Dictionary Definition
grammatical adj
1 of or pertaining to grammar; "the grammatic
structure of a sentence"; "grammatical rules"; "grammatical gender"
[syn: grammatic]
2 conforming to the rules of grammar or usage
accepted by native speakers; "spoke in grammatical sentences" [syn:
well-formed]
[ant: ungrammatical]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- /gɹəˈmætɪkəl/, /gr@"m
Extensive Definition
Grammar is the study of the
rules governing the use of
any given spoken
language, and, as such, is a field of linguistics. Traditionally,
grammar included morphology
and syntax; in modern
linguistics these subfields are complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics. Each language has
its own distinct grammar. "English grammar" (uncountable) refers to
the rules of the English language itself, while "an English
grammar" (countable) refers to a specific study or analysis of
these rules. A fully explicit grammar exhaustively describing the
grammatical
constructions of a language is called a descriptive
grammar. Specific types of grammars, or approaches to
constructing them, are known as grammatical
frameworks. The standard framework of generative
grammar is the transformational
grammar model developed by Noam Chomsky
in the 1950s to 1980s.
A reference book that attempts
a comprehensive description of the grammar of a language may be
called "a grammar" or "a reference grammar".
Etymology
The word "grammar," derives from Greek γραμματική τέχνη (grammatike techne), which means "art of letters," from γράμμα (gramma), "letter," and that from γράφειν (graphein), "to draw, to write".History
see History of linguistics The first systematic grammars originate in Iron Age India, with Panini (4th c. BC) and his commentators Pingala (ca. 200 BC), Katyayana, and Patanjali (2nd c. BC). In the West, grammar emerges as a discipline in Hellenism from the 3rd c. BC forward with authors like Rhyanus and Aristarchus of Samothrace, the oldest extant work being the Art of Grammar (), attributed to Dionysius Thrax (ca. 100 BC). Latin grammar developed by following Greek models from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors such as Orbilius Pupillus, Remmius Palaemon, Marcus Valerius Probus, Verrius Flaccus, Aemilius Asper.Tamil grammatical tradition
also began around the 1st century BC with the Tolkāppiyam.
A grammar of Irish
originated in the 7th century with the Auraicept
na n-Éces.
Arabic
grammar emerges from the 8th century with the work of Ibn Abi
Ishaq and his students.
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 begins gradually during the High
Middle Ages, with isolated works such as the First
Grammatical Treatise, but becomes 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, Gramática 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 (Pietro
Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua Venice 1525).
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
Arte de la Lengua General de los Indios de los Reynos del Perú
(1560), and a Quechua grammar by
Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás. In 1643 there appeared Ivan
Uzhevych's Grammatica sclavonica and, in 1762, the Short
Introduction to English Grammar of Robert Lowth
was also published. The Grammatisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der
hochdeutschen Mundart, a High German
grammar in five volumes by Johann
Christoph Adelung, appeared as early as 1774.
From the latter part of the
18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the
emerging discipline of modern linguistics. The Serbian
grammar by
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić arrived in 1814, while the Deutsche
Grammatik of the Brothers
Grimm was first published in 1818. The Comparative Grammar of
Franz
Bopp, the starting point of modern comparative
linguistics, came out in 1833.
In the USA, the Society for
the Promotion of Good Grammar has designated March 4, 2008 as
National Grammar Day.
Development of grammars
Grammars evolve through usage, and grammars also develop 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 codifications of usage that are developed by repeated documentation over time, 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. Linguists tend to believe that prescriptive grammars do not have any justification beyond their authors' aesthetic tastes; however, prescriptions are considered in sociolinguistics 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.The formal study of grammar is
an important part of education for children from a
young age through advanced learning, though the rules
taught in schools are not a "grammar" in the sense most linguists use the term, as
they are often prescriptive rather than
descriptive.
Constructed
languages (also called planned languages or conlangs) are more
common in the modern day. Many have been designed to aid human
communication (for
example, naturalistic Interlingua,
schematic Esperanto, and
the highly logic-compatible artificial language Lojban). Each of
these languages has its own grammar.
No clear line can be drawn
between syntax and morphology. Analytic
languages use syntax
to convey information that is encoded via inflection in synthetic
languages. In other words, word order is not significant and
morphology
is highly significant in a purely synthetic language, whereas
morphology is not significant and syntax is highly significant in
an analytic language. Chinese
and Afrikaans,
for example, are highly analytic, and meaning is therefore very
context – dependent. (Both do have some inflections, and have had
more in the past; thus, they are becoming even less synthetic and
more "purely" analytic over time.) Latin, which is
highly synthetic,
uses affixes and inflections to convey the
same information that Chinese does with syntax. Because Latin words are
quite (though not completely) self-contained, an intelligible Latin
sentence
can be made from elements that are placed in a largely arbitrary
order. Latin has a complex affixation and a simple syntax, while
Chinese has the opposite.
Grammar frameworks
Various "grammar frameworks" 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 USA. Of these, the main divisions are:- Transformational grammar (TG))
- Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P)
- Lexical-functional Grammar (LFG)
- Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG)
- Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
- Dependency grammars (DG)
- Role and reference grammar (RRG)
See also
Notes and references
- American Academic Press, The (ed.). William Strunk, Jr., et al. The Classics of Style: The Fundamentals of Language Style From Our American Craftsmen. Cleveland: The American Academic Press, 2006. ISBN 0978728203.
- Rundle, Bede. Grammar in Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0198246129.
External links
- English Grammar (Gramática da Língua Inglesa), wikibook in English and Portuguese
- Online Grammar Practice
- Grammar and Language Message Board A free online grammar community featuring Q&A, ESL, and other forums for anyone with an interest in or questions about grammar.
grammatical in Afrikaans:
Grammatika
grammatical in Tosk Albanian:
Grammatik
grammatical in Amharic:
ስዋሰው
grammatical in Aragonese:
Gramatica
grammatical in Asturian:
Gramática
grammatical in Bengali:
ব্যাকরণ
grammatical in Belarusian
(Tarashkevitsa): Граматыка
grammatical in Bosnian:
Gramatika
grammatical in Breton:
Yezhadur
grammatical in Bulgarian:
Граматика
grammatical in Catalan:
Gramàtica
grammatical in Chuvash:
Грамматика
grammatical in Czech:
Mluvnice
grammatical in Welsh:
Gramadeg
grammatical in Danish:
Grammatik
grammatical in German:
Grammatik
grammatical in Modern Greek
(1453-): Γραμματική
grammatical in Spanish:
Gramática
grammatical in Esperanto:
Gramatiko
grammatical in Basque:
Gramatika
grammatical in Persian: دستور
زبان
grammatical in French:
Grammaire
grammatical in Galician:
Gramática
grammatical in Classical
Chinese: 語法
grammatical in Korean:
문법
grammatical in Hindi:
व्याकरण
grammatical in Croatian:
Gramatika
grammatical in Ido:
Gramatiko
grammatical in Indonesian:
Tata bahasa
grammatical in Interlingua
(International Auxiliary Language Association):
Grammatica
grammatical in Icelandic:
Málfræði
grammatical in Italian:
Grammatica
grammatical in Hebrew:
דקדוק
grammatical in Kara-Kalpak:
Grammatika
grammatical in Kurdish:
Rêziman
grammatical in Latin: Ars
grammatica
grammatical in Latvian:
Gramatika
grammatical in Lithuanian:
Gramatika
grammatical in Lojban:
gerna
grammatical in Hungarian:
Nyelvtan
grammatical in Macedonian:
Граматика
grammatical in Marathi: मराठी
व्याकरण
grammatical in Dutch:
Grammatica
grammatical in Japanese:
文法
grammatical in Norwegian:
Grammatikk
grammatical in Norwegian
Nynorsk: Grammatikk
grammatical in Novial:
Gramatike
grammatical in Low German:
Grammatik
grammatical in Polish:
Gramatyka
grammatical in Portuguese:
Gramática
grammatical in Romanian:
Gramatică
grammatical in Quechua: Simi
kamachiy
grammatical in Russian:
Грамматика
grammatical in Sanskrit:
व्याकरण
grammatical in Scots:
Grammar
grammatical in Simple
English: Grammar
grammatical in Slovenian:
Slovnica
grammatical in Serbian:
Граматика
grammatical in Finnish:
Kielioppi
grammatical in Swedish:
Grammatik
grammatical in Thai:
ไวยากรณ์
grammatical in Vietnamese:
Ngữ pháp
grammatical in Tok Pisin:
Grama
grammatical in Turkish: Dil
bilgisi
grammatical in Ukrainian:
Граматика
grammatical in Walloon:
Croejhete (linwince)
grammatical in Yiddish:
גראמאטיק
grammatical in Chinese:
语法
grammatical in Slovak:
Gramatika (jazykoveda)
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
adjectival, adverbial, attributive, conjunctive, copulative, correct, descriptive, formal, functional, glossematic, glottochronological,
grammatic, graphemic, intransitive, lexicographic, lexicological, lexicostatistical,
lingual, linguistic, linking, metalinguistic, morphological, morphophonemic, nominal, participial, philological, phonemic, phonetic, phonological, postpositional, prepositional, pronominal, psycholinguistic,
semantic, structural, substantive, syntactic, tagmemic, transitive, verbal