This document summarizes the history and key concepts of traditional grammar. It discusses how traditional grammar was influenced by ancient Greek and Roman scholars like Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. It also describes how traditional grammar was later developed by scholars in Latin, Sanskrit, and other languages. Traditional grammar focuses on prescriptive rules and the parts of speech, and views written language as purer than spoken forms.
1. UNIVERSITY OF CARABOBO
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
MODERN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND GRAMMAR
PEDAGOGICAL GRAMMAR
Barbula, January 21st, 2012
2. All the languages comes from Romans and Greeks.
The Traditional Grammar has a long tradition with it.
There are ideas about:
• New genders (Protagoras)
• Sentence structure ( Aristotle and Plato)
• The parts of speech ( The Stoic grammarians)
• Scholastic study of Latin Grammar (Middle Ages)
• Discovery of Sanskrit grammar (XVIII Century)
• Inner and outer form (Humboldt)
3. PROTAGORAS (fifth-century)
It is credited with the distinction of the three genders in Greek.
(Masculine, feminine and things).
PLATO (c.429-437 B.C.)
His contribution was the distinction between nouns and verbs.
Onoma: noun, it can mean subject, nominal name.
Rhema: verb, it can mean verb, predicate. This includes verbs
and also adjectives, but Plato did not call it adjectives.
Onoma and Rhema are the constituents of the logos (sentence)
4. ARISTOTLE (322-384)
His contributions were :
He kept the Platonic distinction between nouns and verbs.
He added a further distinctic class ( The conjunctions)
Recognition of the category of tense in the Greek verb. ( The
systematic variations in forms of the verb could be correlated
with such temporal notions (present and past).
Stoics gave the most attention to the language.
Stoics: distinction between form and meaning.
They contributed with four parts of speech:
•Noun
•Verb
•Conjunction
•Article
5. DIONYSIUS THRAX (late second century B.C)
To Dionysius deal with the language of the previous era was
something that he thought was important.
His method has two steps:
•Phonology
•Morphology (no syntax)
He contributed with four more parts of speech to the list of four
of the Stoic:
•Adverbs
•Participle
•Pronoun
•Preposition
6. The first Latin Grammar was written by VARRO (1166- 27 B.C.)
His distinctions between derivation and inflection.
Varro set up the following system of our inflectionally contrasting
classes:
• Those with case inflection (nouns including adjectives)
• Those with tense inflection (verbs)
• Those with case and tense inflection (participles)
• Those with neither (adverb)
PRISCIAN (C. A.D.500)
His contribution was to transfer as far as he could the
grammatical system of Thrax’s grammar, as well as the writings of
Apollonius, to Latin.
The omission of the article and the inclusion of the interjection.
7. Sanskrit is the ancient sacred language of India. It is believed to
be the oldest language of the world.
William Jones, a British judge and Orientals, noted that Sanskrit
possessed vocabulary and grammatical structures very similar to
many other languages, including Greek, Latin, and even English.
Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European language family.
A Hindu Indian grammarian by the name of Pāṇini recorded rules
of Sanskrit grammar.
8. (HUMBOLT 1767-1835)
Inner form: The inner form of a word would be more precisely
defined as the semantic or structural correlation of the lexical or
grammatical morpheme of a word with other morphemes of the
particular language that may occur in the mind of a speaker when
analyzing the structure of that word.
Outer form: (“the expression that language creates for
thinking”)
Taken together, the inner and outer forms constitute the form of
language.
9. To establish for the language a position
To establish rules
To devise methods
To organize
To perpetuate a historical model
10. Based on theoretical and Philosophical issues
Traditional grammar is prescriptive
The study is for pedagogical purposes
13. middleterm
major premise
All men
Majorterm
are mortals
minorterm
minor premise
and all Greeks
are men
middleterm
conclusion
then all Greeks are mortals.
15. The divine comedy.
The Arabian nights.
Poetics.
The Iliad.
The Odyssey.
16. Epic poem
During the Trojan War
quarrel between
king Agamemnon and
The warrior Achiles
The siege
17. Major ancient Greek
a sequel of the Iliad
The Hero Oddysseus
Journey
Penelope and son
The Mnesteres or Proci
18. AUTHORITY CRITERION
(Reflected in presciptive
feature)
Prescription
Judgmnent
Speech
community
Witter or
proffessor
Dictionary
makers
Prescriptive
authority
Community
Large
26. THE BOOK THAT JOHN LENT ME IS INTERESTING.
1.- Grammatical Analysis
2.- Logical Analysis
27. Based on rules & principles.
Inductive approach (example rule exercise).
Written language prior to spoken language.
Synchronic (the study of language at a given point
in time).
28. The parts of speech (verb, noun, pronoun, adjective,
adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection).
Description of grammatical rules.
Historical linguistics (how language changes).
Metalanguage (use of italics, symbols; !” &¿?, words in bold
in order to describe or analyze language).
29. Prescriptivism (what is socially & politically correct).
Classical fallacy (error in reasoning, vagueness).
Exercises out of context.
Focus on written language, not the spoken one.
focus on orthography, not in sentence constructions.
Predominance of morphology rather than syntax.
30. Mary who is my sister is a teacher
•Grammatical Analysis:
Mary: proper noun, feminine, subject of the verb “be”
Who: relative pronoun
Is: verb to be, 3rd person singular
My: possessive, 1st person
Sister: common noun, singular
Is: verb to be, 3rd person
A: indefinite article
Teacher: common noun, singular
•Logical analysis:
Mary is a teacher: main clause
Who is my sister: subordinate clause
