grammars of English published specifically for use in schools. Mastering grammar rules like those derived from the study of Latin has at times been a specific goal of English-language education. This approach to teaching has, however, long competed with approaches that downplay the importance of grammar instruction. Similarly in foreign or second language teaching, the grammar-translation method based on traditional Latin teaching, in which the grammar of the language being learned is described in the student's native language, has competed with approaches such as the direct method or the communicative approach, in which grammar instruction is minimized.


Parts of speech

The parts of speech are an important element of traditional grammars, since patterns of
inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
and rules of
syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
each depend on a word's part of speech. Although systems vary somewhat, typically traditional grammars name eight parts of speech:
noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
s,
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...
s,
adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...
s,
verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
s,
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...
s,
preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...
s, conjunctions, and interjections. These groupings are based on categories of function and meaning in Latin and other
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
. Some traditional grammars include other parts of speech, such as articles or determiners, though some grammars treat other groupings of words as subcategories of the major parts of speech. The traditional definitions of parts of speech refer to the role that a word plays in a sentence, its meaning, or both. *A noun is a name for something—whatever one wants to refer to in order to talk about it. ** A common noun refers to something abstract: a kind of object (''table, radio''), a kind of living thing (''cat, person''), a kind of place (''home, city''), a kind of action (''running, laughter, extinction''), a kind of attribute (''redness, size''), a kind of relationship (''closeness, partnership''), or anything at all, no matter how abstract (''two, god, diversity, corporation''). ** A proper noun refers to a specific thing (''
Jesse Owens James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...
, Felix the Cat, Pittsburgh, Zeus''). *A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun (''she'' in place of her name). * An adjective modifies a noun or pronoun; it describes the thing referred to (''red'' in "My shirt is red" or "My red shirt is in the laundry."). *A verb signifies the predicate of the sentence. That is, a verb indicates what is being asserted or asked about the subject of the sentence (''is'' in "My shirt is red"; ''own'' in "I own this house"; ''ran'' in "Jesse Owens ran in the 1936 Olympics"). *An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, other adverbs, or the whole sentence (''happily'' in "People danced happily", "Happily, I was paid on time"). *A preposition indicates a relationship between a noun or pronoun, called the object of the preposition, and another part of the sentence. The other part of the sentence may be a noun or pronoun, a verb, or an adjective. (''in'' in "Jesse Owens ran in the 1936 Olympics"; ''on'' in "A store on Main St. sells antique chairs") **The object of a preposition takes an oblique case (''me'' in "Amanda borrowed money from me"; see
Oblique case In grammar, an oblique ( abbreviated ; from ) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case and, sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, ...
). *A conjunction joins parts of sentences, such as nouns, verbs, or clauses, into larger units (''and'' in " Mack Robinson and Jesse Owens ran in the 1936 Olympics"; ''because'' in "Amanda borrowed money from me because she needed to pay the rent"). *An interjection expresses
emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...
(''Ouch!'') or calls to someone (''Hey'' in "Hey, you!"). Contemporary linguists argue that classification based on a mixture of
morphosyntactic In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, wh ...
function and
semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
meaning is insufficient for systematic analysis of grammar. Such definitions are not sufficient on their own to assign a word an unambiguous part of speech. Nonetheless, similar definitions have been used in most traditional grammars.


Accidence

Accidence, also known as inflection, is the change of a word's form depending on its grammatical function. The change may involve the addition of
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...
es or else changes in the sounds of the word, known as vowel gradation or ablaut. Some words feature irregular inflection, not taking an affix or following a regular pattern of sound change. Verbs, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives may be inflected for
person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...
,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
, and
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
. The inflection of verbs is also known as
conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics *Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form *Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics *Complex conjugation, the change o ...
. A verb has person and number, which must agree with the subject of the sentence. Verbs may also be inflected for tense, aspect, mood, and
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...
. Verb tense indicates the time that the sentence describes. A verb also has mood, indicating whether the sentence describes reality or expresses a command, a hypothesis, a hope, etc. A verb inflected for tense and mood is called finite; non-finite verb forms are
infinitive Infinitive ( abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all ...
s or
participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...
s. The voice of the verb indicates whether the subject of the sentence is active or passive in regard to the verb. Number indicates whether the noun refers to one, two, or many instances of its kind. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives may also be inflected for case. The inflection of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives is also known as declension. Noun case indicates how the noun relates to other elements of the sentence (''I, me'' in "I see Jesse" and "Jesse sees me"). A traditional means of learning accidence is through conjugation tables or declension tables, lists of the various forms of a word for a learner to memorize. The following tables present partial conjugation of the Latin verb and its English equivalent, ''be''. This partial table includes only two tenses (
present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
and preterite) and one mood (
indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentence Dec ...
) in addition to the infinitive. A more complete conjugation table for Latin would also include the subjunctive and
imperative mood The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request. The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. They are sometimes called ' ...
s and the imperfect indicative, which indicates imperfective aspect. In English the imperative often has the same form as the infinitive, while the English subjunctive often has the same form as the indicative. English does not have imperfective aspect as Latin does; it has progressive and perfect aspects in addition to the simple form.


Syntax

Syntax is the set of rules governing how words combine into phrases and
clause In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...
s. It deals with the formation of sentences, including rules governing or describing how sentences are formed. In traditional usage, syntax is sometimes called ''grammar'', but the word grammar is also used more broadly to refer to various aspects of language and its usage. In traditional grammar syntax, a sentence is analyzed as having two parts, a subject and a predicate. The subject is the thing being talked about. In English and similar languages, the subject usually occurs at the beginning of the sentence, but this is not always the case. The predicate comprises the rest of the sentence, all of the parts of the sentence that are not the subject. The subject of a sentence is generally a noun or pronoun, or a
phrase In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English language, English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adject ...
containing a noun or pronoun. If the sentence features active voice, the thing named by the subject carries out the action of the sentence; in the case of passive voice, the subject is affected by the action. In sentences with imperative mood, the subject may not be expressed. *''Zoltan'' ate the cake. (Zoltan, the subject of this active sentence, carried out the action of eating.) *''The cake'' was baked for Zora's birthday. (The cake, the subject of this passive sentence, is affected by the action of baking.) *Bake another cake. (In this imperative sentence, the subject is not expressed. The implied subject is ''you''.) The predicate of a sentence may have many parts, but the only required element is a finite verb. In addition to the verb, the predicate may contain one or more objects, a subject complement, object complements, adpositional phrases (in English, these are prepositional phrases), or adverbial elements. Some verbs (called transitive verbs) take direct objects; some also take indirect objects. A direct object names the person or thing directly affected by the action of an active sentence. An indirect object names the entity indirectly affected. In a sentence with both a direct and an indirect object, the indirect object generally appears before the direct object. In the following sentence, the direct object, ''the book'', is directly affected by the action; it is what is given. The indirect object, ''Nikolai'', is indirectly affected; he receives the book as a result of it being given. *Yuri gave ''Nikolai'' the book. In place of an indirect object, a prepositional phrase beginning with ''to'' or ''for'' may occur after the direct object. *Yuri gave the book ''to Nikolai''. A subject complement (variously called a
predicative expression A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula or linking verb, e.g. ''be'', ''seem'', ''appear'', or that appears as a second complement (object complement) of ...
, predicative, predicate noun or adjective, or complement) appears in a predicate with a linking verb (also called a copula). A subject complement is a noun, adjective, or phrase that refers to the subject of the linking verb, illustrated in the following examples. *Elizabeth is ''a doctor''. *Salim is ''clever''. *Kerli is ''from Estonia''. While subject complements describe or modify the subject of a linking verb, object complements describe or modify nouns in the predicate, typically direct or indirect objects, or objects of adpositions. In the following example, the phrase ''sun's origin'' is a complement of the direct object ''Japan''. *Chinese scholars called Japan "''sun's origin''". A subject and a predicate together make up a clause. Although some traditional grammars consider adpositional phrases and adverbials part of the predicate, many grammars call these elements adjuncts, meaning they are not a required element of the syntactic structure. Adjuncts may occur anywhere in a sentence. Adpositional phrases can add to or modify the meaning of nouns, verbs, or adjectives. An adpositional phrase is a phrase that features either a preposition, a postposition, or a circumposition. All three types of words have similar function; the difference is where the adposition appears relative to the other words in the phrase. Prepositions occur before their complements while postpositions appear after. Circumpositions consist of two parts, one before the complement and one after. * French prepositional phrase: ("on the table") * Chinese postpositional phrase: (, "on the table") * Sorani Kurdish circumpostional phrase: ("in Kurdistan") An adverbial consists of either a single adverb, an
adverbial phrase In linguistics, an ''adverbial phrase'' ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Some grammars use the ...
, or an adverbial clause that modifies either the verb or the sentence as a whole. Some traditional grammars consider adpositional phrases a type of adverb, but many grammars treat these as separate. Adverbials may modify time, place, or manner.
Negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
is also frequently indicated with adverbials, including adverbs such as English ''not''.


See also

* '' The Art of Grammar'' *
Linguistic prescription Linguistic prescription is the establishment of rules defining publicly preferred Usage (language), usage of language, including rules of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard ...
* Pedagogical grammar * Regular and irregular verbs * Sentence diagram * Syntax–semantics interface * Uses of English verb forms *
Hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...
* Term logic


Notes


References


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Traditional Grammar Grammar