What Is Grammar?
"Grammar," Henry Fowler wrote in his soon-to-be famous 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage, is "a poor despised branch of learning." Henry was a bit cranky that day. To the rest of us, grammar is a branch of linguistics that deals with the form and structure of words. It's an attempt to make explicit and conscious what the skilled writer and speaker of English does intuitively and unconsciously. When people are said to have "good" or "bad" grammar, the understanding is that they choose to obey or ignore the rules of accepted usage associated with their language. Grammar is one of the oldest fields of study, as well as one of the most durable. Even Plato can be labeled an early grammarian, because he was responsible for dividing the sentence into subject and verb (onoma and rheme), a division it has retained.
"Grammar," Henry Fowler wrote in his soon-to-be famous 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage, is "a poor despised branch of learning." Henry was a bit cranky that day. To the rest of us, grammar is a branch of linguistics that deals with the form and structure of words. It's an attempt to make explicit and conscious what the skilled writer and speaker of English does intuitively and unconsciously. When people are said to have "good" or "bad" grammar, the understanding is that they choose to obey or ignore the rules of accepted usage associated with their language. Grammar is one of the oldest fields of study, as well as one of the most durable. Even Plato can be labeled an early grammarian, because he was responsible for dividing the sentence into subject and verb (onoma and rheme), a division it has retained.
Grammar is a branch
of linguistics that deals with the
form and structure of words.
Grammarians are not necessarily
writers,
but writers must always
be grammarians,
whether they
are aware of it or not.
From: Complete Idiot Guide to Grammar, by Laurie E. Rozakis (2003).
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