What is English Grammar? Definition of Grammar? What is Grammar?
Some Important Definitions of English Grammar by Famous Linguists are:
English grammar is a description of the usages of the English Language by good speakers and writers of the present day. (Whitney)
A description of account of the nature, build, constitution, or make of a language is called its grammar. (Meiklejohn)
Grammar teaches the laws of language, and the right method of using it in speaking and writing. (Patterson)
Grammar is the science of letter; hence the science of using words correctly. (Abbott)
The English word grammar relates only to the laws which govern the significant forms of words, and the construction of the sentence. (Richard Grant White)
Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the "rules" of a language; but in fact no language has rules. If we use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. Then what we call "grammar" is simply a reflection of a language at a particular time.
Do people need to study grammar to learn a language?
The short answer for this question is "People don't need". Many people in the world speak their own, native language without having studied its grammar. Children start to speak before they even know the word "grammar". But if you are serious about learning a foreign language, the long answer is "yes, grammar can help you to learn a language more quickly and more efficiently." It's important to think of grammar as something that can help us, like a friend. When we understand the grammar or system of a language, we can understand many things ourself, without having to ask a teacher or look in a book.
Grammar is a field of linguistics that involves all the various things that make up the rules of language. Subfields of linguistics that are considered a part of grammar include syntax, phonetics, morphology, and semantics.
Grammar is also used as a term to refer to the prescriptive rules of a given language, which may change over time or be open to debate.
Categories of Grammar
Grammar may be separated into two common broad categories: 1: Descriptive 2: Prescriptive
Both views of grammar are in wide use, although in general, linguists tend towards a descriptive approach to grammar, while people teaching a specific language – such as English – might tend towards a more prescriptive approach. Usually, there is a bit of give and take in any approach, with a prescriptivist being at least somewhat descriptive, and a descriptivist having some prescriptivist tendencies.
A Descriptive Grammar tries to look at the grammar of any spoken language or dialect as it actually exists, judging whether a sentence is grammatical or not based on the rules of the speech group in which it is spoken, rather than an arbitrary set of rules.
A Prescriptive Grammar looks at the norms of speech as given by authoritative sources, such as an upper-class or academic subculture, and creates strict rules by which all speech within that language must abide to be considered grammatical. Few linguists take a prescriptive approach to grammar in the modern age, preferring to describe language as it exists in a given speech community. Prescriptive grammar is also used to some extent in teaching a language to non-native speakers. When teaching English, for example, it can be useful to employ a “standard” form of English as a baseline to teach from, to help reduce confusion among students.
Thus think of grammar as something good, something positive, something that we can use to find our way - like a signpost or a map.


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