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1 results

  • 2 - What Is Grammar?

  • Roger Berry, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
  • Book:
    Doing English Grammar
    Published online:
    02 March 2021
    Print publication:
    11 March 2021, pp 17-42

  • 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.