Definition:
- The systematic study and description of a language.
- A set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a language.
- What Is Grammar?
- Grammarian
- Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar
- Comparative Grammar
- Generative Grammar
- Mental Grammar
- Pedagogical Grammar
- Performance Grammar
- Reference Grammar
- Theoretical Grammar
- Traditional Grammar
- Transformational Grammar
- Universal Grammar
- Word Grammar
Etymology:
From the Greek, "craft of letters"Observations:
- "It is not the business of grammar, as some critics seem preposterously to imagine, to give law to the fashions that regulate our speech. On the contrary, from its conformity to these, and from that alone, it derives its authority and value."
(George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776) - "Ancient attitudes to grammar still survive: many people are in awe of it, know little about it, tend to fear or dislike it, often find it baffling or boring if exposed to it at school, and yet a minority is fascinated by it: a field in which precise scholarship and nit-picking pedantry have co-existed for centuries."
(Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford Companion to the English Language) - "What I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object being photographed."
(Joan Didion) - "[G]rammar is the study of all the contrasts of meaning that it is possible to make within sentences. The 'rules' of grammar tell us how. By one count, there are some 3,500 such rules in English."
(David Crystal, The Fight for English, 2006) - "A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual. [Grammar should not] be confused with the guidelines for how one 'ought' to speak that are taught in school."
(Steven Pinker, Words and Rules, 1999)
Pronunciation: GRAM-er
