A grammar is an explicit or implicit set/system of organizational rules governing some system of signs (see semiotics), for example a cultural code, a language, or a logical system. In particular, a grammar should help distinguish well-formed or meaningful expressions. Regarding that the meaning of a sign is part of the system, grammars in general may contain rules concerning or depending on semantics, though sometimes one restricts grammar to form.
It is widely believed that advanced cognition itself includes intermediate representations which is symbolic and uses intermediate signs and their grammar. Patterns like analogies which contain placeholders to fill can also be viewed as part of grammar.
Vocabulary (the list of signs) itself is usually, from the point of view of a grammar, considered as an open class (that is, they can in principle be extended) hence it is not viewed as a part of a grammar, except for a special reserved signs (for example auxiliary verbs in a language grammar) which are typically viewed within closed classes (the lists which are considered exhaustive).
In linguistics, a descriptive grammar is an explicit grammar of some language/idiom. That is not the natural grammar itself but the scientific account of it (for example, Panini’s grammar of Sanskrit which is a particular record writen in verse). A prescriptive grammar is an explicit set of rules of advices how to attain to some norm of a language. Linguists consider prescriptive grammars political or social construct rather than linguistical (scientific) though they may include the research into tradition and norm and some experience with socially popular practice. In ideal, a descriptive grammar should include information on variation, but often does not and is received often as prescriptive. A scientifically sound descriptive ground should never hesitate to include phrases/idioms which look as lacking some logics, if they are not etymologically sound or not confirming to some general rules (or its original usage in history) if such idioms indeed appear often in practice (for example usage of double negation meaning single negation etc.).
Notable modern theories of grammar in linguistics include generative grammar, transformational grammar, cognitive grammar, functional grammar, generative semantics etc.
David Mumford, Grammar isn’t merely part of language, 2016 blog
wikipedia generative grammar, dependency grammar, transformational grammar, cognitive grammar, functional discourse grammar
Generative semantics in linguistics has the basic thesis that the computation of syntactic structures is driven by the semantic meaning of constituents
Last revised on December 23, 2022 at 17:53:52. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.