Traditional Grammar vs. Modern Grammar Prof. Asif Ikram Sahib
Presented to:
Khurram Piracha
Pr esen ted by:
Difference between the animal communication and Human communication is
GRAMMAR
Traditional Grammar
Modern Grammar
Grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses , phrases, and words in any given natural language.
Its most known approach is the traditional grammar
In linguistics, traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of language.
Many of those ideas & rules were based on Latin grammar. Latin was assumed as the respected scientific language in the 15th – 17th Centuries.
Its modern name is ―Latin Oriented Model‖
Traditional Grammar
morphology
syntax (More emphasis)
But excludes Phonology
semantics
The approach to language was developed through:
Ancient Greeks and Romans
Aristotle (Poetics) & Plato(sentence structure , parts of speech) •
•
Middle Ages Ideas about meanings from scholastic debates Vernacular English
16th century Chaucer gave a new dimension to language.
•
•
17th
century(age
of philosophical controversies b/w rationalists and imperialists) Ideas about relationship between language and mind
18th century Ideas about correctness in language
19th century
* Emphasis on comparative philogy(study of words)
Traditional grammar distinguishes between the grammar of the elements that constitute a sentence (i.e. inter-elemental) and the grammar within sentence elements (i.e. intra-elemental).
Subject
Predicate
Object
Sentence
Clause
Phrase
Concepts of inter-elemental grammar for the English language
Subject as head Predicate much like a verb phrase Object Denotes somebody’s involvement in subject’s performance.
Sentence Contain functions & content words to clarify meanings Clause is a pair of group of words that contain sub+predicate Phrase is a group of words functioning as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence.
Phrase verb
took the
Clause obj
sub
train
Jack
pred took the train
Nouns Verbs Pronouns Adjectives Adverbs Conjunctions Articles Prepositions Interjections
is used to refer to people (boy), objects (bag), creatures (dog), places (school), qualities (honesty) , phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love).
2. are words which used in place of noun phrases. Kinds of pronouns (I, you, he, etc.) personal (my, mine, etc.) possessive reflexive (myself, himself etc.) (who, which, that etc.) relative (who, what, which etc.) interrogative
Are used to refer to various kinds of actions (go, run, talk) and states (be, have).
Linking verbs:
* Links subjects to noun or an adjective in the predicate part of the sentence. e.g.
is, are, was, were, am, been, will…..
Are used to describe nouns and provide more information, having degrees: Comparative (happier) Superlative (happiest)
Relates a noun to pronoun to another word in a sentence,e.g: In, or, with, to, above etc.
•
are words used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying and identifying them. This minute category contains only the definite article (the) and the indefinite article (a, an).
Connects words and individual group of words. It indicates the relationships between events e.g: and, but, neither-nor, either-or, that, etc.
Are typically used with verbs, to provide more information about action, states and events
Adverbs of time: yesterday
Adverbs of manner: roughly, gently
Adverbs of place: upward, downstairs
Words or phrases used to express strong emotions or surprises. e.g.
Wow!, Alas!, Hurrah! etc.
Traditional English grammar is largely based on Latin grammar, not on current linguistics research.
Traditional grammarians considered Latin as their model because English is a part of the IndoEuropean family of languages, and to which Latin and Greek also belong having similar grammatical elements.
It distinguishes rational, emotional, and conventional types of discourse in theory, if not in grammatical practice.
Through It, ordinary students and scholars have mastered many languages successfully for centuries.
Inadequate Full of short comings
Mainly based on Latin and Greek
It does not distinguish between all the linguistic levels – Phonetic: The articulation and perception of speech sounds Descriptive:
Rules are illogical Unable to differentiate between The girl is weeping & The weeping girl Disadvantages of grammar rules Memory Time Inconsistent Neglects functional and social varieties of languages
Gives priority to the written forms of the language Ignores the spokenform
Ignores the fact of change in language
It cannot resolve the ambiguity existing in the grammatical forms.
Examples: He loves her more than you. The lady hit the man with an umbrella. He gave her cat food.
Methods are inadequate, incomplete and inconsistent.
Despite the fact that traditional grammar has limitations and weaknesses, T.G is still a crucial unit of English language. Thus there is no need for whole scale change, it surely needs to be mended rather than ended.
Deep structure and surface structure In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structur
Development of basic concepts Deep Structure and Surface Structure (LF — Logical Form, and PF — Phonetic Form) Innate linguistic knowledge A generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand. Most of this knowledge is innate.
Grammatical theories The distinction between competence and performance The evaluation of theories of grammar
I language & E language In 1986, Chomsky proposed a distinction between I-Language and E-Language I-Language is taken to be the object of study in linguistic theory
E-Language encompasses all other notions of what a language is
Grammaticality Chomsky argued that the notions "grammatical― and "ungrammatical" could be defined in a meaningful and useful way
Minimalism
Economy of derivation is a principle stating that movements (i.e., transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features.
Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose.
Transformations
The usual usage of the term 'transformation' in linguistics refers to a rule that takes an input typically called the Deep Structure (in the Standard Theory) or D-structure (in the extended standard theory or government and binding theory) and changes it in some restricted way to result in a Surface Structure (or S-structure). In TGG, Deep structures were generated by a set of phrase structure rules.
Traditional grammar
prescriptive Focus on written form Scientific
Modern grammar
Descriptive Focus on spoken form Unscientific
Accuracy linguistic competence limited Scope
Fluency Communicative competence broader Scope
Prescriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a language, as certain people think it should be used.
Descriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers.
Perspective
Descriptive
I don’t have none
I don’t have any
You was wrong
You were wrong
Sana is fatter than me
Sana is fatter than I
Focus on written form
Scientific It follows the rigidity of rules and regulations. It is formed by the grammarians. Limited scope
Focus on spoken form
Unscientific It is flexible, easily changed by native speaker.
Broader scope
Accuracy is emphasized more than fluency. They said that their should be accuracy rather than fluency. Fluency in modern grammar fluency is emphasized and they think that weather student do mistakes while speaking but he should be fluent.
Linguistic competence is the spontaneous, flexible and correct manipulations of the language system. without linguistics competence, there is no communicative competence.
Communicative competence It involves principles of appropriateness and a readiness on the part of learner to use relevant strategies in coping with certain language situations.
There is a school of thought however that differentiates between traditional and modern grammar. While traditional grammar is static and does not change, modern grammar is the amorphous, fluid shifting of the rules of grammar over time.
