What is/are grammar(s) (for)?
Accessible / text version of task
We will do this by asking you a series of questions
for you to reflect on. Submit your answer and then, in each case, you
can compare your views with ours.
1. What is grammar for? - why do we need it?
our answer
2. Is there one grammar of English or are
there many?
our answer
3. Is English grammar God-given or constructed by
humans?
our answer
Answer to question 1
If we only had words and no grammar, it would not be possible to express
the relations among the things we were using the words to refer to. Consider
the following simple sentence:
Emily is watching Jane.
If we just know the meaning of each of the words, we cannot know that
Emily is the person doing the watching and Jane is the person being watched.
The fact that in English subjects typically come before verbs, and objects
typically come after them, enables us to know that Emily is doing the
watching and Jane is being watched. So grammar is used in languages to
specify the relations among the words and phrases we use.
There are two main ways in which languages typically 'do' grammar.
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They can specify grammatical relations among words and phrases by
adding grammatical morphemes to words: languages that mainly do this
are normally called synthetic languages.
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Or they can use place ordering by associating particular grammatical
functions with particular places in sentences, clause and phrases:
languages that mainly do their grammar this way are normally called
analytic languages.
Most languages are a mixture of these two grammatical modes. English
is a predominantly analytic language, doing most of its grammar by place-ordering.
But even though it is an analytic language, English still uses grammatical
morphemes to do some of its grammar. Consider the '-ed' past tense endings
on verbs, plural markers on nouns and and comparative (-er') and superlative
(-est) endings on short adjectives (though notice that longer adjectives
have 'more' or 'most' placed in from of them to affect the same meaning
relations).
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Answer to question 2
Although modern English speakers to a large degree share the same grammar
(otherwise communication would be extremely difficult), the grammar of
the language is always changing (the grammar of modern English is different
in many ways from Shakespeare's English, and the difference between modern
English and Chaucer's English are even greater). Moreover, there is some
variation from one speaker to another and one dialect to another. It is
this variation that drives historical linguistic change. So there is not
one monolithic English grammar - no complete system we could call THE
grammar of English.
For example, some parts of Yorkshire, people still use 'thee' and 'thou'
instead of singular 'you', and some American dialects use 'you-all' for
plural 'you'. And although in Southern and standard varieties, 'while'
is a clausal conjunction meaning roughly 'during the time when', in various
Northern dialects it can also be a preposition, and means 'until', whether
it is a preposition or a conjunction (cf. expressions like 'Wait while
tea.'). It is said (we have never discovered whether this story is true
or apocryphal!) that someone driving on a road in Derbyshire once came
to an ungated railway crossing with a sign (presumably written by a southern
speaker) saying 'Wait while lights flash' and was killed because he waited
until the lights began to flash before trying to drive across the railway
line, only to be hit by the oncoming train.
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Answer to question 3
Not only is there not one monolithic and 'perfect' English grammar, it
is also easily arguable that grammars are not God-given (despite the attitudes
of those who try to change what others say to accord with what they call
'correct grammar'), but are merely the constructs of grammarians.
There are many grammars of English, and they all differ from another in
some ways not just because English has variation and is changing, but
also because the grammarians are always struggling to get good descriptions
of the grammar of English and continually argue among themselves about
what is the best description of this area and that area of English grammar.
Moreover, different grammars are designed for different purposes. So,
for example, the various generative grammars associated with Chomsky and
his followers have the form they do because they are constructed to investigate
universals of language and related phenomena. On the other hand, pedagogical
grammars, written to help foreign learners of English, are very different
from so-called theoretical generative grammars precisely because they
have a different function.
We have chosen a grammar which is well-suited to describing texts. So,
as you learn about it, you should remember that it is bound to differ
from other grammars you might have come across, and there is NO ONE
TRUE ANSWER.
In any case, grammars describe clear cases, but in the real world, and
in real texts, we often come across difficult cases which might be very
complex or be borderline between one grammatical phenomenon and another.
So don't be surprised if not everything you come across fits neatly into
the 'boxes' you learn about. The world is full of phenomena like flying
fish, which do not fit neatly into pre-determined categories, and the
same is true of language in general and English grammar (and Englishtexts)
in particular.
The grammar we are going to explore is based on:
Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad (1982) English
Grammar for Today, London: Macmillan
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