What is English Grammar?

INTRODUCTION.

Many notable writers have expressed various opinions on English grammar, such as the following—

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

These are sufficient to suggest several distinct notions about English grammar—

Synopsis of the above.

(1) It makes rules to tell us how to use words.

(2) It is a record of usage which we ought to follow.

(3) It is concerned with the forms of the language.

(4) English has no grammar in the sense of forms, or inflections, but takes account merely of the nature and the uses of words in sentences.

What grammar is

Coming back, then, from the question, What ground should grammar cover? we come to answer the question, What should grammar teach? and we give as an answer the definition—

English grammar is the science which treats of the nature of words, their forms, and their uses and relations in the sentence.

All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection.

Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea.

There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common Nouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as man, city. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as John, Philadelphia. In the former case man is a name which belongs in common to the whole race of mankind, and city is also a name which is common to all large centres of population, but John signifies a particular individual of the race, while Philadelphia denotes a particular one from among the cities of the world.