Prescriptive grammar

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 503.

Early pre-normative grammars

English grammars before 1900

Until the 17^th century the term grammar in English was applied only to the study of Latin, because Latin grammar was the only one studied in school. One of the earliest and most popular Latin grammars written in English by William Lily was published in the first half of the 16^th century and went through many additions. It set a standard for the arrangement of material, and thus Latin paradigmes with the English equivalents suggested the possibility of presenting English forms in a similar way, but using the terminology of Latin.

Lily's Latin grammar may be considered the precursor of the earliest English grammars.

Ben Johnson's and Charles Butler's English grammars pointed out two cases of the English noun, while in Wallace's grammar (1653), which was written in Latin, the category of cases is said to be nonexistant, and the ‘s form is defoned as a possessive adjetive. This view was supported by an early 18^th century grammar, attributed to John Brightland, who preferred also the two-case system.

The age of prescriptive grammar began in the second half of the 18^th century. The most influential grammar at that period was R. Lowth's grammar, which was called Short introduction to English grammar. It was published in 1762, and its aim was to reduce the English language to rules and to set up a standard of correct usage. The grammar setlled most disputed points of usage by appealing to reason, to the laws of thought or logic, which were considered to be universal, hence another name of this grammar is Universal grammar.