Traditional Grammar & Structural Linguistics

 Difference between traditional grammar and structural linguistics


  1. Traditional/Prescriptive Grammar:-
This has been the basis of all school-grammar until the structuralists headed by Leonard Bloomfield and C. C. Fries. With them began the structural or descriptive analysis of English grammar. The structuralists pointed out some major defects of traditional English grammar.

    (i) Traditional grammar was based on the dead classical languages, Latin and Greek. Latin was taught in England for a long time. The rules of Latin grammar were imposed on English grammar. Latin was a highly inflected and dead language. The rules of an inflected language cannot be the basis for analysing an uninfected language like English. Modern language keeps on changing.

    (ii) The definitions of grammatical categories like noun, verb etc. were Latin. These definitions were unsatisfactory, the reason was that there was not a single criterion for classification. There was opposition between meaning and function. There was a frequent shift from meaning to function.

    (iii) Traditional grammar ignored phonology, the study of the system of contrastine relationships among the fundamental speech sounds of a language or between languages.

    (iv) The traditional grammarians followed the prescriptive method of analysis. They tried to impose the rules of correct usage on the native speakers. According to traditional grammarians, the sentence was either right or wrong. They prescribed language as it is spoken. 

    2. Structural Linguistics or Descriptive Grammar:

The structuralists operated on language data, they went about analysis the spoken language and broke up the glow of connected speech. They arrived at three levels of analysis: phonology (the study of speech sounds), morphology (the study of inflections and other sorts of words) and syntax (arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed meaningful sentences). Structural grammar was also called descriptive as the structuralists described language as it was spoken by a native speaker. For them, "form" was all important and meaning was subordinate to form. Meaning could be explained deductively in relation to form. The structuralists had their own definitions for the grammatical categories which were based on structure. Their theories were based on five slogans:

    (a) Language is speech not writing.
    (b) Language is a set of habits.
    (c) Teach the language, not about the language.
    (d) Language is what its nature speakers say, not what the grammarians think they ought to say.
    (e) Languages are different. 

(Analysis of the slogans):

    (i) For the structuralists, the spoken language was primary. They preferred informal colloquial language rather than a formal stilted style.

    (ii) The second slogan is derived from the Behaviourist School of Psychology. The behaviourists considered that language could be learned like any other habits.

    (iii) The traditional grammarians taught a great deal about the language. The structuralists felt that language was the best learned by learning to use it.

    (iv) Languages should not be prescriptive, it should be descriptive, what the nature speakers say.

    (v) Every language is unique in its internal and external structure, that is why the structuralists went against the idea of imposing Latin on English. This kind of language notion helped to develop theories of  second language learning.

Prepared by:
Dr. Susan Mathew
CMS College Kottayam

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