Traditional Grammar vs.

Modern Grammar
Presented to:

Prof. Asif Ikram Sahib

Presented by: Khurram

Piracha

Difference between the animal communication and Human communication is

GRAMMAR

Traditional
Modern

Grammar

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

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

morphology
But

syntax
(More emphasis)

semantics

excludes Phonology

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

of philosophical controversies b/w rationalists and imperialists) Ideas about relationship between language and mind 18th century

century(age

Ideas about correctness in language

19th

century

* Emphasis on comparative philogy(study of words)

 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).

 Subject Predicate Object Sentence Clause Phrase

 Concepts

of inter-elemental grammar for the English language

Subject

as head Predicate much like a verb phrase Object Denotes somebodys involvement in subjects 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.

Phrase
verb obj train

Clause
sub Jack pred took the train

took the

 Nouns Verbs Pronouns

Adjectives
Adverbs Conjunctions Articles Prepositions Interjections

 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.)

 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..

 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 events e.g: and, but, neither-nor, either-or, that, etc.

 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.

 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 IndoEuropean 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.

 Through

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

Inadequate
Full

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 illogical Unable 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 spokenform

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.

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.

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) A generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand. Most of this knowledge is innate.

Innate linguistic knowledge

Grammatical theories
The distinction between competence and performance The evaluation of theories of grammar

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

Economy

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
prescriptive

Modern

grammar
Descriptive

Focus

on written form Scientific

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. Grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers.

Descriptive

Perspective

Descriptive I dont have any You were wrong

I dont have none You was wrong

Sana is fatter than me

Sana is fatter than I

 Focus

on written

Focus

on spoken

form
Scientific

form
Unscientific

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

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.

 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.