Introduction

Language is like the weather: we are so immersed in it that we are not easily able to see how it is patterned. It rains today or it’s sunny tomorrow, but the regularities that underpin these processes are hidden from us. So it is with language. A grammar is an attempt to capture the regularities of language. But because language – like weather – is a synthesis of so many elements, grammars can take different forms, depending on the vantage point. This unit reviews some of the main ways of looking at language.

Tasks

1 Grammar

Here are some definitions of grammar. What similarities and differences do you note? Which of these definitions best captures the needs of the second language teacher?

• a The identification of systematic regularities in language.

• b Grammar studies language as a system of means of expression.

• c What grammar does is this: it treats of the language generally, its sounds, letters and words; it supplies us with a number of rules for the correct way of using the language, and it examines why certain ways of using the language are right, and certain others are wrong, not merely stating rules, but adding reasons.

• d Grammar is the study of the way words, and their component parts, combine to form sentences.

• f Grammar is the process by which language is organized and patterned in order to make meaning.

• g In a narrow sense this refers to the structure of sentences, but in a broad sense it includes everything to do with the structure of language.

• h Grammar is essentially a limited set of devices for expressing certain kinds of necessary meaning that cannot be conveyed by vocabulary alone.

• i A grammar is […] the finite system that characterizes an individual’s linguistic capacity and is represented in the individual’s mind/brain.

2 Views of grammar

Here are some teachers of English offering their opinions on grammar. In each case, what ‘view’ of grammar do their statements seem to express?

• a Grammar IS very important, because it helps people to use a language much more correctly.

• b Let’s teach the importance of using words to form sentences, rather than grammar itself as some kind of mathematical equation.