02. Study of Grammar

Objectives for this lesson

• Identify how grammar is defined
• Learn key influences on English usage (e.g., prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, regional and social dialects, language standards)

Warm-up

• Read this article and discuss with your peers what you think.

In-class readings

• Read “What is grammar and how is grammar used?” (5 min)
• Read “Varieties of English” (5 min)

Definitions of grammar

• Klammer et al. (2010):
  • “the linguistic system that presumably exists in the mind of a speaker of a language”
    • Syntax + morphology
  • “the knowledge to which we refer when we say that someone “knows” a language.”
  • “a description of the language system”
  • “an ideal set of rules”
    • He always uses good grammar.
  • a handbook containing the prescriptive rules
    • Look it up in your grammar.

Prescriptive and Descriptive Grammar

• Descriptive rules: “how our grammatical system operates, rules that are the same for all speakers of English (e.g., subjects precede verbs in most sentences).”
• Prescriptive rules “govern the version of English considered appropriate (e.g., Standard American English)”

Evolution of grammar study

• The reason why grammar gets a bad rap
• Two hallmarks:
  • Insisted only certain “high” forms of English were worth studying
  • Studied it in an complicated, obscure way, using a system borrowed from Latin
    

Prescriptive grammar

• The view that one variety (or use) of a language has an inherently higher value than others and ought to be the norm for the whole of the speech community (Crystal, 1995)
• An approach to the study of grammar that stipulates the grammatical forms that speakers should use or ought to use. (Cummings, 2018)

Modern/Descriptive views of grammar

• Objective
• More data-driven
• Studying language as it’s actually used by members of a speech community in real world contexts

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive grammar

What camp do you consider yourself to be in at this point? Why?

Let’s revisit this question:

• How should language teachers handle dialect differences in the classroom?

• Why do we use language differently?

  • Language change
  • Dialects
  • Language development

Summary of this lesson

• Key definitions in the study of grammar, such as prescriptive/descriptive approaches, dialects, standard and nonstandard language
• Reasons for variations in grammar

In-class quiz

Study of Grammar Quiz (3 min)
Any question?

• What’s next?
  • In the next part we take a look at morphology — the structure of words.

Homework

Give the Morphology Overview a read. You can skip the Knowledge Check questions for now.

Resource

“How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk” (An NYT Dialect Survey)