KEY WORDS

Grammar

Prescription – prescriptive

Description – descriptive

Linguistics

Phonetics

Phonology

Pragmatics

Semantics

Syntax

GRAMMAR

In linguistics, grammar refers to the logical and structural rules that govern

the composition of sentences, phrases and words in any given natural language. The

term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and

syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics and pragmatics.

Each language has its own grammar. “English grammar” is the set of rules. A

reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a “reference

grammar” or simply “a grammar”.

A fully explicit grammar exhaustively describing the grammatical

constructions of a language is called a descriptive grammar, as opposed to linguistic

prescription, which tries to enforce the governing rules of how a language is to be

used.

Grammatical frameworks are approaches to constructing grammars. The

standard framework of generative grammar is the transformational grammar model

developed in various ways by Noam Chomsky and his followers from the 1950’s

onwards.

HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

The first systematic grammars originated in Iron Age India, with Yaska (6th

C. BC), Panini (4th century BC) and his commentators Pingala, Katyayana and

Patanjali (2nd century BC). In the West, grammar emerged as a discipline in

Hellenism from the 3rd century BC onwards with authors like Rhyanus and

Aristarchus of Samothrace, the oldest extant work being the ‘Art of Grammar’,

attributed to Dionysius Thrax. Latin grammar developed by following Greek models

from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors like Orbilius Papillus, Remmius

Palaemon, Marcus Valerius Probus, Verrius Flaccus, Aemilius Asper.

Belonging to the ‘trivium’ of the seven liberal arts, grammar was taught as a

core discipline throughout the Middle Ages, following the influence of authors from

Late Antiquity, such as Priscian. Treatment of vernaculars began gradually during

the High Middle Ages, with isolated works such as the ‘First Grammatical Treatise’,

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but became influential only in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In 1486,

Antonio de Nebrija published ‘Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance

al Latin’, and the first Spanish grammar, ‘Gramatica de la lengua castellana’, in

1492. During the 16th century. Italian Renaissance, the ‘Questione della lingua’ was

the discussion on the status and ideal form of the Italian language, initiated by

Dante’s ‘de vulgari eloquentia.

Grammars of non-European languages began to be compiled for the purposes

of evangelization and Bible translation from the 16th century onward, such as

‘Grammatica o Are de la Lengua General de los Indios de de los Reynos del Peru’

(1560), and a Quenchua grammar by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas. In 1762, the

‘Short Introduction to English Grammar’ of Robert Lowth was published. From the

latter part of the 18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the

emerging discipline of modern linguistics. The Comparative Grammar of Franz

Bopp, the starting point of modern comparative linguistics came out in 1833.

DEVELOPMENT OF GRAMMARS

Grammars evolve through usage and also due to separations of the human

population. With the advent of written representations, formal rules about language

usage tend to appear also. Formal grammars are codification of usage that are

developed by repeated documentation overtime, and by observation as well. As the

rules become established and developed, the prescriptive concept of grammatical

correctness can arise. This often creates a discrepancy between contemporary usage

and that which has been accepted, over time, as being correct. Linguistics tend to

believe that prescriptive grammars do not have any justification beyond their authors

aesthetic tasters; however, prescriptions are considered in socio linguistics as part of

the explanation for why some people say “I didn’t do nothing” some say “I didn’t do

anything’, and some say one or the other depending on social context.

Various “grammar frame works” have been developed in theoretical

linguistics since the mid 20th century, in particular under the influence of the idea of

a “Universal grammar” in the United States, of these, the main divisions are:-

Transformational grammar (TG)

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Systemic functional grammar (SFG)

Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P)

Lexical-functional Grammar (LFG)

Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG)

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)

Dependency Grammars (DG)

Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)

PRESCRIPTION

The oldest recorded linguistic descriptions such as those of Arabic, Sanskrit

Greek and Latin are prescriptive and pedagogical in purpose; they attempt to

describe a language accurately, but they also set out to prescribe how it should be

used.

In nation-states which have developed highly focussed standard languages,

the part of this ancient linguistic tradition which offers a normative model has

contributed to a widespread belief that there is one and only one correct way of

using the language. This norm of correctness is held to be prescribed by some

authoritative source; other varieties, which are held to be inferior, are commonly

described as ‘incorrect’ or ‘ungrammatical’.

NORMS AND ATTITUDES

Such views underline traditional pedagogical practice in highly developed

nation-states. They appear to be resistant to change or conscious reflection and are

commonly expressed in letters to the press or the broadcasting authorities which

complain of ‘misuses’ of the language. The sentences {1(a-c)} are examples of such

supposed misuses of English, while (2a-c) represent the corresponding “correct”

forms.

(1a) Peter is different to (or than) John.

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(1b) It was him that did it

(1c) I didn’t do nothing

(2a) Peter is different from John

(2b) It was him who did it.

(2c) I didn’t do anything

Paradoxically, the “ungrammatical” or “incorrect” variants occur commonly

and normally. Both variants of (1a) are widely used in speech and writing by

educated speakers and are effectively alternatives to (2a); (1b) is a normal

colloquial usage which many native speakers of English would naturally adopt in

conversation, while reserving (2b) for writing or very formal discourse, and (1c)

represents a usage avoided by educated speakers, but probably employed by a

majority of all English speakers.

However, prescriptive beliefs about correct and grammatical language do not

allow for the equal acceptability of more than one alternative form; nor do they

admit that where there is a choice, one form might be appropriated to speech and the

other to writing. Nor is it admitted that non-standard dialects might be characterised

by sets of grammatical rules which are simply different from those of Standard

English [(1c) and (2c) for example]

Defining Standard English rather loosely as the variety of English used by

educated speakers, we may note that the term “grammatical” is used here in a

descriptive rather than a prescriptive sense: the grammar of a language or dialect is

simply a description of the regularities which underlie its structure. Every human

language and dialect have an immensely complex structure, which can be described

in terms of grammatical rules. Thus (1c), to the descriptive linguist, is a grammatical

sentence of a dialect such as Cockney (London dialect), where double negation is a

regularly occurring feature.

One consequence of the gulf which has opened up in recent centuries

between popular prescriptive approaches to language and contemporary linguistic

reality is that millions of native speakers of standardized languages (such as English)

consider that their own native language, in some sense, does not represent the real or

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correct language. The latter is often felt, with varying degrees of explicitness, to be

the property of a small number of speakers who confirm to the norms of what (in the

case of English) is often called “Oxford English”, “BBC English” or the “Queen’s

English”. Alternatively the real language might be thought to be embodied in

dictionaries, school grammars, or handbooks of usage. (e.g.: Fowler’s “Modern

English Usage”) and to be an ideal from which their own language is a corrupt

deviation. These attitudes are very different from those of contemporary descriptive

linguistics, who generally, but controversially, view prescription as an issue which

lies outside the discipline of linguistics, and whose goals are seen as irreconcilable

with those of the prescriptive grammarian.

In the linguists differ from the classical grammarians of Greece and Rome;

for the latter, the goal of descriptive linguists was pedagogical and their prescriptive

norms were also descriptively adequate. Unlike the descriptive linguist, present day

prescriptivists generally work partially and selectively, focussing on small and easily

specifiable parts of the language, rather than attempting a comprehensive

description. The distinctions between speech and writing, between formal and

informal situations of language use, and among varieties of language associated with

social and geographical factors, are generally not taken into account-nor is the

distinction.

ORIGINS

Historically, a number of factors are found that give rise to prescriptive

tendencies in language. Whenever a society reaches a level of complexity to the

point where it acquires a permanent system of social stratification and hierarchy, the

speech used by political and religious authorities is preserved and admired. This

speech often takes on archaic and honorific colours. The style of language used in

ritual also differs from everyday speech in many cultures.

When writing is introduced into a culture, new avenues for standards are

opened. Written language lacks voice tone and stress, and other vocal features that

serve to disambiguate speech, and tends to compensate for these by stricter

adherence to norms. And since writers can take more time to think about their

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words, new avenues of standardization open up. Thus literary language, the specific

register of written language, lends itself to prescription to a higher degree than

spoken language.

The introduction of writing also introduces new economies into language. A

body of written texts represents a sunk cost; changes in written language threaten to

make the body of preserved texts obsolete, so writing creates an incentive to

preserve older forms.

Bureaucracy is another factor that encourages prescriptive tendencies in

language. When government centres arise, people acquire different forms of

language which they use in dealing with the government, which may be seated far

from the locality of the governed. Standard writs and other legal forms create a body

of precedent in language that tends to be reused over generations and centuries. In

more recent times, the effects of bureaucracy have been accelerated by the

popularization of travel and telecommunications; people grow accustomed to

hearing speech from distant areas. Eventually these several factors encourage

standards to arise.

PROBLEMS

While many people would agree that some kinds of prescriptive teaching or

advice are desirable, prescription easily becomes controversial. Many linguists are

skeptical of the quality of advice given in many usage guides, particularly when the

author are not qualified in languages or linguistics. Even when practiced by

competent experts, giving wise advice is not always easy, and things can go badly

wrong. A number of issues pose potential pitfalls. One of the most serious of these is

that prescription has a tendency to favour the language of one particular region or

social class over others, and thus militates against linguistic diversity.

Another problem with prescription is that prescriptive rules quickly become

entrenched and it is difficult to change them when the language changes. Thus there

is a tendency for prescription to be overly conservative. When in the early 19 th

century, prescriptive use advised against the split infinitive, the main reason was that

this construction was not infact a frequent feature of the varieties of English

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favoured by those prescribing. Today it has become common in most varieties of

English and a prohibition is no longer sensible.

A further problem is the difficulty of defining legitimate criteria. Although

prescribing authorities almost invariably have clear ideas about why they make a

particular choice, and the choices are therefore seldom entirely arbitrary, but they

often appear arbitrary to others who do not understand or are not in sympathy with

the criteria. Judgement based on the subjective associations of a word is more

problematic. Finally, there is the problem of inappropriate dogmatism. Wise

prescriptive advice may identify a form as non-standard and suggest it be used with

caution in some contexts. An example from the 18th century England is Robert

Lowth’s tentative suggestion that preposition stranding in relative clauses sounds

colloquial; from this grew a grammatical dogma that a sentence should never end

with a preposition. For these reasons, some writers have argued that linguistic

prescription is foolish or futile.

DESCRIPTION

Description involves observing language and creating conceptual categories

for it without establishing rules of language. In the study of language, description,

or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how

language is spoken by a group of people in a speech community. All scholarly

research in linguistics is descriptive; like all other sciences, its aim is to observe the

linguistic world as it is without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it ought to

be. Modern descriptive linguistics is based on a structural approach to language, as

exemplified in the work of Bloomfield and others. Descriptivism is the belief that

description is more significant or important to teach, study, and practice than

prescription. An extreme ‘mentalist’ viewpoint denies that the linguistic description

of a language can be done by anyone but a competent speaker. Such speakers have

internalized something called “linguistic competence”, which gives them the ability

to extrapolate correctly from their experience new but correct expressions, and to

reject unacceptable expressions.

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A linguistic description is considered descriptively adequate if it achieves

one or more of the following goals of descriptive linguistics:

A description of the phonology of the language in question

A description of the morphology of words belonging to that language

A description of the syntax of well-formed sentences of that language.

A description of lexical derivations

A documentation of the vocabulary including at least one thousand entries.

A reproduction of a few genuine texts.

PRESCRIPTION & DESCRIPTION IN CONFLICT

Given any particular language controversy, prescription and description

represent quite different, though not necessarily incompatible, approaches to

thinking about it. For example a descriptive linguist working in English would

describe the word ‘aint’ in terms of usage, distribution and history, observing both

the growth in its popularity but also the resistance to it in some parts of the language

community. Prescription, on the other hand, would consider whether it met criteria

of rationality, historical grammatical usage or conformity to a contemporary

standard dialect. When a form does not confirm, as is the case for ‘aint’ - the

prescriptivist will recommend avoiding it in formal contexts. These two approaches

are not incompatible as they attempt different tasks for different purposes.

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CONCLUSION

Grammar refers to the logical and structural rules that govern the composition of

sentences, phrases and words in any language.

Descriptive grammar is explicit describing the grammatical constructions of a

language.

Prescriptive grammar tries to enforce the rules of low a language should be

used

Both prescriptive and descriptive approaches are not incompatible as they

attempt different tasks for different purpose.

REFERENCES

1. Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics second edition

2. ELsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition.

3. Wikipedia

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