A grammar book is a book or treatise describing the

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 ...

of one or more languages. In

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 ...

, such a book is itself frequently referred to as a grammar.

Etymology

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

had the term ''τέκνή γραμματική'' (''téchnē grammatikḗ'', 'skill in the use of letters'), which was adapted into Latin as ''

ars grammatica An ''ars grammatica'' () is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin grammar. The first ''ars grammatica'' seems to have been composed by Remmius Palaemon (first century AD), but is now lost. The most famous ''ars grammatica'' since late a ...

''. This term was used in the title of works about writing and language, which came to be known in English as ''grammar-books'' or ''grammars''.Andrew Linn, 'English Grammar Writing', in ''The Handbook of English Linguistics'', ed. by Bas Aarts and April McMahon (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 72–92.

Definition

Although the style and content of grammar-books varies enormously, they generally aim for a fairly systematic and comprehensive survey of one language's

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

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 ...

and

word-formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word format ...

. Since languages vary across time, space, social groups, genres, and so forth, grammars inevitably cannot represent every single aspect of a language, but usually select a particular variety with a view to a particular readership. The readerships of grammars and their needs vary widely. Grammars may be intended for native-speakers of a language or for learners. Many grammars are written for use by children learning a language in a school environment. Many grammars are reference grammars, intended not to be read from beginning to end like a textbook, but to enable readers to check particular details as the need arises. Some grammars are

prescriptive Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in this sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgme ...

, aiming to tell readers how they ought to use language; others are

descriptive In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All aca ...

, aiming to tell readers how language is used in reality. In either case, popular grammars can be enormously influential on language-use.

History

The earliest known descriptive linguistic writing, leading to early grammar-books, took place in a

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 ...

community in northern India; the best known scholar of that linguistic tradition was

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 ...

, whose works are commonly dated to around the . François & Ponsonnet (2013). The earliest known grammar of a Western language is the second-century BCE ''

Art of Grammar ''The Art of Grammar'' ( - or romanized, Téchnē Grammatikḗ) is a treatise on Greek grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax, who wrote in the 2nd century BC. Contents It is the first work on grammar in Greek, and also the first concerning a W ...

'' attributed to

Dionysius Thrax Dionysius Thrax ( ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a st ...

, a grammar of Greek. Key stages in the history of English grammars include

Ælfric of Eynsham Ælfric of Eynsham (; ; ) was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as '' ...

's composition around 995 CE of a grammar in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

based on a compilation of two Latin grammars,

Aelius Donatus Aelius Donatus (; fl. mid-fourth century AD) was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric. He once taught Jerome, an early Christian Church father who is most known for his translation of the Bible into Latin, known as the Latin Vulgate. N ...

's ''Ars maior'' and

Priscian Priscianus Caesariensis (), commonly known as Priscian ( or ), was a Latin grammarian and the author of the ''Institutes of Grammar'', which was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle Ages. It also provided the raw materia ...

's ''Institutiones grammaticae''. This was intended for use by English-speaking students of Latin, and is the first known grammar of Latin written in a

vernacular language Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige than standard language, which is more codified, institutionally promoted, literary, or formal. More n ...

, but was arguably also intended to use Latin as a basis for explaining English grammar.Melinda J. Menzer,
Ælfric's English ''Grammar''
, ''The Journal of English and Germanic Philology'', 103 (2004), 106-24. A key step in the development of English grammars was the 1586 publication of

William Bullokar William Bullokar was a 16th-century Printer (publisher), printer who devised a 40-letter Phonetic transcription, phonetic alphabet for the English language. Its characters were presented in the Blackletter, black-letter or "gothic" writing style ...

's published his ''Pamphlet for Grammar'', which used a framework derived from Latin grammars to show how English too had grammatical structures and rules. Numerous grammars aimed at foreign learners of English, sometimes written in Latin, were published in the seventeenth century, while the eighteenth saw the emergence of English-language grammars aiming to instruct their Anglophone audiences in what the authors viewed as correct grammar, including an increasingly literate audience of women and children; this trend continued into the early twentieth century. A key shift in grammar-writing is represented by Charles Carpenter Fries' 1952 ''The Structure of English'', which aimed to give up-to-date, descriptive rather than prescriptive, information on English grammar, and drew on recordings of live speech to inform its claims.

List of first printed grammars (1450–1800)

References

{{reflist

Grammar books A grammar book is a book or treatise describing the grammar of one or more languages. In linguistics, such a book is itself frequently referred to as a grammar. Etymology Ancient Greek had the term ''τέκνή γραμματική'' (''téchnē g ...

Etymology

Definition

History

List of first printed grammars (1450–1800)

See also

Further reading

References