Definition of Grammar: Grammar is the study of linguistics, which identifies and applies different rules for

expression in a particular language.

Types of Grammar: There are three types of grammars. These are:
=>Traditional Grammar
=> Structural Grammar
=> Transformational Generative Grammar
History of traditional grammar: Panini was the earliest grammarian of Sansrkit. Formal study of grammar
found first in Europe in Renaissance. Classical Latin was the base of traditional grammar. Dominance of
traditional grammar was till the onset of the 20th century through the grammar-translation method.
History of Structural grammar: Otto Jespersen and Henry Sweet were opposite traditionalists. Formal
beginning of structural linguistics was with the publication of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics in
1916. It had two flows. These are: In America and In Europe.
History of Transformational generative grammar: Foundation of Transformational generative grammar
found first in Fries's Structure of English in 1952 .Formal start of Transformational generative grammar by
Noam Chomsky with his publication of the book Syntactic Structures in 1957.
Definition of traditional grammar: Traditional grammar has come from the grammar of classical languages
like Greek, Latin. It usually deals with general rules of syntactic units, general rules of teaching and learning
language. The grammar usually used at schools is traditional grammar. It is prescriptive approach to
grammar. It uses for correctness of sentences. It is the study of analyzing of sentences into parts of speech. It
deals with subject and predicate.
Exam: Nahida likes flower.
Here Nahida is subject and likes flower is predicate.
Advantage of traditional grammar: Traditional grammar helps to learn native language. It also helps to learn
foreign language.
Limitations of traditional grammar: There are many limitations of traditional grammar. These are given
bellow:
1. Traditional grammar is an inadequate and full of shortcomings.
2. Traditional grammar is based mainly on Indo-European classical languages.
3. It does not sufficiently distinguish between all the linguistics levels: phonetic, morphological, syntactic
and semantic.
4. It is normative and prescriptive rather than explicit and descriptive.
5. Its rules are illogical.
6. Its approach is historical rather than contemporary.

7. It tries to study a living language like a dead one.

Definition of structural grammar: structural grammar is descriptive approach to grammar. It tries to describe
the structure of grammatical sentence. It emphasizes on the function of words and sentences. It identifies
parts of speech through their position in sentences.
Exam: "The cat caught the rat."
Sentence pattern: Det.+N+Tran. V+DO, where
Det.(determiner) - the
N (noun) - cat and rat
Tran. V (transitive verb) - caught
DO (direct object) - the rat
Advantages of structural grammar: Advantages of structural grammar is described given bellow:
1. According to Chomsky it is methodological rather than substantive
2. It made the study of language scientific, supportable and objective.
3. It took a living dialect for the study and analyzed its features.
4. The aim was to begin with the raw data and arrive at a grammatical description of the corpus.
Limitations of structural grammar: Limitations of structural grammar are described given bellow:
1. Chomsky criticized this school of linguistics for its being corpus-bound, and neglect of meaning.
2. Structuralism ignores explanatory adequacy, meaning, linguistic universals, native speakers intuition and
his competence.
3. Structuralisms fail to capture all ambiguities and relations.
4. It does not include the idea of creativity.
5. It does not account for the degree of grammatically and acceptability; nor does not stop the generation of
ungrammatical sentences.
6. The structuralist grammar is not a whole but a part of whole- an inventory of units such as phonemes,
morphemes, words, lexical categories and phrases.
Definition of Transformational Generative Grammar: Transformational grammar is the grammar which
refers to finite system, which specify and generate these infinite numbers of sentences. Each sentence has
two levels of structure. These are: Deep structure and Surface structure.
Deep structure: Deep structure is an abstract structure that is close to meaning. It specifies the logical roles
of phrases. It is formed by phrase structure rules.
Surface structure: It is a superficial level of structure that is close to sound. It describes the ordering of
words and phrases. It is formed by traditional rules.Exam: