Traditional Grammar

Traditional Grammar is the speculative work of the medieval and the prescriptive approach of the
18th Century grammarians basically it refers back to the Aristotelian orientations towards the
nature of language as it is shown in the work of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Origin:

The very beginning of the twentieth century was typically marked by a new approach to grammar
as suggested by linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and American linguist like Frantz Boas,
Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. Their approach is called structuralism whose aim was to arouse a
reaction against the approach of the traditional grammarians. 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. It did have similar grammatical elements and Traditional
grammar is a term often uses to summarize the range of attitudes and methods found in the
period of grammatical study before the advent of linguistic science. If we study the form of
traditional grammar, the rules of classical languages were followed considering that English did
not have grammar of its own.

Traditional Grammar Essay Example

And English followed Latin grammar. Besides the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis
also makes use of numerous other categories, just like ‘number’, ‘gender’, ‘person’, ‘tense’ and
‘voice’. For example, gender was not natural. It was grammatical in traditional grammar. As we see
here “The man loves his bike”. Gender, in this example, is used for describing the agreement
between ‘man’ and ‘his’. In English, you need to describe this relationship in terms of natural
gender based upon a biological distinction between male and female. Such biological distinction is
different compared to the common distinction found in languages which employ grammatical
gender.

Prescriptive approaches of traditional grammar: Traditional grammar prescribes (prescriptive

means) what people should not to do with language. James D. Williams says “Traditional grammar
is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction between what some people do with language
and what they ought to do with it, according to a pre-established standard. . . . The chief goal of
traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a historical model of what supposedly constitutes
proper language.” (James D. Williams, The Teacher’s Grammar Book. Rutledge, 2005)

Some prescriptive Rules of English: Do not use double negation (e.g.”I didn’t know nothing” ) Do
not end a sentence with a preposition (e.g. “what is she talking about”) Do not use “who” in place
of home (e.g. “Who did you see?”) Do not misuse hopefully (e.g. “Hopefully he will arrive
tomorrow”) Do not split infinitives (e.g. “ … to boldly go where no man has gone before” )
Grammatical Categories: Grammatical Categories are shown bellow: How parts of speech is define
in traditional grammar Sentence analyzing sentence Clause Phrase

Limitations: 1. Traditional grammar has some limitations as it occurs with some static verbs that do
not occur in a progressive form, for instance “I am knowing” or in the imperative mood like
“Know!” Traditional grammar sometimes fails to account for certain things like ambiguous
sentences just like “While thinking about the queen the Honda hit the fence”. 2. In one respect
traditional grammar is a set of rules on which the English language is based on

Define of parts of speech in traditional grammar: Noun: Noun in traditional grammar is define as
person, place, thing or idea. For example: Jenifer and Hatirjheel, jenifer is a person therefore
jenifer is a noun and hatirjheel is a place therefore hatirjheel is a noun. Verb: The second parts of
speech is verb. Verbs traditionally are words that show action or state of being. For example:Mikel
eat bauble gum all the time.

John seemed happy in London.

Adjective: Another parts of speech is adjective. Adjectives are define as words that describe nouns
or pronouns. When they nouns or pronouns adjective directly answer the following question: what
kind, which one, and how many. For example: In the phrase “sweet girl” sweet is an adjective
describing the noun girl. Sweet answer the question which girl and what type of girl. Adverbs:
Adverbs are traditionally describe as words that describe verb, adjective or other adverb.

They answer the following question: how, when, where and why. For example: Mahadi speak
loudly. In this sentence the question is how did Mahadi speak and answer is loudly. Preposition:
Prepositions are words used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place, and
other connections involving actions and things. For example: My pen is on the table. In this
sentence ‘on’ is indicate a place. Pronoun: Pronouns are words used in place of noun phrases,
typically referring to people and things already known. For example: She talks to herself.
Conjunction: Conjunctions are words used to make connection and indicate relationship between
events. For example: Rita and Mita go to market. Article: Articles are words used with nouns to
form noun phrases classifying those ‘things’ or identifying them as already known. For example: I
will take the apple.

Traditional grammar define in a sentence: Traditional grammar declares that the sentence
structure can be shown by subject and predicate. In traditional grammar the analysis of a sentence
is a seperation of the sentence into its part. Sentence analysis summarizes exatly what traditional
grammar was the prescription of the various components with in a sentence. One of the most
important tools within sentence analysis was sentence parsing. Sentence parsing the process of
identifying various components within a sentence and then explaining what made somebody
decides to level the parts of speech. For example: “Polan was dismembered” in the sentence Polan
is a noun and it is the subject. And ‘was’ is a verb because it asserts an action.

Traditional grammar also led the foundation of the use of diagram in the leveling and dissecting a
sentence. Example: They/made/queen Victoria. The line that separate made from quean show
that quean belongs to the object. Made does not fully express the act perform upon Victoria. They
did not made Victoria but Queen Victoria. Queen helps made to express the act. And at the same
time denotes the office to which the act raised Victoria. These may help to understand the strange
order of the diagram sentence.