What is Grammar?
Descriptive Grammars
grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the unit and rules of their language-rules for combining sounds into words, combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences.
Such a model is called a descriptive grammar. It describes your basic linguistic knowledge.
grammatical sentence means that it conforms to the rules of mental grammar, ungrammatical sentences means it deviates from the rules in some way
Perspective Grammars
Prescribing rather than describing the rules of grammar, which give rise to the writing of prescriptive grammars
Lowth was influential and because the rising new class wanted to speak properly, many of these new rules were legislated into English grammar, at least for prestige dialect
Writing is another story as it follows certain prescriptive rules of grammar, usage, style and that the spoken language does not
Teaching Grammars
Teaching grammar used to learn another language or dialect
This kind of grammar gives the words and their pronounciations, and explicitly states the rules of the language
Teaching grammars assume that the students already know one language and compares the grammar of the target language with the grammar of native language
Universal Grammar
the universal rules are of particular interest because they give us a window into human 'faculty of language' which enables us to learn and use any particular language
A major aim of linguistic theory is to discover the nature of UG
The complexity of language undoubtedly means this goal will never be fully achieved
The Development of Grammar
it is often remarked that children seem to pick up language just from hearing it spoken around them
children can acquire any language they are exposed to with comparable ease
Children acquire language as quickly and effortlessly as they do not have to figure out all the grammatical rules
Sign Languages : Evidence for Language Universal
sign languages are fully developed languages, signers create and comprehend unlimited number of new sentences
it have their our grammatical rules and mental lexicon of signs
sign language provides the best evidence to support the view all languages are governed by the same universal principles