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The Development of the English Grammatical Theory

The first attempts to describe the grammatical system of the English language

 

The first attempts to describe the English language were made by Alfric (955 – 1020). He wrote Colloquy which was a series of dialogues of daily speech of boys at the monastic schools. It was just designed to instruct the scholars in the daily speech of monastery. Besides he wrote a Latin Grammar with some comments written in OE in it. He translated Latin terms by means of loans. We don’t know whether there were any other important attempts; we find some commentaries, some glossaries, but we don’t find any comprehensive book, any comprehensive work which can be considered a grammar.

Prenormative grammars (16 – 18 centuries)

Grammars in the true sense of the word began to appear in the 16th century. We refer to them as prenormative grammars, because their aim was just to describe, to register the grammatical system of the language of that time.

William Bullocar

One of the first most comprehensive grammars of that period was written by William Bullocar in the end of the 16th century. Before William Bullocar published his grammar William Lily published a Latin Grammar in the first half of the 16th century. It is one of the first complete grammars of a certain language in England/in English. Lily set a certain pattern, standard of arranging the material, he was the forerunner of the many grammars that appeared later. He used the same terminology that was used in Latin but at the same time he saw something in English that wasn’t like in Latin (the use of the auxiliaries, he called them “signs”).

Bullocar’s grammar was called “Brief grammar for English”. Bullocar used Lily’s scheme but he didn’t imitate it. In Bullocar’s Grammar we find 5 cases for the noun instead of 6 cases. He divided all the parts of the speech into declinable and indeclinable.

Other grammars which appeared later are grammars written by Johnson, Butler and Wallis. They considered the existence of case. Johnson and Butler in their grammars discovered only two cases. As to Wallis he wrote his English grammar in Latin “Grammatica linguae anglicanae (the 17th c). In this grammar we see that he had his own look at the EL of that period. He thought that case is non-existent. Besides he studied word groups in detail: the relationship between different parts of the sentence. As to the idea of the possessive case of the noun he considered it to be not a case but sort of a possessive adjective. Wallis was one of the first who formulated the new rule of the formation of Future.

Brightlandwas one of the first who introduced the idea of sentence. Considering the structure of the sentence he was one of the first who distinguished between a simple and a compound sentence.

The 18th c is the end of the prenormative grammar. Then begins the era of the prescriptive or normative grammars (the middle of the 18th century – up to now).

Prescriptive or normative grammars (the middle of the 18th c – up to now)



As it is clear from the names the main difference between grammars of the prenormative and normative periods was that the grammars of the prenormative period just described the grammatical phenomena of the language as they were and the grammars of the prescriptive/normative period described, prescribed and proscribed. They gave recommendations what to use and how to use, and what not to use.

Some of the objections were based on usage but on some logical grounds. Sometimes the usage that they objected to went out of the use, but some of the forms still exist. But we should pay tribute to their attempts, they were very particular about the correctness of the language. They went so far as to criticize some mistakes which were to be found in some official speeches even king’s speeches. For instance in Cobbit’s grammar (the 19th century) we find sort of an assignment to point out errors and nonsense of king’s speech and in Coold Brown’s grammar (in the 19th century) there’s an assignment to point out blunders in the works of other grammarians both predecessors and contemporaries.

The grammarians of the prenormative and normative periods continued to argue about the number of cases in the EL Their ideas varied from 2 to 3, 4, 5.

As far as the tenses were concerned all the rules that formulated the use and the formation of the new analytical tenses were worked out in those grammars.

Much was done in working out sentence analysis. In the previous period of the prenormative grammars they didn’t write much about the sentence; the main material was devoted to the description of morphological forms and word combinations, to developing the theory of the sentence. In the prenormative and normative periods the structure of a simple or a compound sentence was described in detail. Later the distinction between a compound and a composite sentence was introduced and still later the grammarian of the beginning of the 20th c (Poutsma) introduced the term “the composite sentence” which is universal now.

In sentence analysis some grammarians paid much attention to the hierarchy of the sentence and they came to the conclusion that there are different levels in the structure of the sentence. They also introduced the idea of expansion and singled out two operations in English – enlargement (ðàñøèðåíèå) and extention (ðàñïðîñòðàíåíèå). By enlargement they meant an attribute added to the subject or object. And by extention they meant adverbial modifiers which extended the idea of either a verb or an adverb or even an adjective. The main representatives of this period are Lowth, L. Murray, Mason, Bain.

Lowthworked in the second half of the 18th c. His most prominent work is “A short introduction to English Grammar” published in 1762. As far as the cases are concerned it was he who insisted on the 2case system for nouns: common and possessive (he introduced the very term “the Possessive case”). Besides he insisted on the 3 case system for the pronouns: nominative, possessive, objective. Scholars think that it was he who introduced the term “the Objective case”.

L. Murray (an American), (the very end of the 18th c)

In 1795 was written “English Grammar Adapted to the different Clauses of Learners”. It was highly popular and underwent fifty editions.

We may call Murray the follower of Lowth. He used many conceptions, many schemes of Lowth. Thus he distinguished 3 cases for the noun. Murray distinguished 9 parts of speech (considered the article a different part of speech).

In Bain’s “Higher English Grammar” (1863) we find some ideas which somehow paved the way for structuralism: we find an anticipation of the modern theory of deriving a more complicated structure from a simpler one; the idea of the possibility of isolating the parts of a compound sentence.

 


Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1718


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