The answer to "what is grammar?" is the same
whether you are teaching grammar for use in writing, or grammar
for speaking, or grammar for scoring well on bubble tests:
There is no one set of rules for generating sentences that is
used worldwide. Each language has its own rules for generating
sentences. Those rules are the language's grammar.
Grammar is about relationships
To study grammar means to study the structural relationships
between words (and word components) within a particular language.
The importance of knowing grammatical relationships becomes clear
when you see people attempting to learn a new language; they have
less difficulty learning new words than they have getting the
structural relationships right.
Grammar's two aspects
There are two aspects to grammar: a descriptive one and a prescriptive
one.
Prescriptive grammar tells what "ought" to be
When most of try to answer "what is grammar?" we talk
about prescriptive grammar, the picky, critical set of
rules most of us associate with English class.
Prescriptive grammar is an attempt to tell people how they
ought to form words and how they ought to form sentences.
Native speakers of a language can make themselves understood
without knowing the rules of prescriptive grammar. However, people
who want to advance socially and economically in a society usually
have to master at least the rudiments of their language's prescriptive
grammar.
Descriptive grammar tells what really happens
Descriptive grammar studies the ways people actually put words
together to form sentences.
In English, for example, the standard way of forming a sentence
is to follow the order subject-verb-object. A language
could just as easily use the order:
- Verb-subject-object, or
- Object-subject-verb, or
- Object-verb-subject.
Each of those ways of arranging the three elements represents
a distinctive pattern that expresses what is the grammar (the
rules for forming sentences) of a particular language.
Every language has ways of putting words together that constitute
a verbal lowest common denominator for that language. In
societies with written languages, there are also ways of using
language that are considered superior, educated or high class.
Descriptive grammar records both; however, it does not say which
is preferable.
What is grammar not?
People can put sentences together orally without using any punctuation
at all, so punctuation is not part of grammar.
Usage, which refers to the way a particular speech
community uses certain words or phrases, is not about entire
sentences so it is not part of grammar either.
Unlike grammar, which is systematic, usage is unsystematic
and idiosyncratic. Some English usage has been
accorded the authority of rules by virtue of having been
used by educated people for a long period of time; however,
usage is is not a part of the grammar of a language.
