Talk:Traditional grammar

Untitled
This article is "descriptive linguist" propaganda. It assumes, with unconcealed bias, that the majority opinion in this field is the correct interpretation; for example, modern linguistics has exposed the limitations of traditional grammar, and [contempary linguistics is] intended to apply to a much broader range of languages; compare this to, ''Traditional grammar attempts... to analyse and elucidate the constituents of any given well-formed sentence.'' (my emphasis)

This article is full of moralising and peremptory statements on a controversial issue. There are clear violations of WP:NPOV. Please re-write this article and amend the indulgent, self-gratifying language. It might be appropriate for linguistics lectures, but not for a reputable encyclopedia intended for a broader audience. Rintrah 08:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Currently, the article's first sentence seems to introduce an article on the term "traditional grammar", but the rest of the article seems instead to be an article on the concept that term supposedly identifies. I think the solution here is to adjust the entire article to be about the term, how it's used, what it covers, and so on. The article can then be frank about the fact that the term is usually used by linguists to refer to the moronic prescriptive grammar often taught in schools. How does that sound? —RuakhTALK 21:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds like you might not be the best choice for the rewrite if that's your attitude. Tsunomaru 12:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 10 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dorinapellumbi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Turn into a stub
The term "traditional grammar" may describe any number of things, from Pāṇini's grammar of Sanskrit (which is "traditional" in most senses of the word) to a straw man argument against usage pedantry. It is most often used (as seems to be the intent of this article) to refer to any of a number of pedagogical grammars, especially those that are unconcerned with linguistic theory.

Since the page does not cite any sources and does not concur with any work I know of, it is difficult to say precisely what version of "traditional grammar" it is intended to describe. Specifically, I can find no published work that discusses "inter-elemental" and "intra-elemental grammar" as discussed here, and several mentions on the Web are clearly copied from this page or earlier versions of it.

I am therefore going to remove most of the contents from the page with the hope that others will rebuild it with reliable sources; I will of course endeavor to help in this rebuilding as well. Of course anyone is free to revert my changes, but discussion here would be appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 11:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It may not be pretty, but I've rewritten the article. It has at least a few sentences describing each of the concepts listed in the stub, plus lots of internal links and citations of generally reliable sources. I also added a section on the history of traditional grammars, again based on published sources. Cnilep (talk) 07:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Poor intro

 * "A traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language."

This does not define traditional grammar. The same definition could equally be used for 'structuralist grammar':


 * "A structuralist grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language."

It could be applied to Paninian grammar:


 * "A Paninian grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language."

I suggest that a meaningful definition should be supplied, even if it makes the first sentence a little longer.

59.153.112.126 (talk) 07:12, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Algeo 1969
The lead section cited John Algeo (1969) to support the notion, "Traditional grammar is often preferred by prescriptive grammarians and may be regarded as unscientific". Algeo, however, argues at length that 'traditional' grammar had its place in pedagogy, and that 'linguistics' does not easily replace it in language teaching. I've reproduced specific quotes below to illustrate his argument. Since Algeo discusses the use of linguistics in pedagogy, and not the attitude of linguists toward traditional grammar, I have removed the citation. (Allison Smith, in contrast, does discuss the attitude of linguists toward traditional grammar.)


 * 'Thus, the first English grammars were translations of Latin grammars that had been translations of Greek grammars in a tradition that was already some two thousand years old. [...] When people talk about "traditional grammar", this is the tradition they mean, or ought to mean. As the first of our four stages in the teaching of English grammar, it is an ancient and in many ways honorable tradition. It is by no means a contemptible tradition. I make this disclaimer for two reasons: because it has for some time been fashionable to use "traditional grammar" as a term of contempt and because I am about to point out some of the limitations of that grammar as it was practiced in the early nineteenth century' (p. 104).


 * 'Goold Brown is a typical and full-blown example of traditional grammar properly so called, i.e. Latin grammar Englished, with emphasis on parsing, rule memorization, and the correction of false syntax. The term "traditional grammar" is often used more vaguely. In fact it seems very often to mean the kind of grammar we taught last year as opposed to the kind of grammar we hope to teach next year. (This year we are in a transitional period.)' (p. 106).


 * 'As the midpoint of the twentieth century drew near, grammar teaching was in a confused state. Traditional grammar, as practiced by Goold Brown, had faded from the scene, although its traces remained. Sentence grammar was still widely taught, but the influence of functionalism was undermining all grammar teaching. The stage was set for the fourth development of our grammatical history, the advent of a "new grammar," a "revolution in grammar," to use Francis's phrase' (p. 108).

[The "new grammar" was structuralism, replaced within a few decades by the new-new generative-transformational grammar.]


 * 'The simple dichotomy that is often drawn between "traditional" grammar and "linguistics" is not tenable. I have tried to show that the grammar inherited by the twentieth-century school was the product of a series of influences, that it was not a single coherent approach to language but a pot-pourri, and that the "traditional" grammar properly so called began to disappear after 1850. I have also tried to show that there is no one "linguistics" that is about to enlighten pedagogy with its science' (p. 111)

Cnilep (talk) 07:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)