What is grammar?

Grammar is a guidebook to explain how a language works

Let's make one point clear from the very start. Grammar is not an exact science. And, second point,  it is not the same as linguistics, even if the two are very often confused (1). Grammar is a guidebook that helps us to discover or understand how a language works.

In the process of language acquisition, and particularly in second language learning, grammar is the manual that people follow in order to better understand the language they are learning, and to make faster progress. Grammar describes or prescribes the architecture of a language; it spells out the norms and the expected traditions that speakers and learners must usually follow if they want to be understood, or even to understand what other people are saying or have written. 

Universal grammar.. or not

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English grammar From Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and good bookshops

Over the centuries, some grammarians and linguists have suggested the existence of a universal grammar that underlies all languages and helps to explain how people can acquire language skills without ever learning any grammar. In recent times the main exponent of this theory was Noam Chomsky (born 1928), who is known as the father of modern linguistics. Chomsky's ideas on grammar dominated research in linguistics from the 1970s to the early 2000s, but since then the theory that there is some kind of common universal grammar behind all languages has been increasingly debunked (2.) , with even Chomsky in later life beginning to question his earlier assumptions.

That being said, all languages must, by definition, have certain common features. Every language has categories of words that refer to objects or creatures, and others that describe actions . 

1. In English, we call the first category nouns, whether we are talking about the English language, with nouns such as man, dog or tree, about Spanish with hombre, perro and árbol, Chinese with 男人 (Nánrén) 狗 (Gǒu) and 树 (Shù), or any other languages. 
2. We call the second category verbs, such as  make in English, faire in French or 作る(Tsukuru) in Japanese. However when looking at verbs, it quickly becomes clear that not all words that refer to actions are actually verbs. Clearly, the word action itself refers to an action, but the word action is not a verb. And what about the word "seeing", as in "Seeing is believing"; is it a noun, of a verb? In grammar terms we actually call it a gerund, gerunds being among the word categories in English.

So even if there are a few common features that underlie all languages, these are not necessarily easy to define; and beyond them, the differences between languages, and between the specific grammatical rules of different languages, are generally greater than the similarities. 

Thai, the language of Thailand, does not have any punctuation apart from spaces. Different languages express ideas using different word order, and the basic word order used in English, which is subject > verb > object, is by no means a universal feature of language. On the contrary, many Asian languages including Hindi and Korean, as well as European languages including Hungarian and Basque, put the verb at the end of the sentence, after the object. This explains why a Hindi speaker speaking English will be tempted to say I the cat saw, rather than I saw the cat.

Grammar definitions

The Oxford Dictionary, quoted by Google, defines grammar as "the whole system and structure of a language .... usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics." (3).

   In the USA, the Merriam-Webster dictionary provides a slightly less technical definition, calling grammar "the study of the classes of words, their inflections , and their functions and relations in the sentence"

In a similar vein, the Encyclopedia Britannica describes grammar as being the " rules of a language governing the sounds, words, sentences, and other elements, as well as their combination and interpretation. The word grammar also denotes the study of these abstract features or a book presenting these rules." (4)

The Cambridge dictionary provides an even clearer definition, defining grammar as "(the study or use of) the rules about how words change their form and combine with other words to make sentences". (5)

Linguistics professor David Crystal has described grammar as " the study of all the contrasts of meaning that it is possible to make within sentences..... By one count, there are some 3,500 such rules in English" (6) ... a definition that is liable to alarm teachers and learners more than help them.

For my part, I prefer to go with the simplest of definitions of the word grammar, and repeat the definition from the start of this short article, "Grammar is a guidebook that helps us to discover or understand how a language works.".  There are many different types of grammar, starting with the binary distinction between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar, and these will be the subject of another article to be published on this website in due course.

As in any other situation, some people may progress to the required level of language proficiency without having any need for a guidebook to help them. They can pick up the language with the help of the people around them, subconsciously absorbing enough of the basics to get by with. But within the context of formal education, both teachers and learners need to learn  and understand the essentials of grammar,  and when at a more advanced level of study, more than just the essentials.

As I stressed in How to demystify grammar (7)  in 2020, there is nothing elitist about teaching or studying grammar. Learning a language involves the mastering of two fields, on the one hand its words (its vocabulary) and on the other hand its grammar. They are two sides of the same coin, and both are required – words in order to designate entities, qualities, ideas and actions, and grammar to correctly express the relationships between the words. Neither is an option; neither can be passed over.

References

1. Rossiter Grammar Teaching and The Problem of Terminology  in  EFL Magazine , 2023 

2. Ibbotson & Tomasello Evidence Rebuts Chomsky’s Theory of Language Learning in Scientific American, Sept 7 2016

3. The Oxford Dictionary is used to provide definitions in Google search.

4. The Encyclopedia Britannica, available online, provides a succinct overview of the nature and history of grammar.

5  The Cambridge Dictionary, provides a short definition and plenty of examples and citations.

6. David Crystal, quoted by Richard Nordquist in English Grammar: Discussions, Definitions, and Examples, Thought.co, 2023

7. Rossiter  How to demystify Grammar, in EL Gazette, November 2020