Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Traditional grammar
By traditional grammar is usually meant the grammars written by classical Greek
scholars, the Roman grammars largely derived from the Greek, the speculative work of
the medievals, and the prescriptive approach of eighteenth-century grammarians
(Dinneen, 1967, p. 166; Allen and Widdowson, 1975, p. 47). Also, because many
grammars used in schools for both native- and foreign-language teaching take their
terminology from this tradition, the term also tends to be used to refer to the grammar
that people who have been taught grammar at school have learnt (Allan and Widdowson,
1975, p. 47). Dinneen (1967, p. 170) therefore lists as one of the possible virtues of
traditional grammar the fact that it is ‘the most wide-spread, influential, and bestunderstood
method of discussing Indo-European languages in the Western world’.
Palmer (1971, p. 41), however, is less optimistic, suggesting that many of the terms used
in traditional grammar are unintelligible to most people ‘though they may have some dim
recollection of them from their schooldays’.
Linguists tend to criticize traditional grammar for being based largely on intuitions
about grammatical meaning, for being atomistic and not backed by an overall theory or
model of grammar, for overemphasizing detail at the expense of attention to larger
patterns (Chomsky, 1964b, p. 918), and for being internally inconsistent yet prescriptive
or normative in nature, ignoring or classing as ungrammatical actual linguistic usage in
favour of prescriptive rules derived largely from Latin and Greek and the linguistic
categories appropriate to these languages—rules and categories which may not be
suitable to even all Indo-European languages, and certainly not to most non-Indo-
European Languages (Dineen, 1967, pp. 170–1; Allen and Widdowson, 1975, pp. 50–55).
However, while much of this criticism is well founded, it should not be forgotten that
a great deal of the grammatical terminology and many of the concepts used in linguistic
theory derive from traditional grammar, and that, ultimately, western linguistics derives
from the Greek preoccupation with language (see HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS for
information about other ancient analyses of language), although traditional school
grammar derives most directly from the adaptation of Greek grammar to Latin by
Priscian (sixth century).
Priscian’s work is divided into eighteen books. The first sixteen, which the medievals
called Priscianus major, deal with morphology, and the last two, Priscianus minor, deal
with syntax. Here, Priscian defined eight parts of speech:
1. The noun is a part of speech that assigns to each of its subjects, bodies, or things a
common or proper quality.
2. The verb is a part of speech with tenses and moods, but without case [the noun is
inflected for case], that signifies acting or being acted upon…
3. The participles are not explicitly defined, but it is stated that they should come in third
place rightfully, since they share case with the noun and voice and tense with the
verbs.