There does not appear to exist a generally accepted periodization of the
history of English grammars, so we shall roughly divide it into two
periods of unequal length, according to the general aims or objectives
of the grammars appearing within these periods. The first is the age of
prescientific grammar beginning with the end of the 16th century and
lasting till about 1900. It includes two types of grammars which
succeeded each other.
The first type of grammars in the history of English grammars are the
early prenormative grammars of English, beginning with William
Bullokar’s Bref Grammar for English (1585).
By the middle of the 18th century, when many of the grammatical
phenomena of English had been described, the early English grammars gave
way (to a new kind of grammar, a prescriptive (normative) grammar, which
stated strict rules of grammatical usage, condemning those constructions
and forms which it considered to be wrong or “improper”, and setting up
a certain standard of correctness to be implicitly followed by learners
of English. The grammars of the second type still constitute the only
kind of grammar in use in the practical teaching of English.
By the end of the 19th century, when the prescriptive grammar had
reached its highest level of development, when the system of grammar
known in modern linguistics as traditional had been established, the
appearance of new grammar, the scientific grammar, became possible.
In contrast with prescriptive grammars, classical scientific grammar
(the third type of grammar), according to the explicitly stated views of
its founders, was both descriptive and explanatory. As Sweet’s grammar
appeared in the last decade of the 19th century, we may take 1900 as the
dividing line between the two periods and the beginning of the second
period, the age of the scientific grammars of English (including three
new types of grammars). During the first half of the present century an
intensive development of this grammar has taken place. Classical
scientific grammar has accepted the traditional grammatical system of
prescriptive grammar, but, as has been mentioned, now we witness the
final stage of its existence, for since the 1950’s no new grammars of
the scholarly traditional type seem to have appeared. The new types of
English grammars, which appeared since the fifties are the fourth type
of grammar – structural or descriptive, which, in its turn, is becoming
obsolete and is being supplanted by the fifth type of grammar – the
transformational generative grammar. The linguistic theory represented
by the last mentioned type of grammar is considered by many modern
linguists to be the most fruitful approach to the description and
explanation of the grammatical system of English, especially in the
field of syntax.
ENGLISH GRAMMARS BEFORE 1900
(THE FIRST PERIOD)
Early (Prenormative) Grammars. Until the 17th century the term “grammar”
in English was applied only to the study of Latin. This usage was a
result of the fact that Latin grammar was the only grammar learned in
schools (“grammar” schools) and that until the end of the 16th century
there were no grammars of English. One of the earliest and most popular
Latin grammars written in English, by William Lily, was published in
the first half of the 16th century and went through many editions.
This work was very important for English grammar as it set a standard
for the arrangement of material and thus Latin paradigms with
their English equivalents easily suggested the possibility of
presenting English forms in a similar way, using the same terminology as
in Latin grammar. A striking example of the two approaches to the
description of English is the divergence of views on the problem of
English case system. Though Bullokar mentioned 5 cases and in a grammar
published in 1749 and reprinted as late as 1819 (Th. Dilworth, A New
Guide to the English Tongue) the number of cases both of nouns and
adjectives is said to be 6 (as it is in Lily’s grammar), in two grammars
which appeared during the first half of the 17th century, Ben Jonson’s
and Ch. Butler’s English grammars, the number of cases is two, while in
J. Wallis’s Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653), which was written in
Latin, in spite of the author’s intention to break entirely with Latin
tradition, the category of case is said to be non-existent and the ‘s
form is defined as a possessive adjective. This view was supported by an
early 18th century grammar, attributed to John Brightland. The authors
of the second half of the 18th century seemed to prefer the two-case
system, which was revived at the end of the 19th century in scientific
grammar. In 19th century school grammars a three-case system prevailed.
The treatment of the problem of case shows that even in the early period
of the development of English grammars the views of grammarians were
widely divergent, a fact which may be explained by two different
approaches toward the description of English grammatical structure. The
grammarians who desired to break with Latin grammatical tradition were
not always consistent and still followed the Latin pattern in some of
the chapters of their grammars.
By the middle of the 18th century the main results of the description of
the English grammatical system, as it was presented in the prenormative
grammars, were as follows:
Morphology. The Latin classification of the parts of speech, which
included eight word-classes, differed from the system adopted by modern
grammars in that the substantives and adjectives were grouped together
as two kinds of nouns, while the participle was presented as a separate
part of speech. In the earliest English grammars, where this system was
reproduced, the parts of speech were also divided dichotomically into
declinable and indeclinable parts of speech, just as in Lily’s grammar
(W. Bullokar), or words with number and words without number (Ben
Jonson), or words with number and case and words without number and case
(Ch. Butler). The first of these groups, declinable words, with number
and case, included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participles, the second —
indeclinables — adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.
Ben Jonson increased the number of parts of speech in his
classification, introducing the article as the ninth part of speech.
Later, at the beginning of the 18th century, another scheme of
classification appeared in J. Brightland’s grammar. This author reduced
the number of parts of speech to four, rejecting the traditional
terminology as well. The four parts of speech were: names (i. e. nouns),
qualities (i. e. adjectives), affirmations (i. e. verbs) and particles,
which included the four so-called indeclinable parts of speech. In this
scheme the adjective was classed as a separate part of speech, owing to
the influence of the philosophical or universal (logical) grammars of
the age, which in their attempts to discover the universal laws of the
structure of languages pointed out the difference between the syntactic
functions of the two varieties of “nouns”.
Syntax. In Brightland’s grammar we likewise find an important innovation
in the study of English syntax — the introduction of the notion
“sentence” into syntax. Latin grammar was not concerned with the
structure of the sentence, the principal object of the syntax of modern
grammar. Though definitions of the sentence, mostly logical (pointing to
its function as an expression of a complete thought, a judgment or
proposition), already existed in the ancient period, grammarians
understood syntax etymologically as a study of the arrangement, i. e.
the connection of words. Thus, Lily briefly stated the three concords of
Latin: of the nominative and the verb, of the substantive and the
adjective and of the relative pronoun and its antecedent.
Ben Jonson applied this analysis to English syntax and devoted a large
part of his grammar to the description of the “syntax” of a noun with a
noun, of a noun with an adjective, with an article, with a verb, etc. As
the rules of concord and government were few in English, the author paid
much attention to a specifically English means of connection of words —
word order. The sentence was mentioned only in the chapter on
punctuation, which was based on the theory of rhetoric (i. e.
stylistics) created by ancient authors. The principal unit of rhetoric
was the period, which, like the sentence, was defined as an expression
of a complete thought. The expression of a complete thought in rhetoric
was not confined to the bounds of a single sentence. It could be
expressed by a group of closely connected sentences, but early English
grammarians identified the period with the sentence, so that the marks
of punctuation (named after the parts of the period which they divided,
such as the comma, the least part of the period, the colon, a member of
the period, and the period itself, which denoted the mark of punctuation
pointing to its completion) were at the same time intended to divide
sentences and their parts, which as yet had no special names. As some
colons were rather long, another mark of punctuation was added, the
semicolon (a half-member), which was so named by analogy with the
already existing terms.
It was only in Brightland’s grammar that the concept of the sentence was
included in syntax proper. In Brightland’s grammar sentences are divided
dichotomically into simple and compound. The simple sentence is defined
as containing one affirmation (verb) and one name, signifying the
subject of the affirmation expressed or understood. The compound
sentence consists of two or more simple sentences.
Alongside the logical terms introduced into syntax, the term “object”
(deriving from medieval scholastic philosophy) was added to denote the
third “principal” part of the sentence. But morphological terms (such as
the nominative case or word, the noun, etc.) continued to be used in the
description of the parts of the sentence.
The concept of the compound sentence, which, judging by Brightland’s
examples, denoted both complex and compound sentences, according to a
classification introduced, much later, was also due to logic, where
propositions or judgments were divided into simple and compound. The
second part of his syntax deals with the “construction of words” (as it
does in older grammars).
Prescriptive Grammars. The age of prescriptive grammar begins in the
second half of the 18th century. The most influential grammar of the
period was R.Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar, first
published in 1762. The aim of prescriptive grammars was to reduce the
English language to rules and to set up a standard of correct usage. The
authors of prescriptive grammars believed that, their task was not only
to prescribe, to provide rules for distinguishing what is right from
what is wrong, but also to proscribe expressions which they considered
to be wrong. In the second half of the 18th century it was the
grammarians who took upon themselves the responsibility of dictating the
laws of grammar and usage. These grammarians settled most disputed
points of usage by appealing to reason, to the laws of thought or logic,
which were considered to be universal and to be reflected in the
Universal, that is, Logical or Philosophical Grammar. But as O.
Jespersen correctly observes, “In many cases what gives itself out as
logic, is not logic at all, but Latin grammar disguised.” There is then
nothing whatever in logic which obliges the predicative to stand in the
same case as the subject, that is, in the nominative.
From the point of view of modern grammatical theory some changes
which had taken place in the description of the morphological system did
not contribute to its improvement. In spite of the authority
of Lowth and Murray, who had retained the scheme of nine parts of
speech, the succeeding grammarians reverted to the system of eight parts
of speech. They chose to class the article with the adjective, as it had
been done in earlier grammars (e. g. in Wallis’s grammar), rather than
increase the number of the parts of speech beyond eight. In this case
it was the older tradition which prevailed. This classification remains
the most popular one in prescriptive and classical scientific
grammars of the modern period. Another morphological problem which in
the earliest grammars had caused considerable disagreement among
grammarians and admitted of various solutions came to be settled to
the satisfaction of the authors of prescriptive grammars. This was a
problem which continues to be subject of dispute to this day — the
number of cases in English. Lowth adopted a two-case system for
nouns and a three-case system for pronouns, and the term
“possessive case”, which is extremely popular now. The paradigm
of the declension of personal pronouns included the nominative case, the
possessive pronoun as a form of the possessive case and the objective
case, the latter term also having been most likely introduced by Lowth.
After a great deal of vacillation, Murray, in the later editions of his
grammar, decided to adopt the three-case system for nouns. The
three-case system was adopted almost unanimously by all prescriptive
grammars of the 19th century and later, until in the 1920’s Nesfield
substituted for it a five-case system.
The syntactic study of the simple sentence did not advance greatly till
the middle of the century. By the time Lowth’s grammar appeared the
concept of the principal parts of the sentence had been already
elaborated to the number of three. The terminology was rather unsettled.
Lowth distinguished an agent, an attribute (i. e. the predicate) and an
object. The definitions of the first and second parts of the
sentence corresponded to the definitions of the logical subject and
predicate. The object was defined as the thing affected by the action of
the verb. There was no advance in the conception of the secondary parts
of the sentence. Besides the principal parts, Lowth mentioned adjuncts
without further differentiation on the syntactic level.
The theory of the compound sentence, dating from the beginning of the
18th century, was during this period at an absolute standstill. The
definitions in the grammars of the first half of the century were
practically the same as in J. Brightland’s grammar, where they first
occurred.
The principal feature of a compound sentence, as it was understood at
that time, is that it comprises more than one subject or nominative word
and verb, expressed or understood. Sentences were therefore classed as
compound, when a punctuation unit contained two or more
subject-predicate groups, connected by subordinating or coordinating
conjunctions, or when there was a single subject-predicate group with
coordinate members.
The classification of conjunctions corresponded to the classification of
compound propositions or judgments in logic. All conjunctions were
divided according to their meaning, but without regard to their
syntactic nature, into copulatives and disjunctives. The notions of
subordination and coordination were still unknown.
The second part of syntax, which treated the “construction of words”,
was more developed. In Lowth’s grammar the word “phrase” came to be used
as a grammatical term, defined as follows: “A Phrase is two or more
words rightly put together to make a part of a Sentence and sometimes
making a whole Sentence.” The concept of the phrase occupies an
important place in Murray’s grammar and the grammars of his successors,
who described the kinds of phrases and the relations between the words
making up a phrase.
Though the grammatical system created by the grammarians by the middle
of the 19th century (especially in syntax) still differed from that
known in traditional grammar of the present period, a great number of
prescriptions and rules formulated and fixed by the authority of the
grammarians remain in grammars of the modern period. One
important series of prescriptions that now forms part of all grammars
had its origin in this period, namely the rules for the formation of the
Future Tense. The rule was first stated by J. Wallis, and since that
time it has been repeated by all grammarians, at first in its archaic
form, as formulated by Wallis.
The rule that two negatives destroy one another or are equivalent to an
affirmative, was first stated in J. Greenwood’s Royal English Grammar in
the first half of the 18th century, the influence of Lowth’s grammar
helped to fix it.
It was in the second half of the 19th century that the development of
the grammatical scheme of the prescriptive grammar was completed. The
grammarians arrived at a system now familiar, because it has since been
adopted by a long succession of grammarians of the 19th and 20th
centuries. The best prescriptive grammars of the period, like C. P.
Mason’s English Grammar (London, 1858) and A. Bain’s Higher English
Grammar (London, 1863), paved the way for the first scientific grammar
of English.
The description of the morphological system in grammars of the second
half of the 19th century changed very little as compared with that of
grammars of the first half of the century, but the explanation of
grammatical forms became more detailed, expressing of a deeper
understanding of the nature of the phenomena discussed. Some important
changes, however, took place in the description of the syntactic system,
though the definition of the sentence remained logical, as a combination
of words expressing a complete thought. But the concept of the parts of
the sentence differs greatly from that of the grammars of the first half
of the 19th century. The changes and innovations concerned both the
principal and the secondary parts of the sentence. The number of the
principal parts of the sentence was reduced to two – the subject and the
predicate, which retained their logical definitions. In this period the
grammarians make an attemps to differentiate logical and grammatical
subjects and predicates. The former are represented by single words, the
latter include word groups with subjects and predicates as head words. A
little later subjects and predicates expressed by one word came to be
distinguished simple or essential subjects and predicates, and those
expressed by a word group as complete subjects and predicates.
The objects came to be viewed as a secondary or dependent (subordinate)
part of the sentence in the light of the newly developed theory of
subordination and coordination of sentence elements and the introduction
into grammar of the content aspect of syntactic relations, such as
predicative, attributive, objective and/or adverbial relations.
Thus the notion of the attribute came to be applied, instead of the
predicate to a relation expressed by a secondary part of the sentence
and adjuncts were subdivided into attributive (also attributival or
adnominal) and adverbial adjuncts, which was the first
differentiation of the secondary parts of the sentence on a syntactic
level.
The objects were classified according to their meaning and form as
direct, indirect and prepositional. This classification, though
inconsistent logically, is accepted by many grammarians of the modern
period. Objects and subjects as well were further classified as compound
(i. e. coordinate), complex (expressed by infinitive groups or
subordinate clauses), etc.
Besides the object and two kinds of adjuncts, some new notions and terms
developed, either as synonyms for the already defined syntactic units or
used in a slightly different meaning to describe some new syntactic
units, which contributed to a more detailed sentence analysis.
Syntactic processes operate to derive a more complicated structure from
a simpler one.
The notion of completion of the meaning of transitive or copulative
verbs, defined as verbs of incomplete predication, may be understood as
a designation of a syntactic process.
A very important innovation in the concept of the compound sentence was
its subdivision into the compound sentence proper, with coordinated
component parts, and the complex sentence, characterized by
subordination of clauses. In this way the dichotomic classification of
sentences into simple and compound was changed into a tricholomic
division, according to which sentences are divided into simple, compound
and complex. This theory has since been accepted with very few
exceptions by prescriptive, classical scientific and some structural as
well as transformational grammars. The recognition and differentiation
of the two principal syntactic modes of joining subject-predicate units,
subordination and coordination (the former expressing syntactic
dependence and the latter — equality of syntactic rank), was a great
advance in the development of grammatical theory. Of great interest also
is the elaboration of the concept of a clause as a syntactic unit
containing a noun and a finite verb and forming part of a complex or
compound sentence. Clauses are classified as independent and dependent
or coordinate and subordinate. The latter were also classified
morphologically as noun, adjective and adverb clauses, because
grammarians considered clauses to be of the nature of a word, and not of
a part of the sentence. These three kinds of clauses were further
subdivided according to their syntactic functions in the sentence.
The concept of the compound sentence in the new sense, as containing
independent clauses or sentences, did not, it seems, satisfy those
grammarians who had gained a deeper insight into the nature of the
grammatical phenomena described in their grammars. They give
examples illustrating the possibility of isolating the parts of the
compound sentences, of pronouncing each part of such a sentence by
itself, without any change of meaning or intonation and they
stress the complete independence of each part.
The concept of the phrase has been retained in the grammars of the
second half of the 19th century, though not all grammarians use this
term, describing the syntax of the parts of speech instead. The phrase
is differentiated from the clause, as containing no finite verb.
The Rise of Classical Scientific Grammar. By the end of the 19th
century, after the description of the grammatical system, especially
that of syntax had been completed, prescriptive grammar had reached the
peak of its development. A need was fell, therefore, for a grammar of a
higher type, which could give a scientific explanation of the
grammatical phenomena. The appearance of H. Sweet’s New English Grammar,
Logical and Historical (1891) met this demand. As Sweet wrote in his
Preface: “This work is intended to supply the want of a scientific
English grammar.” The difference in purpose between scientific and
prescriptive grammar is stated in the following terms: “As my exposition
claims to be scientific, I confine myself to the statement and
explanation of facts, without attempting to settle the relative
correctness of divergent usages. If an ‘ungrammatical’ expression such
as it is me is in general use among educated people, I accept it as
such, simply adding that it is avoided in the literary language.” This
was a new approach, in keeping with the Doctrine of General Usage which
had been first formulated by an 18th-century grammarian, a contemporary
of Lowth’s, J. Priestley, in his Rudiments of English Grammar. But
Priestley’s views had been rejected, as we have seen, in favour of the
Doctrine of Rules or Correctness. Sweet clearly stales the new
viewpoint: “…whatever is in general use in language is for that reason
grammatically correct.” Scientific grammar was understood by its authors
to be a combination of both descriptive and explanatory grammar. The
same views on the purpose and methods of scientific grammar were held by
20th-century linguists.
ENGLISH GRAMMARS IN THE 20th CENTURY
(THE SECOND PERIOD)
The modern period may be divided into two chronologically unequal parts,
the first from the beginning of the 20lh century till the 1940’s, when
there were only two types of grammars in use —the prescriptive and the
classical scientific, the second from the 1940’s, during which time
structural grammar, and then transformational have been added. As has
been pointed out, structural grammar tended to supplant the older
scientific grammar, which we call classical in order to distinguish it
from the new theoretical grammars of English.
There is a borrowing of some of the concepts of prescriptive and
classical scientific grammars by the authors of both structural and
transformational grammars, especially in the field of syntax, which
proves that structural grammar has not quite succeeded in breaking with
traditional grammar to the degree that is proclaimed by the authors of
these grammars, while transformational grammar, as professed by its
exponents, is closer to traditional grammar, than descriptivism.
Prescriptive Grammars in the Modern Period. Among the 20th-century
prescriptive grammars which are of some interest, J. C. Nesfield’s
grammar should be mentioned. Although published at the end of
the 19th century (1898), it exerted a certain influence on
prescriptive and even scientific grammars of the 20th century,
comparable to the influence of Murray’s grammar upon 19th-century
grammars. The editions which preceded the revision continued the
tradition of 19th century grammar: morphology was treated as
it had been in the first half of the 19th century, syntax, in the
second half of that century. Of the various classifications of the
parts of the sentence current in the grammars of the second half
of the 19th century the author chose a system, according to which the
sentence has four distinct parts: (1) the Subject; (2) Adjuncts to
the Subject (Attributive Adjuncts, sometimes called the Enlargement of
the Subject); (3) the Predicate; and (4) Adjuncts of the Predicate
(Adverbial Adjuncts); the object and the complement (i. e. the
predicative) with their qualifying words, however, are not treated as
distinct parts of the sentence. They are classed together
with the finite verb as part of the predicate. Although grammars as a
rule do not consider the object to be the third principal part of the
sentence, indirectly this point of view persists since the middle of the
19th century and underlies many methods of analysis. In Nesfield’s
scheme, though the object is not given the status of a part of the
sentence, it is considered to be of equal importance with the
finite verb. In diagramming sentences, grammarians place the
subject, predicate, objects and complements on the same syntactic
level, on a horizontal line in the diagram, while modifiers of all sorts
are placed below the line.
Revision brought about certain changes in Nesfield’s
grammatical system. The number of cases of the noun was increased to
five (through the addition of the vocative and the dative), while
classical scientific grammars, for instance, those of Sweet and
Jespersen, favoured the two-case system. Another change occurred in the
structural classification of sentences. Two new , terms, “double” and
“multiple” sentences, were substituted for the term “compound”
sentence, the term “double” denoting the coordination of two and
“multiple” of more than two sentences. This innovation —a quantitative
classification of independent sentences contained within a
punctuation unit, is significant as symptomatic of the weakness of
the concept of the “compound” sentence, intuitively felt by the
members of the Joint Committee and those who followed their
recommendation. According to the concept of the “compound” sentence, the
combination of two or more syntactically independent, though
semantically connected sentences, was analysed as a single sentence. The
new terms, which were probably intended to improve the theory, became
very popular in prescriptive grammar and, as we shall see, influenced
some scientific grammars.
Classical Scientific English Grammar in the Modern Period. The founders
of this type of grammar in the period of its intensive development
either specialize in syntax or deal with the problem of both morphology
and syntax.
Among the authors who specialize in syntax are L. G. Kimball, C. T.
Onions and H. K. Stokoc. Both Kimball’s Structure of the English
Sentence (New York, 1900) and Onions’ Advanced English Syntax. (London,
1904), which appeared at the beginning of the period, discuss the
problems of the structure of English on the traditional plane, though in
Onion’s book there is a striking anticipation of the sentence patterns
of descriptive linguistics. Kimball’s grammar shows the influence of
logical grammars of the type current in 19th-century German linguistics,
K. F. Backer’s grammar for example. The third book, H.R.Stokoe’s
Understanding of Syntax, which appeared in 1937, was also largely
influenced by the views of prescriptive grammarians like Nesfield. Two
of these authors are not satisfied with the traditional concept of the
compound sentence. Onions passed it over in silence. Stokoe adopted the
new nomenclature, describing double and multiple sentences in his book.
All these authors differ from prescriptive grammarians in their
non-legislative approach to the description of English structure and
deeper insights into the nature of the grammatical phenomena.
Scientific grammar was the first to undermine the strictly structural
concept of a clause as of a syntactic unit containing a subject and a
predicate, created by prescriptive grammar. Beginning with Sweet’s
grammar, the authors of scientific grammars have been developing the
concepts of half-clauses, abridged clauses, verbid clauses, etc.,
which practically destroy the original concept of clause and lead
to a tendency to analyse simple sentences as complex or, to put it
another way, demolish the structural distinction between simple and
complex sentences. Thus Poutsma treats substantive clauses,
adverbial clauses, infinitive clauses, gerund clauses and
participle clauses as units of the same kind, though the last
three types of “clauses” are not clauses, according to the original and,
in our opinion, more correct concept of clause as a syntactic unit.
From a theoretical point of view, Kruisinga’s grammar is one of
the most interesting of those scientific grammars which have retained
the traditional grammatical system. Kruisinga approaches the problem of
the definition of the sentence critically, refraining, however, from
giving a definition of his own, whereas most grammarians were
content to repeat traditional logical definitions. Kruisinga originated
the theory of close and loose syntactic groups, the difference between
them being based on the distinction between subordination and
coordination. Closely connected with this theory is the author’s
concept of the complex sentence. His classification is dichotomic: only
two sentence types are recognized — simple and compound sentences.
The traditional compound sentence is not considered to be a syntactic
unit at all; the material in question is treated in connection with
double and multiple loose syntactic groups.
Of all the authors of scientific grammars of the classical type O.
Jespersen is the most original. His morphological system differs from
the traditional in that he lists only five parts of speech —
substantives, adjectives, verbs, pronouns (the latter include pronominal
adverbs, and articles) and “particles”, in which he groups adverbs,
prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Like Sweet, he proposes
three principles of classification, according to which everything must
be kept in mind — meaning, form and function, though in practice only
one of these features is taken into consideration, and that is primarily
form (cf. the “particles”) and, in a few cases, the origin of a given
form.
Jespersen’s syntactic system is more original. He intends to
reject the traditional syntactic analysis, though some of the
traditional terms still occur in his works and develops the concept of
ranks.
Structural and Transformational Grammars. Structural grammarians begin
treating the problems of the structure of English with criticism of
traditional, or conventional grammar, lumping together prescriptive and
scholarly grammars because their methods of approach are said to be the
same. According to the point of view of structural linguists, both these
types of grammar belong to a “prescientific era”.
Fries believes that “the study of the usual ‘formal’ grammar has much
the same sort of value and usefulness as the study of the astronomy of
Ptolemy, or of the medical beliefs and practices of Galen, the great
Greek physician”. The author insists that pupils should begin the study
of grammar only after ridding their minds of all previously acquired
notions concerning language.
The new approach — the application of some of the newly developed
techniques, such as distributional analysis and substitution — makes it
possible for Fries to dispense with the usual eight parts of speech and
with the traditional terms. He classifies words into four
“form-classes”, designated by numbers, and fifteen groups of “function
words”, designated by letters. The form-classes correspond roughly to
what most grammarians call nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs, though Fries especially warns the reader against the attempt to
translate the statements which the latter finds in the book into the old
grammatical terms. The group of function words contains not only
prepositions and conjunctions, but also certain specific words that more
traditional grammarians would class as a particular kind of pronouns,
adverbs and verbs.
Further descriptive works on grammar should be mentioned. In 1951
An Outline of English Structure by G. L. Trager and H. L. Smith was
published. This book was much the fullest on phonology and morphology,
but, as noted by H. A. Gleason, hardly more than suggestive on syntax,
though we shall see some traces of its influence in another
descriptive grammar (by J. Sledd). Gleason seems to think that the
two books (that of Fries and the Outline) can be looked upon as
supplementing each other and that in the midfifties it looked as though
the “new grammar” might emerge as a new eclectic tradition, based on
these two sources with certain elements salvaged from older grammars
(which was what really happened).
As has been aptly observed by Hathaway, the syntax of modern English
has undergone a shrinkage at the hands of the structuralists. In
Chomsky’s estimation also modern structural linguistics provides little
insight into the processes of formation and interpretation of sentences,
and therefore it does not seem to him surprising that there has been
renewed interest in the formalization and use of techniques and devices
more characteristic of traditional than of structuralist grammars.
The method developed by N. Chomsky has now become widely known as
Transformational Generative Grammar. It was first, expounded in
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (1957) and has been revised in the
author’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1905). According to this
theory sentences have a surface structure and a deep structure. Of
these, the surface structure is the more complicated, based on one or
more underlying abstract simple structures. In certain very simple
sentences the difference between the surface structure and the deep
structure is minimal. Sentences of this kind, simple, active,
declarative, indicative, are designated as kernel sentences. They can be
adequately described by phrase or constituent structure methods, as
consisting of noun, and verb phrases (the so-called P-markers, the NP’s
& VP’s). According to Syntactic Structure’s, kernel sentences are
produced by applying only obligatory transformations to the
phrase-structure strings (e.g. the transformation of affix + verb into
verb + affix in the present tense, hit –s, etc). Non-kernel or derived
sentences involve optional transformations in addition, such as active
to passive (the boy was hit by the man). But later interpretations of
the transformational theory have made less use of this distinction,
stressing rather the distinction between the underlying “deep structure”
of a sentence and its “surface structure” that it exhibits after the
transformations have been applied. Transformational operations consist
in rearrangement, addition, deletion and combination of linguistic
elements.
A Transformational Grammar is organized in three basic parts. The first
part—its syntactic component (which includes a lexicon, i.e. a list of
words — boy, hit, ball, etc.) is described, as mentioned above, in terms
of IC’s or P-markers. The syntactic component includes description both
of deep and surface structure. The second is the semantic component,
which provides a semantic interpretation of the deep
structure. E. g. in sentences we enjoy smoking and we oppose smoking the
semantic component would indicate that the former is a paraphrase of we
smoke and we enjoy it, though the latter is not a paraphrase of we smoke
and we oppose it. The third, the phonological component provides a
phonetic interpretation of the surface structure of the sentence.
Note that “to generate sentences” according to this theory does not mean
“to produce sentences”, but “to characterize”, “to enumerate”, “to
determine” the rules for forming all of the infinite number of
sentences, some of them never heard before.
Chomsky’s new theory is that language has a base which contains the
elementary phrase structures. In the new conception of Chomsky the
kernel sentence loses all its significance, for Chomsky is careful to
stress that sentences are not derived from other sentences (as has been
sometimes loosely and inaccurately stated), but rather from the
structures underlying them. The phrase structures produce sentences
usually by way of transformations. . . Now it is clearer that
transformations are not intended to relate sentences to sentences (as
was stated at first by Z. S. Harris), but deep structure to surface
structure and that deep structure thus embodies a hypothesis set up for
an adequate description of a language.
Our selections from transformational grammars of English represent the
earlier version of the transformational theory, even O. Thomas’
Transformational Grammar, the first popular survey published since the
major revision.
Of great interest for clarifying the theoretical and philosophical
sources of transformational generative grammar are the two books
by Chomsky: Cartesian Linguistics and Language and Mind.
It is also an interesting fact that some linguists point at the danger
of new prescriptivism in generative transformational grammars, e. g. J.
Nist maintains that in their search for language universals (that is,
categories underlying the structures of all languages), a process
reminiscent of the eighteenth century authoritarians, the generative
grammarians have already showed signs of becoming prescriptive and
prescriptive in their analysis of “permitted” (i. e. grammatically
correct) strings. This opinion is shared by B. Hathaway.
In the process of the development of English grammatical theory,
despite the great divergence of the types, aims, objectives and
approaches of English grammars, a certain continuity may be observed in
establishing and keeping up the English grammatical tradition. The
foundations of the English grammatical system were laid already in the
first part of the first, prescientific, period, in early prenormative
grammar, though its morphological system leaned heavily on that of the
Latin grammar and the incipient syntactic notions were dependent upon
rhetoric and logic. The most important type of grammar, in our opinion,
is the second, the prescriptive or normative grammar, which has the
longest tradition, as it arose in the mideighteenth century and still
dominates class room instruction. Its most significant contribution to
English grammatical theory was the syntactic system evolved in the
midnineteenth century.
The three types of scientific grammars of English discussed here have
not quite succeeded in creating any really independent or new
grammatical notions and systems. The interests of the scholars centered
found the grammatical system of prescriptive grammar. They either
elaborated it further (in classical scientific grammar) or refuted it,
retaining at the same time some of its ideas (in structural grammar) or
acknowledged its merits as an implicit transformational grammar and
reformulated its ideas (in transformational grammar).
Both modern schools of grammar show a marked tendency towards
morphological labelling of syntactic units, which may be viewed as a:
revival of the grammatical notions of the earliest grammars when the
syntactic system was practically non-existent.
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