THE NOTION OF GRAMMAR IN

SYNTAX

Doctor Chimwemwe Kamanga

(2024)

(Department of Language, Cultural and Creative

Studies- Mzuzu University)
 Definition of Grammar
 Grammar refers to the structure and the system
of language usually considered to consist of
Syntax and Morphology.
 Grammar is the set of rules that help us to use
language with understanding.
 Grammar is the structural foundation of our
ability to express ourselves.
 Definition of Grammar
(Continued)
 The more we are aware of how it works, the
more we can monitor the meaning and
effectiveness of the way we and others use
language.
 Knowing a language is knowing the grammar
of the language and using a language is using
the grammar of the language.
 There are different ways in which the concept
of grammar can be perceived.
 Prescriptive Grammar
 Prescriptive Grammar refers to the structure of
language as certain people think it should be.
 Prescriptive grammarians lay out the rules
about what they believe to be “correct” use of
language or “incorrect” use of language.
 Prescriptive Grammar is a kind of grammar
that outlines the dos and don’ts of language
use.
 Traditional Grammar
 Traditional Grammar is the collection of
prescriptive rules and concepts about the
structure of language that is commonly taught
in school.
 The rules are collected and taught to guide the
proper use of language.
 Descriptive Grammar
 Descriptive Grammar refers to the structure of
a language as it is actually used by speakers
and writers.
 Descriptive grammarians (linguists) study the
rules or the patterns that underlie our use of
phrases, clauses and sentences.
 The rules are generated upon observing how
people use a language.
 Comparative Grammar
 Comparative Grammar refers to the
comparison of the grammatical structures of
related languages.
 The focus for Comparative Grammar is on the
relationships among languages.
 Generative Grammar
 Generative Grammar refers to the set of rules
that indicate the structures and interpretation
of sentences that native speakers of a language
accept as belonging to the language.
 Basic areas of study in Generative Grammar
include Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and
Semantics.
 Mental Grammar
 Mental Grammar refers to the generative
grammar that is stored in the brain, which
allows a speaker to produce language that
other speakers can understand.
 All humans are born with the capacity to form
a mental grammar given linguistic experience.
 This is also known as the language faculty.
 Performance Grammar
 Performance Grammar refers to the intuitive
judgements concerning the well-formedness of
sentences of a language.
 This is the essence of linguistic performance.
 Transformational Grammar
 Transformational Grammar refers to a theory of
grammar that accounts for the constructions of a
language by linguistic transformations and phrase
structure rules.
 By linguistic transformations, we mean changes that
happen to the order of words in a sentence.
 Universal Grammar
 Universal Grammar refers to the system of
categories, operations and principles that are
shared by all human languages and considered
to be innate.
 Taken together, the linguistic principles of
Universal Grammar constitute a theory of the
organisation of the mind or brain of the
language acquirer or language learner.