DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

Assignment

On

“Limitations of Traditional

Grammar”

Presented to: Muhammad Irfan Lodhi(Visiting Faculty)

Submitted by: Muhammad Asif Saleem.

Class: M. Phil. (Linguistics)

Roll No. 20

Session: 2008-10.

Department of LinguisticsThe Islamia University of Bahawalpur

Limitations of Traditional Grammar

What is traditional Grammar?

Traditional Grammar is the speculative work of the medieval and the

prescriptive approach of the 18th Century grammarians basically it refer back to the

Aristotelian orientations towards the nature of language as it is shown in the work of the

ancient Greeks and Romans. There are ideas about sentence structure deriving form

Aristotle and Plato ideas about the parts of speech deriving from the socio-grammarians.

Limitations of traditional Grammar.

1. In one respect traditional grammar is a set of rules on which the English

language is based on the other hand it is a pile of an inappropriate rules and

short coming because if this type of grammar was perfect and appropriate

then there would be no need for so many models of modern grammar.

2. Traditional Grammar is basically structured on indo-European classical

languages. So, it is a poor model for the grammars of languages that differ

from Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.

3. It does not discern between all linguistic level such as phonetic, morphology,

syntactic and semantic.

4. In its essence it is normative and prescriptive rather than explicit and

descriptive. As Frank Palmer says “most of the rules of grammar have no real

justification and there is no serious reason condemning the errors they

prescribe. What is correct and what is not correct is ultimately only a matter of

what is accepted by society, for language is a matter of conventions with in

society. If every one says, “It is me” then surely “it is me” is correct English

its rules are not rational, it is inconsistent and in adequate as description of

actual language in use.

5. It rejects not only the contemporary usage but also the functional and social

varieties of Language.

6. In its approach it is diachronic (Historical) rather than synchronic. It tries to

incorporate a living language like a dead one. Fries in his book, “the structure

of English” challenges traditional grammar by the calling them not insightful,

pre-scientific, prescriptive and having a literary bias.

7. There may be about two hundred definitions of the sentence, yet they are not

able to differentiate between.

The girl is weeping.

The weeping girl.

According to rules of the traditional grammar “noun” is the name of a person,

place or thing yet it can not include pink, blue and purple in the list of nouns

although there are the names of color.

8. It is also noticed that traditional grammar gives importance to the written form

of language and it rejects the facts that spoken form is prior to the written

form. On the other hand it does not cover even the whole range of the written

language but it is bound to specific kinds of writing, the more formal styles, in

particular it gives a general conception of the nature of language in essentially

aesthetic terms.

9. Traditional Grammar uses meaning as the primary tool of linguistic analysis.

Total meaning of a language utterance can not be analyzed in the present stage

of our knowledge. Meaning is a complex entity to understand of which a

forma description of language should form the base. Similarly it is going to

treat because there is a various categories of meaning there are two major

types of meaning (1) Social Meaning (2) Linguistic Meaning and Linguistic

meaning is divided into tow sub-categories (1) Lexical meaning (2) Structural

meaning similarly lexical meaning is divided into three sub-divisions(1)

notional meaning (2) referent ional meaning (3) contextual meaning.

How did language arise in the first place?

There are many questions such like but TG has not an adequate notion of a

linguistic rule. It appeals only to intuition. The rules are not adequate and whole some

the learner has to use his own common sense or judgment in matters of unstated rules.

This grammar concentrates on giving rules and defining terms but its rules and

definitions are even not satisfactory and they are not scientifically sound. John Lyons

says, “The Traditional Grammarian tended to assume, not only that the written

language was more fundamental that the spoken, but also that a particular form of the

written language, namely the literary language was inherently purer and more correct

that all other forms of the language written and spoken, and that it was his task, as a

grammarian, to preserve this form of the language from corruption”. ( An

introduction to theoretical linguistics).

In its approach traditional grammar shows itself as God given, neat, Holy

and does not allow the consideration for language change and ignores the fact that

grammar of language show also change as the language changes.

Conclusion.

Despite the fact that traditional grammar is informal, unscientific full of

contradictions and inconsistencies, inexplicit, inadequate, and prescriptive

uneconomical and unwholesome and it ignores spoken language, language change,

contemporary usage and all the varieties of language. T is still crucial unit of English

language. It is not in so much what traditional grammar actually tells us about

language that is the real worrying factor as what it does not tell us. Thus there is no

need for whole scale change, it surely needs to be mended rather than ended. This is

what palmer has to say in his book “Grammar”. “Provided we are aware of the

problem, we can use the traditional parts of speech and their terminology as the basis

for word classification.”

References

1. Frank Palmer (Grammar)

2. John Lyons (introduction to the theoretical linguistics).

3. Fries ( the Structure of English)