WHAT IS GRAMMAR?
“Grammar,” Henry Fowler wrote in his soon-to-be famous, 1926, Dictionary of Modern English Usage, is “a poor despised branch of learning.” Well maybe he was a bit grumpy that day.
To the rest of us, grammar is a branch of linguistics (the study of language) that deals with the form and the structure of words. It is an attempt to make clear what the skilled writer and speaker of English does by instinct. When people are said to have “good” or “bad” grammar, the understanding is that they choose to obey or ignore the rules of accepted usage associated with their language whether it is English or Japanese.
Grammar is one of the oldest fields of study, as well as one of the most durable. Even Plato can be labeled as an early grammarian (a person who studies grammar), because he was responsible for dividing the sentence into subject and verb, a division still exists today!
WHAT IS USAGE?
Usage is the normal way we use language in speaking and writing. Because we use language for different purposes, there are various levels of usage. The following table lists the “big three”.
LEVEL OF USAGE | EXAMPLES |
| 1. Standard English: formal usage | They have done nothing. |
| 2. Standard English: informal (conversational) usage | They’ve done nothing. |
| 3. Nonstandard (“Friendly-speak”) usage | Dey ain’t done nothin’. |
LEVEL OF USAGE
- Standard English (formal usage) – “They have done nothing.”
- Standard English (informal (conversational) usage) – “They’ve done nothing.”
- Non-Standard (“Friendly-speak”) usage – “Dey ain’t done notin’.”
The main difference between Standard English and non-Standard English (“Friendly-speak”) appears in the use of pronouns and certain verb forms. For example, where a speaker in Standard English would use brought, a speaker of nonstandard English would use brung. There are also several words and expressions that are considered nonstandard, such as slang words.
LEVEL OF USAGE
- Standard English (formal usage) – “They have done nothing.”
- Standard English (informal (conversational) usage) – “They’ve done nothing.”
- Non-Standard (“Friendly-speak”) usage – “Dey ain’t done notin’.”
The main difference between Standard English and non-Standard English (“Friendly-speak”) appears in the use of pronouns and certain verb forms. For example, where a speaker in Standard English would use "brought", a speaker of nonstandard English would use "brung". There are also several words and expressions that are considered nonstandard, such as slang words.
DECIDING WHICH GRAMMAR TO LEARN
Which grammar? Does that mean that there is more than one? Yes, indeed there are several different types of grammar, including historical (how language has changed through the centuries) and comparative (comparing languages). But don’t worry too much. Here we I will only be interested in two types of grammar: the two you have to know in order to improve your speech and writing.
Descriptive English grammar gives names to things: the parts of speech and the parts of a sentence. When you learn descriptive grammar, you understand what every word is (its part of speech) and what every word does (its function in the sentence). If a person is not careful, however, descriptive grammar can go overboard fast and you can end up saying things like “balloon is the object of the gerund, in a gerund phrase that is acting as the predicate nominative of the linking verb ‘appear’.” Don’t worry because we will not go into that level of terminology; besides, I’m not quite sure what that all means anyway. There is, however, one important reason to learn some English grammar terms and that is to understand why a particular word or phrase is correct or incorrect.
Functional grammar makes up most of what we will learn. Functional English grammar tells you how words behave when they are doing their jobs properly. Functional grammar guides you to the right expression; that is, the one that fits what you are trying to say, by insuring that the sentence is put together correctly. When you are agonizing over whether to say I or me, you are actually solving a problem of functional grammar. So in order to be successful in our study of English grammar, we will use this formula: a little descriptive grammar + a lot of functional grammar = better grammar overall.
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