What is Grammar? Different types of Grammar

1. WHAT IS GRAMMAR?
Aslıgül KÖYÜK
Hacettepe University

2.  The definion of Grammar
 Descriptive Grammar
 Prescriptive Grammar
 Descriptive Grammar vs Prescriptive Grammar
 Universal Grammar
 Traditional Grammar
 Learning Grammar… Do I have to?
 The Relationship between Grammar
and Language Learning

3. WHAT IS GRAMMAR?
 It is the knowledge speakers have about the units
and rules of their language.
 A set of rules which help us to create clauses,
phrases and words in any language.
 Basically, explicit rules dealing with word and
sentence structure in language.
 The rules can include phonetics and phonology,
morphology, syntax and sometimes semantics and
pragmatics.

4. DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
 The kind of grammar that tells you not how you
should speak; but how you speak and your basic
linguistic knowledge.
 It tells you what you know about the sounds, words,
phrases and sentences of your language.
 It has no evaluation. (non-judgmental )
 Descriptive Grammar’s rules are more basic and
general than prescriptive ones.

5. PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
 It came up with Renaissence.
 Main aim: not to describe the rules people know;
but to tell them what rules they should follow.
 These rules are set and tell us how we should
speak or write.
 Contrary to descriptive grammar, it has evaluation.
It gives judgments on which structures are correct
or incorrect.
 Such rules are;
I didn’t see anybody. ( + )
I didn’t see nobody. ( - )

7. UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
 Linguistic ability springs itself without being taught.
 There are properties that all languages share
common.
 To determine what abilities are innate and what
properties are shared by all languages, the linguist
observes and experiments.

8.  Chomsky says just
because human beings
have undergone
evaluation and
been created by nature,
Universal Grammar is a
biological trait; so
common to all humans.

9. TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR
 Traditional Grammar is the framework for the
description of the structure of a language.
 It is the definition of the best and most correct
structures to be used.
 It is mostly used in language education.

10. LEARNING GRAMMAR.. DO I HAVE TO?
 Grammar is important because thanks to it, it is
possible for us to talk about language.
 Knowing grammar offers a window into the human
mind and it’s mental capacity.
 For communication, all kinds of texts ( does not
matter whether it is formal or not ), we use
language.
 To understand others and to be understood by
them, we create endless sentences with the rules of
grammar.

11. GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
 The common thing is all languages have their own
grammar structures.
 For speaking any language, we should be able to
create sentences; to create sentences, we must
know grammar rules.
 At beginning stages of language learning, it starts
with basic words and basic grammar rules. It is the
root of language.
 Example:
*She, ill, go, school, today. ( ??? )
*She is ill; that’s why she couldn’t go to school
today.

13. REFERENCES
 http://www.lingholic.com/important-grammar-
language-learning/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_grammar
 http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/gramma
rvalue.htm
 http://www.ingilizcealanbilgisi.com/oabt/descriptive-
grammar-vs-prescriptive-grammar/
 http://amyrey.web.unc.edu/classes/ling-101-
online/tutorials/understanding-prescriptive-vs-
descriptive-grammar/