SURIGAO STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Narciso Street, Surigao City

Name: Genaro A. Roy Jr.

Section: A- Grammatical Models
Professor: Dr. Carmelin Mosa
Synthesis 1: Topic 1-6

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

The term traditional grammar refers to the collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about
the structure of language that is commonly taught in schools. Traditional English grammar, also
referred to as school grammar, is largely based on the principles of Latin grammar, not on
modern linguistic research in English.
Traditional grammar defines what is and is not correct in the English language, not accounting
for culture or modernizing in favor of maintaining tradition. Because it is fairly rigid and rooted
in the ways of the past, traditional grammar is often considered outdated and regularly
criticized by experts. Even so, many children learn this proper, historical form of grammar
today.
Author of The Teacher's Grammar Book James D. Williams summarizes the creeds of traditional
grammar: "We say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction
between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it, according to a
pre-established standard. ... The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a
historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language," (Williams 2005).

Others, like David Crystal, are passionately opposed to school grammar and find it too
restrictive. "[G]rammarians of the 2000s are the inheritors of the distortions and limitations
imposed on English by two centuries of a Latinate perspective,"(Crystal 2003).

Prescriptive forms of grammar like traditional grammar are governed by strict rules. In the case
of traditional grammar, most of these were determined a long time ago. While some
professionals uphold prescriptivism and the goals of traditional grammar, others deride them.

Author of The Teacher's Grammar Book James D. Williams summarizes the creeds of traditional
grammar: "We say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction
between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it, according to a
pre-established standard. ... The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a
historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language," (Williams 2005).

Others, like David Crystal, are passionately opposed to school grammar and find it too
restrictive. "[G]rammarians of the 2000s are the inheritors of the distortions and limitations
imposed on English by two centuries of a Latinate perspective,"(Crystal 2003).

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Universal grammar, theory proposing that humans possess innate faculties related to the
acquisition of language. The definition of universal grammar has evolved considerably since first
it was postulated and, moreover, since the 1940s, when it became a specific object of modern
linguistic research. It is associated with work in generative grammar, and it is based on the idea
that certain aspects of syntactic structure are universal. Universal grammar consists of a set of
atomic grammatical categories and relations that are the buildingblocks of the particular
grammars of all human languages, over which syntactic structures and constraints on those
structures are defined. A universal grammar would suggest that all languages possess the same
set of categories and relations and that in order to communicate through language, speakers
make infinite use of finite means, an idea that Wilhelm von Humboldt suggested in the 1830s.
From this perspective, a grammar must contain a finite system of rules that generates infinitely
many deep and surface structures, appropriatelyrelated. It must also contain rules that relate
these abstract structures to certain representations of sound and meaning—representations
that, presumably, are constituted of elements that belong to universal phonetics and
universal semantics, respectively.

This concept of grammatical structure is an elaboration of Humboldt’s ideas but harkens back
to earlier efforts. Noam Chomsky, a leading figure in modern development of the idea of
universal grammar, identifies precursors in the writings of Panini, Plato, and both rationalist
and romantic philosophers, such as René Descartes (1647), Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1647),
César Chesneau DuMarsais(1729), Denis Diderot (1751), James Beattie (1788), and Humboldt
(1836). Chomsky focuses in particular on early efforts by the 17th-century Port Royal
grammarians, whose rationalist approach to language and language universals was based on
the idea that humans in the “civilized world” share a common thought structure. Moreover, he
traces the conception of linguistic structure that marked the origins of modern syntactic theory
to Lancelot and Arnauld’s 1660 Port Royal work, Grammaire générale et raisonnée, which
postulated a link between the natural order of thought and the ordering of words.

AMERICAN STRUCTURALISM

American structuralism is a label attached to a heterogeneous but distinctive style of language

scholarship practiced in the United States, the heyday of which extended from around 1920
until the late 1950s. There is certainly diversity in the interests and intellectual stances of
American structuralists. Nevertheless, some minimum common denominators stand out.
American structuralists valued synchronic linguistic analysis, independent of—but not to the
exclusion of—study of a language’s development over time; they looked for, and tried to
articulate, systematic patterns in language data, attending in particular to the sound properties
of language and to morphophonology; they identified their work as part of a science of
language, rather than as philology or as a facet of literary studies, anthropology, or the study of
particular languages. Some American structuralists tried to establish the identity or difference
of linguistic units by studying their distribution with respect to other units, rather than by
relying on identity or difference of meaning. Some (but not all) American structuralists avoided
cross-linguistic generalizations, perceiving them as a threat to the hard-won notion of the
integrity of individual languages; some (but not all) avoided attributing patterns they discovered
in particular languages to cultural or psychological proclivities of speakers. A considerable
amount of American structuralist research focused on indigenous languages of the Americas.
One outstanding shared achievement of the group was the institutionalization of linguistics as
an autonomous discipline in the United States, materialized by the founding of the Linguistic
Society of America in 1924.

This composite picture of American structuralists needs to be balanced by recognition of their

diversity. One important distinction is between the goals and orientations of foundational
figures: Franz Boas (1858–1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and Leonard Bloomfield (1887–
1949). The influence of Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield was strongly felt by the next generation of
language scholars, who went on to appropriate, expand, modify, or otherwise retouch their
ideas to produce what is called post-Bloomfieldian linguistics. Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics
displays its own internal diversity, but still has enough coherence to put into relief the work of
other language scholars who were close contemporaries to the post-Bloomfieldians, but who in
various ways and for various reasons departedrom them. American structuralism has at least
this much heterogeneity.

This illustrates the character of American structuralism in the first half of the 20th century.
Analysis of a corpus of presidential addresses presented to the Linguistic Society of America by
key American structuralists grounds the discussion, and provides a microcosm within which to
observe some of its most salient features: both the shared preoccupations of American
structuralists and evidence of the contributions of individual scholars to a significant
collaborative project in the history of linguistics.

PRISCIAN GRAMMAR

The list of scholars throughout the Middle Ages who studied, quoted, or copied Priscian reads
like a Who’s Who of medieval intellectual history. Indeed, the modern reader may find it
difficult to understand the durability of Priscian’s influence over the field of grammatical
studies. It should be remembered that, while language is constantly changing, grammar, the
underlying structure of language, changes slowly. In addition, reverence for the correctness of
past usage kept Priscian’s book from early obsolescence.

Priscian was one of the sources used by his younger contemporary Flavius Magnus Aurelius in
the latter’s De orthographia (on spelling). The scholars Aldhelm (639-709) and Bede (673-735)
quoted Priscian, indicating that a manuscript of the Institutiones grammaticae had reached
England by their day. Alcuin (735-804) names Priscian among the authors available in the York
library, and the substance of his second dialogue on grammar is borrowed from Priscian. As
headmaster of Charlemagne’s Palace School at Aachen, Alcuin relied on Priscian among the
other stock authors, including Donatus, Cassiodorus, Bede, Saint Isidore of Seville, and Phocas.
Alcuin’s pupil Rabanus Maurus (c. 776-856) made a copy of Priscian’s Institutiones
grammaticae and introduced it into Germany at the monastery of Fulda, whose library he
founded. Servatus Lupus of Ferrieres, Rabanus’ pupil, quoted frequently from Priscian in his
letters on literary and grammatical matters. His own disciple Remigius wrote commentaries on
Priscian while teaching at Auxerre, Rheims, and Paris. Meanwhile, Priscian’s work was favored
among Irish scholars in monastic centers, where an interest in Greek was kept alive. Sedulius
Scottus (fl. c. 848-c. 860) and possibly John Scotus Erigena wrote commentaries on Priscian’s
grammatical foundations. At least three (of more than one thousand extant) of Priscian’s
manuscripts are written in the Irish minuscule script of the ninth century, including that which
came to Saint Gall around 860.

Between the times of Alcuin and Peter Abelard (1079-1142), Donatus and Priscian continued to
be the principal grammar authorities followed by scholars. From the twelfth century on,
however, the emphasis on theology, philosophy, and natural history at the University of Paris
brought about significant changes, and literature and grammar were reduced in importance.
The new authorities for grammar were the scholars at that university who continued to
produce commentaries on or abridgments of Priscian. As late as 1141, Theodoric, chancellor of
the school at Chartres, wrote a treatise on the seven liberal arts, liberally quoting Donatus and
Priscian for his section on grammar.

It was during the thirteenth century that Priscian gradually lost the place of honor to his
commentators, Petrus Helius, professor at Paris about 1142, and Robert Kilwardby, Archbishop
of Canterbury from 1272 to 1279. In that period of changing curricula, some scholars regretted
the neglect of the study of authors such as Homer, Claudian, Persius, Donatus, and Priscian.
One such person was John of Garland, an English scholar at Paris, who wrote fourteen books on
Latin grammar. Another was Henri d’ Andeli, a master at Rouen whose poem The Battle of the
Seven Arts (1259) depicts a war between the authors on the side of grammar and those
defending logic (Plato and Aristotle). In one episode, Priscian is made to hold his own in combat
with Aristotle. In the fourteenth century, Priscian was superseded by the modern compilations
of Alexander de Villa Dei, author of a hexameter poem on syntax, grammar, and the figures of
speech, called Doctrinale puerorum (c. late twelfth century), which drew largely from Priscian.
Another who was preferred to Priscian was Evrard of Béthune (fl. c. 1212), who also presented
a grammar, called Graecismus (c. late twelfth century), in verse format. Presumably, their use of
verse as a memory aid was a key to their success.

Besides the rise of logic and other arts, which started to claim precedence over grammar in the
schools, another reason must be noted for the demise of grammar and the eclipse of Priscian.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Latin was still a living language in the Church and the schools,
undergoing the dynamic changes common to living languages. New vocabulary, however,
included technical terms and the names of things unknown to antiquity. As Latin departed more
and more from classical Latin, the huge and precise grammatical foundations of Priscian
became less useful. On the southwest doorway of Chartres Cathedral, which is decorated with
personifications of the seven arts and their leading representatives, Grammar and Priscian are
found together. The two are also identified in the representation of the Seven Earthly Sciences
in the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella Church in Florence. The Renaissance thus paid its
homage to Priscian, greatest of all Latin grammarians.

STRUCTURALISM

Ferdinand de Saussure: Cours de Linguistique Générale (1916; posthumously)

Ferdinand de Saussure is seen as the founder of and one of the most influential figures in
modern linguistics. One of his core ideas was that it is possible to describe the structure of
languages in terms of a system, hence the term structuralism. However, we also owe a number
of other important concepts to him, including:

 the distinction between  synchronic  (‘contemporary’) vs.  diachronic  (‘historical’)

studies
 the distinction between  langue  (language system) vs.  parole  (actual usage by a
particular speaker)
 the concept of  arbitrariness , i.e. that the shape of words is generally not linked to their
meaning, unless, of course, they are  onomatopoetic
 the idea that there are relationships between symbols ⇒ systems
 the  syntagmatic  vs.  paradigmatic  axes

GENERATIVE-(TRANSFORMATIONAL) GRAMMAR

Chomskyan Approaches

Generative grammar is intimately associated with Noam Chomsky, who, in the 1950ies, sought
to break with traditional structuralist and behaviourist thinking and to establish a more
mathematical (and hence presumably exact) foundation for the description of language. Some
of the landmarks in his work are the following publications:

 Syntactic Structures (1957)
 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)
 Government-Binding Theory (1981, 1986)
 The Minimalist Program

From an early point on, Chomsky stressed that language is not learnt completely ‘from scratch’,
but that the basic language faculty is  innate  and also to some extent  universal , and that there
are only certain language-specific features a child (or language learner) needs to learn in order
to reach a sufficient level of  competence . The latter is generally seen as a level of
understanding of the language system (similar to Saussure’s concept of langue), as opposed to
the actual realisation of language,  performance .

In traditional generative grammar, syntax is perceived as largely  autonomous  from other

aspects of language, such as semantics (meaning), and conceptualised as a set of  production
rules  that make it possible to  generate  all grammatical forms of language from smaller units.
The only meaning involved is at the level of  deep structure , which embodies the underlying
logical relations between the syntactic elements, while the actual representation appears at the
level of  surface structure  and is achieved via a series of (potential)  transformations . This is
discussed in more detail in our section Syntax 2 – Theory & Practice. Later Chomskyan versions
of generative grammar have replaced the two notions of deep and surface structure by the
concepts of  logical form  (LF) and  phonetic form  (PF), respectively.

SOURCES

https://www.britannica.com/topic/universal-grammar
Algeo, John. "Linguistics: Where Do We Go From Here?" The English Journal, 1969.
Brooks, Brian, et al. Working With Words. Macmillan, 2005.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Hillocks, George. Research on Written Composition: New Directions for Teaching. National
Council of Teachers, 1986.
Williams, James D. The Teacher's Grammar Book. Routledge, 2005.
Robins, R. (1997). A Short History of Linguistics (4th ed.). London: Longman.
https://oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199384655-e-400#:~:text=American%20structuralists%20valued%20synchronic
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https://www.enotes.com/topics/priscian