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2 - What Is Grammar?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2021

Roger Berry
Roger Berry
Affiliation:
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
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Summary

This chapter deals with a number of basic issues to do with grammar: its scope (which has changed over the centuries), its definition and its relationship to the concept of meaning, the strategies that languages employ in order to express grammatical meaning (e.g. vary the word order), and important distinctions between approaches to it (primary vs secondary, descriptive vs prescriptive, and scientific vs pedagogic). It then focuses on pedagogic grammar and argues that it should be seen primarily as a process, consisting of inputs, a pedagogic filter and outputs. Regarding inputs it discusses the relative value of various theories of grammar, in particular modern traditional grammar; it also puts the case for the inclusion of contrastive and historical information where appropriate.

Keywords

Keywords: defining grammarpedagogic grammargrammatical theories
Type
Chapter
Information
Doing English Grammar
Theory, Description and Practice
 , pp. 17 - 42
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Bauer, Winifred. 1998. Some languages have no grammar. In Bauer, Laurie and Trudgill, Peter (eds) Language Myths. London: Penguin, 77–84.Google Scholar
Berry, Roger. 1998. Determiners: a class apart. English Today 53: 27–34.Google Scholar
Berry, Roger. 1999. The seven sins of pedagogic grammar. In Berry, Roger, Asker, Barry, Hyland, Ken and Lam, Martha (eds) Language Analysis, Description and Pedagogy. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 29–40.Google Scholar
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  • What Is Grammar?
  • Roger Berry, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
  • Book: Doing English Grammar
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108325745.004
Available formats
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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • What Is Grammar?
  • Roger Berry, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
  • Book: Doing English Grammar
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108325745.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • What Is Grammar?
  • Roger Berry, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
  • Book: Doing English Grammar
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108325745.004
Available formats
×