Traditional vs Modern Grammar

Traditional Grammar vs.

Modern Grammar

Presented to: Prof. Asif Ikram Sahib

Presented by: Khurram Piracha

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Difference between the animal communication

and Human communication

is

GRAMMAR

TWO MAJOR DIVISIONS

Traditional Grammar

Modern Grammar

INTRODUCTION TO TRADITIONAL

GRAMMAR

DEFINITION OF GRAMMAR Grammar is the set of structural rules

that govern the composition of clauses , phrases, and words in any given natural language.

Its most known approach is the traditional grammar

DEFINITION OF TRADITIONAL

GRAMMAR In linguistics, traditional grammar is a

framework for the description of the structure of language.

Many of those ideas & rules were based on Latin grammar. Latin was assumed as the respected scientific language in the 15th – 17th Centuries.

Its modern name is “Latin Oriented Model”

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR DEALS WITH

Traditional Grammar

morphology syntax semantics (More emphasis)

But excludes Phonology

BACKGROUND OF TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

The approach to language was developed through:

Ancient Greeks and Romans Aristotle (Poetics) & Plato(sentence structure ,

parts of speech) Middle Ages• Ideas about meanings from scholastic debates• Vernacular English 16th century• Chaucer gave a new dimension to language.

17th century(age of philosophical controversies b/w rationalists and imperialists)

• Ideas about relationship between language and mind

18th century • Ideas about correctness in language 19th century* Emphasis on comparative philogy(study

of words)

KEY CONCEPTS Traditional grammar distinguishes between the

grammar of the elements that constitute a sentence (i.e. inter-elemental) and the grammar within sentence elements (i.e. intra-elemental).

CONCEPTS OF INTER-ELEMENTAL GRAMMAR FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Subject Predicate Object Sentence Clause Phrase

INTERPRETATION OF INTER-ELEMENTAL GRAMMAR FOR

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Concepts of inter-elemental

grammar for the English language

Subject as head Predicate much like a verb phrase Object Denotes somebody’s involvement in

subject’s performance.

Sentence Contain functions & content words to

clarify meanings Clause is a pair of group of words that contain

sub+predicate Phrase  is a group of words functioning as a

single unit in the syntax of a sentence.

INTER-ELEMENTAL GRAMMAR               Phrase Clause

verb obj sub pred

took the train Jack took the train

CONCEPTS OF INTRA-ELEMENTAL GRAMMAR FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Nouns Verbs Pronouns Adjectives Adverbs Conjunctions Articles Prepositions Interjections

1.NOUN

is used to refer to people (boy), objects (bag), creatures (dog), places (school), qualities (honesty) , phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love).

2.Pronouns are words which used in place of noun phrases. Kinds of pronouns personal   (I, you, he, etc.) possessive  (my, mine, etc.) reflexive  (myself, himself etc.) relative  (who, which, that etc.) interrogative  (who, what, which etc.) demonstrative (this, that; e.g. Drink this.)

3.VERBS: Are used to refer to various kinds of actions (go,

run, talk) and states (be, have). Linking verbs:

* Links subjects to noun or an adjective in the predicate part of the sentence. e.g.

is, are, was, were, am, been, will…..

4.ADJECTIVES Are used to describe nouns and provide more information,

having degrees: Comparative (happier) Superlative (happiest)

5.Preposition Relates a noun to pronoun to another word in a

sentence,e.g: In, or, with, to, above etc.

•6.Article are words used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying and identifying them. This minute category contains only the definite article  (the) and the indefinite article (a, an).

7.Conjuctions Connects words and individual group of words. It indicates the relationships between eventse.g: and, but, neither-nor, either-or, that, etc.

8.ADVERBS Are typically used with verbs, to provide more

information about action, states and events Adverbs of time: yesterday Adverbs of manner: roughly, gently Adverbs of place: upward, downstairs

9.Interjection Words or phrases used to express strong emotions or

surprises. e.g. Wow!, Alas!, Hurrah! etc.

CONCLUSION

Traditional English grammar is largely based on Latin grammar, not on current linguistics research.

 Traditional grammarians considered Latin as their model because English is a part of the Indo-European family of languages, and to which Latin and Greek also belong having similar grammatical elements.

It distinguishes rational, emotional, and conventional types of discourse in theory, if not in grammatical practice.

CONCLUSION

Through It, ordinary students and scholars have mastered many languages successfully for centuries.

LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES OF

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

EMPHASIS

CORRECTNESSLINGUISTIC PURISM

LITERARY EXCELLENCE

InadequateFull of short comings

Mainly based on Latin and Greek

It does not distinguish between all the linguistic levels –

Phonetic: The articulation and perception of speech sounds

Descriptive:

Rules are illogicalUnable to differentiate between The girl is weeping & The weeping girl Disadvantages of grammar rules Memory Time Inconsistent Neglects functional and social varieties of

languages

Gives priority to the written forms of the language

Ignores the spoken-form

Ignores the fact of change in language

It cannot resolve the ambiguity existing in the grammatical forms.

Examples: He loves her more than you. The lady hit the man with an umbrella. He gave her cat food.

Methods are inadequate, incomplete and inconsistent.

CONCLUSION

Despite the fact that traditional grammar has limitations and weaknesses, T.G is still a crucial unit of English language.

Thus there is no need for whole scale change, it surely needs to be mended rather than ended.

AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN GRAMMAR

TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR

Deep structure and surface structure

In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structure.

Development of basic concepts

Deep Structure and Surface Structure

(LF — Logical Form, and PF — Phonetic Form)

Innate linguistic knowledge A generative grammar models only

the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand.

Most of this knowledge is innate.

Grammatical theories The distinction between competence and

performance The evaluation of theories of grammarI language & E language In 1986, Chomsky proposed a distinction

between I-Language and E-Language I-Language is taken to be the object of

study in linguistic theory E-Language encompasses all other

notions of what a language is

Grammaticality Chomsky argued that the notions

"grammatical“ and "ungrammatical" could be defined in a meaningful and useful way

Minimalism Economy of derivation is a principle

stating that movements (i.e., transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features.

Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose.

Transformations The usual usage of the term

'transformation' in linguistics refers to a rule that takes an input typically called the Deep Structure (in the Standard Theory) or D-structure (in the extended standard theory or government and binding theory) and changes it in some restricted way to result in a Surface Structure (or S-structure). In TGG, Deep structures were generated by a set of phrase structure rules.

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR VS MODERN GRAMMAR

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR VS MODERN GRAMMARTraditional grammar

prescriptive Focus on written form

Scientific

Modern

grammar Descriptive Focus on spoken form Unscientific

Accuracy linguistic competence limited Scope

Fluency Communicative

competence broader Scope

Prescriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a

language, as certain people think it should be used.

Descriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a language

as it is actually used by speakers and writers.

EXAMPLES OF T.G & M.G

Perspective Descriptive

I don’t have none I don’t have any

You was wrong You were wrong

Sana is fatter than me Sana is fatter than I

Focus on written form

Scientific It follows

the rigidity of rules and regulations. It is formed by the grammarians.

Limited scope

Focus on spoken form

Unscientific It is flexible,

easily changed by native speaker.

Broader scope

Accuracy is emphasized more than fluency.

They said that their should be accuracy rather than fluency.

Fluency in modern grammar fluency is

emphasized and they think that weather student do mistakes while speaking but he should be fluent.

Linguistic competence

is the spontaneous, flexible and correct manipulations of the language system. without linguistics competence, there is no communicative competence.

Communicative competence It involves principles of

appropriateness and a readiness on the part of learner to use relevant strategies in coping with certain language situations.

CONCLUSION There is a school of thought however

that differentiates between traditional and modern grammar. While traditional grammar is static and does not change, modern grammar is the amorphous, fluid shifting of the rules of grammar over time.