Argument
Traditional grammar
Overview
Traditional grammar (also known as classical grammar) is a framework for the description of the structure of a language or group of languages. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these models became popular during the Renaissance.
Traditional grammars may be contrasted with more modern theories of grammar in theoretical linguistics, which grew out of traditional descriptions. While traditional grammars seek to describe how particular languages are used, or to teach people to speak or read them, grammar frameworks in contemporary linguistics often seek to explain the nature of language knowledge and ability common to all languages. Traditional grammar is often prescriptive, and may be regarded as unscientific by those working in linguistics.
Traditional Western grammars classify words into parts of speech. They describe the patterns for word inflection, and the rules of syntax by which those words are combined into sentences.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_, **instead of _I walk_, _I sit_. As in the beginnings of language, therefore, mankind seem…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Traditional grammar is.
In the Latin word _fero, fer_, meaning 'to bear,' is the root from which all modifications of the verb _ferre_ (to carry) are formed by means of suffixal elements. If, therefore, a language consists of sound complexes having the nature of roots, it is called a root-language. As a matter of fact, however, the languages under discussion consist purely of detached, monosyllabic _words_; the conception 'root,' which…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Traditional grammar is.
Under the old _régime_ it was unquestionably a most serious problem to give the children a full and free use of language. The reason was obvious. The natural motive for language was seldom offered. In the pedagogical text-books language is defined as the medium of expressing thought. It becomes that, more or less, to adults with trained minds, but it hardly needs to be said that language is primarily a social thing…
John Dewey, The School and Society Being three lectures
States what Traditional grammar is.
Related ideas
- Emotion
- French language
- Greek language
- Classical Greece
- Grammar
- Grammatical tense
- Grammatical gender
- Indo-European languages
- Judgment (mathematical logic)
- Language
- Latin
- Predicate (grammar)
- Middle Ages
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Grammatical mood
- Rhetoric
- Renaissance
- Syntax
- Sanskrit
- Semantics
- Tamil language
- Vyākaraṇa
- Noun
Place in the tradition
Part of Substance theory.