Grammar

Abstract

Most English language teachers are probably comfortable using the word ‘grammar’. There is an established grammatical tradition within ELT, and terms such as ‘tense’, ‘conditional form’, or ‘defining relative clause’ are likely to be familiar even to relatively inexperienced teachers. Grammar is often thought of as something reliable and predictable, but although the term is a keyword in the ELT profession, it is somewhat under-examined. A look at the word’s history reveals a perhaps surprising amount of variation and inconsistency. The word ‘grammar’ comes originally from Ancient Greek grammatike (‘pertaining to letters/written language’). Grammar was one of the ‘liberal arts’ taught in Ancient Greece, and in Rome from around the fifth century BC, although at this time it was a wider area of study than today, including textual and aesthetic criticism and literary history. Its study continued in Europe in medieval times and beyond, with grammar being taught at schools alongside logic and rhetoric in what was known as the ‘trivium’. The tradition of studying the grammar of English in British schools did not emerge until the 16th century (Howatt with Widdowson 2004: 77)—until then, studying grammar at school meant studying Latin or Ancient Greek, not vernacular languages. Indeed, the first grammar of English, Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), is said to have been written to demonstrate that the English language was in fact rule-based and could be analysed in the same way as Latin (Linn 2006: 74). Grammar has lost its status as a distinct subject in the school curriculum but the word has continued (since 1530 according to the Oxford English Dictionary) to be used as a countable noun meaning ‘a book describing the grammar of a language’.

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