"The grammar of a natural language is its set of structural rules on speakers' or writers' usage and creation of clauses, phrases, and words."
The study of the rules governing the use of language, including syntax, punctuation, and spelling.
Parts of Speech: The eight parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections. Understanding their function is crucial to understanding grammar.
Sentence Types: The four basic sentence types are declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory. Familiarizing oneself with these types helps in constructing sentences and conveying meaning.
Subject and Predicate: A sentence is made up of a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a predicate (what the subject does or is).
Singular and Plural: Understanding the difference between singular and plural forms helps in forming proper sentences and agreement among words.
Tenses: The three main tenses are past, present, and future. Knowledge of these tenses is important in correct sentence construction and understanding.
Active and Passive Voice: The active voice portrays the subject as the doer of the action, while the passive voice portrays the subject as the receiver of the action. Knowing when and how to use each is important in effective writing.
Punctuation: Correct use of punctuation marks, such as commas, periods, question marks, and exclamation points, helps in conveying meaning and structure in writing.
Articles and Determiners: Articles (a, an, the) and determiners (this, that, these, those) help to specify and point out things and ideas.
Capitalization: Proper capitalization in proper nouns and titles is important in conveying meaning and clarity in writing.
Phrases and Clauses: A phrase is a group of words that function as a unit within a sentence, while a clause is a group of words that contain a subject and a verb. Understanding these structures is important in sentence construction and comprehension.
Generative grammar: This grammar involves a set of rules to generate all possible sentences in a language.
Transformational grammar: This grammar involves a set of rules to transform sentences from one form to another.
Descriptive grammar: This grammar is concerned with describing the way language is used by native speakers, without making any judgments about what is "correct" or "incorrect.".
Prescriptive grammar: This grammar is concerned with prescribing rules for what is considered "correct" grammar and usage.
Structural grammar: This grammar focuses on the structural components of language, such as clauses, phrases, and words.
Functional grammar: This grammar focuses on the purposes that language serves, such as how it is used to convey information, make requests, or express emotions.
Cognitive grammar: This grammar is concerned with the ways in which language reflects human thought processes and conceptual categories.
Transformational-generative grammar: This grammar combines generative and transformational grammar to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how language is generated and transformed.
"The term can also refer to the study of such rules, a subject that includes phonology, morphology, and syntax, together with phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics."
"The vast majority of which – at least in the case of one's native language(s) – are acquired not by intentional study or instruction but by hearing other speakers."
"Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning a language later in life usually involves more direct instruction."
"The term 'English grammar' could refer to the whole of English grammar (that is, to the grammar of all the language’s speakers) in which case it covers lots of variation."
"At a smaller scale, it may refer only to what is shared among the grammars of all or most English speakers (such as subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences)."
"A reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a 'reference grammar' or simply 'a grammar.'"
"A fully revealed grammar, which describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech type in great detail is called descriptive grammar."
"This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription, a plan to actively ban, or lessen the use of, some constructions while popularizing and starting others."
"Some pedants insist that sentences in English should not end with prepositions."
"His unjustified rejection of the practice may have led other English speakers to avoid it and discourage its use."
"Yet ending sentences with a preposition has a long history in Germanic languages like English, where it is so widespread that it is the norm."
"It may be used more widely to include rules of spelling and punctuation, which linguists would not typically consider as part of grammar but rather of orthography, the conventions used for writing a language."
"It may also be used more narrowly to refer to a set of prescriptive norms only, excluding the aspects of a language's grammar which do not change or are clearly acceptable (or not) without the need for discussions."
"Jeremy Butterfield claimed that, for non-linguists, 'Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to'."