Grammar

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Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language

Natural language

In the philosophy of language, a natural language is a language that is spoken, Sign language, or writing by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages and from constructed languages....
. It includes morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
, often complemented by phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
, phonology

Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
, semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. The word is derived from the Greek language word s??a?t???? , "significant", from s??a??? , "to signify, to indicate" and that from s??a , "sign, mark, token"....
, and pragmatics

Pragmatics

Pragmatics or intent is the study of how the arrangement of words and phrases can alter the meaning of a sentence, it deals with the structural ambiguity in a sentence....
.

Each language has its own distinct grammar. "English grammar" is the set of rules of the English language itself. "An English grammar" is a specific study or analysis of these rules. A reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a "reference grammar" or simply "a grammar".

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Encyclopedia

Grammar is the field of linguistics

Linguistics

Natural language

Morphology (linguistics)

Syntax

Phonetics

Phonology

Semantics

Pragmatics

Grammaticality

In theoretical linguistics, grammaticality is the quality of a linguistic utterance of being grammar Gradient well-formedness.Lyons 1968 defines the concept as "that part of the acceptability of utterances which can be accounted for in terms of the rules," the complement criterion for acceptability being semantic soundness....
constructions of a language is called a descriptive grammar, as opposed to linguistic prescription

Linguistic prescription

In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used. These rules can cover such topics as standards for spelling and grammar or syntax, or rules for what is deemed Etiquette or Political correctness correct....
, which tries to enforce the governing rules of how a language is to be used.

Grammatical framework

Grammatical Framework

Grammatical Framework is a type-theoretic grammar formalism based on Martin-L?f type theory.GF particularly addresses four aspects of grammars: multilinguality, semantics, modularity and grammar engineering, and reuse of grammars in different formats and as software components....
s are approaches to constructing grammars. The standard framework of generative grammar

Generative grammar

In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences....
is the transformational grammar

Transformational grammar

In linguistics, a transformational grammar, or transformational-generative grammar , is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Noam Chomsky tradition....
model developed in various ways by Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an United States linguistics, philosopher, cognitive science, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
and his followers from the 1950s onwards.

Etymology

The word grammar derives from Greek

Ancient greek language

#REDIRECT Ancient Greek...
(grammatike techne), which means "art of letters," from (gramma), "letter", itself from (graphein), "to draw, to write".

History

The first systematic grammars originated in Iron Age India

Iron Age India

The Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition....
, with Yaska

Yaska

, was a Sanskrit grammarian who preceded Panini. His famous text is Nirukta, which deals with etymology, lexical category and the semantics of words....
(6th c. BC), Panini (4th c. BC) and his commentators Pingala

Pingala

Pingala was an Ancient Indian writer, famous for his work, the Chandas Shastra , a Sanskrit treatise on prosody considered one of the Vedanga....
(ca. 200 BC), Katyayana

Katyayana

Katyayana was a Vyakarana, Indian mathematics and Historical Vedic religion priest who lived in History of India.He is known for two works:* The Varttika, an elaboration on Pa?ini grammar....
, and Patanjali

Patañjali

Pata?jali is the compiler of the Yoga Sutras, an important collection of aphorisms on Yoga practice, and also the author of the Mahabha?ya, a major commentary on Panini Ashtadhyayi....
(2nd c. BC). In the West, grammar emerged as a discipline in Hellenism

Hellenism (neoclassicism)

Hellenism, as a neoclassical movement distinct from other Roman or Greco-Roman forms of neoclassicism emerging after the European Renaissance, is most often associated with Germany and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries....
from the 3rd c. BC forward with authors like Rhyanus and Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus or Aristarch of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the Library of Alexandria Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium Byzantium in that role....
, the oldest extant work being the Art of Grammar
Art of Grammar

The Art of Grammar is a treatise on Greek language grammar attributed to Dionysius Thrax, and written in the 2nd century BC. It is the first work of grammar in Greek, and it sought mainly to help speakers of Koine Greek to be able to understand the language of Homer and other great poets of the past....
, attributed to Dionysius Thrax

Dionysius Thrax

Dionysius Thrax was a Hellenization grammarian who lived and is thought by some to have worked in Alexandria and later at Rhodes.The first extant grammar of Greek language, "Art of Grammar" is attributed to him but many scholars today doubt that the work really belongs solely to him due to the difference between the technical appr...
(ca. 100 BC). Latin grammar

Latin grammar

The grammar of Latin language, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflection, which allows for a large degree of flexibility when choosing word order....
developed by following Greek models from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors such as Orbilius Pupillus

Orbilius Pupillus

Lucius Orbilius Pupillus was a Latin grammarian of the 1st century BC, who taught a school, first at Benevento and then at Rome, where the poet Horace was one of his pupils....
, Remmius Palaemon

Remmius Palaemon

Quintus Remmius Palaemon, Roman Empire grammarian, a native of Vicentia, lived in the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius.From Suetonius' minor works we learn that he was originally a slavery who obtained his freedom and taught grammar at Rome....
, Marcus Valerius Probus

Marcus Valerius Probus

Marcus Valerius Probus, of Beirut, was a Roman Empire grammarian and critic, who flourished during the reign of Nero.He was a student rather than a teacher, and devoted himself to the criticism and elucidation of the texts of classical authors by means of marginal notes or by signs, after the manner of the Alexandrine grammarians....
, Verrius Flaccus

Verrius Flaccus

Marcus Verrius Flaccus , was a Ancient Rome grammarian and teacher, flourished under Augustus Caesar and Tiberius....
, Aemilius Asper

Aemilius Asper

Aemilius Asper, Latin grammarian, possibly lived in the 1st century or late 2nd century. He wrote commentaries on Terence, Sallust and Virgil dealing with content and form, and including parallels with other authors....
.

Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
grammatical tradition also began around the 1st century BC with the Tolkappiyam

Tolkappiyam

The Tolkappiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram....
.

A grammar of Irish originated in the 7th century with the Auraicept na n-Éces

Auraicept na n-Éces

The Auraicept na n-?ces is claimed as a 7th century work of Irish grammarians, written by a scholar named Longarad.The core of the text could indeed date to the mid-7th century, but much material will have been added over the 500 years preceding the text as recorded in the earliest surviving copy ...
.

Arabic grammar

Arabic grammar

Arabic is a Semitic languages language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic - the Arabic grammar ....
emerged from the 8th century with the work of Ibn Abi Ishaq and his students.

The first treatises on Hebrew grammar

Hebrew grammar

Hebrew language grammar is partly analytic language, expressing such forms as dative case, ablative case, and accusative case using prepositional particles rather than declension....
appeared in the High Middle Ages

High Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages was the periodization of history of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....
, in the context of Mishnah

Mishnah

The Mishnah or Mishna is a major work of Rabbinic literature, and the first major redaction into written form of Jewish oral traditions, called the Oral Torah....
(exegesis of the Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid

Abbasid

The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. The Caliphate is one of the high points of Islam, and at the time Muslim civilization, together with that of Byzantium, China and India, was the most developed part of the world....
Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the Capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate, with which it is also coterminous. With a municipal population estimated at 6.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq, and the second largest city in the Arab World....
. The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. Ibn Barun in the 12th century compares the Hebrew language with Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
in the Islamic grammatical tradition.

Belonging to the trivium of the seven liberal arts

Liberal arts

The term liberal arts refers to the education derived from the Classical education curriculum....
, grammar was taught as a core discipline throughout the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
, following the influence of authors from Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world: generally from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century to the Islamic conquests and the re-organization of the Byzantine Empire under...
, such as Priscian

Priscian

Priscianus Caesariensis , commonly known as Priscian, was a Latin Latin grammar. He wrote the Institutiones grammaticae on the subject....
. Treatment of vernaculars began gradually during the High Middle Ages

High Middle Ages

First Grammatical Treatise

The First Grammatical Treatise is a 12th century work on the phonology of the Old Norse or Old Icelandic language. It was given this name because it is the first of four grammatical works bound in the Icelandic manuscript Codex Wormianus....
, but became influential only in the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
and Baroque

Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
periods. In 1486, Antonio de Nebrija

Antonio de Nebrija

Antonio de Lebrija, also known as Antonio de Nebrija, Elio Antonio de Lebrija, Antonius Nebrissensis, and Antonio of Lebrixa, was a Spain scholar birth at Lebrija in the Provinces of Spain of Seville ....
published Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance al Latin, and the first Spanish grammar

Spanish grammar

Spanish is a language originating in North-Central Spain which is spoken throughout Spain, most countries in the Americas, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea....
, Gramática de la lengua castellana, in 1492. During the 16th century Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe....
, the Questione della lingua was the discussion on the status and ideal form of the Italian language

Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
, initiated by Dante

DANTE

DANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions....
's de vulgari eloquentia
De vulgari eloquentia

De vulgari eloquentia is the title of an essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist of four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second....
(Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo was a Republic of Venice scholar, poet, literary theory, and Catholic Cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch....
, Prose della volgar lingua Venice 1525).

Grammars of non-European languages began to be compiled for the purposes of evangelization and Bible translation from the 16th century onward, such as Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de los Indios de los Reynos del Perú (1560), and a Quechua

Quechua

Quechua is a Native American language of South America. It was already widely spoken across the Central Andes long before the time of the Inca Empire, who established it as the official language of administration for their Empire, and is still spoken today in various regional forms by some 10 million people through much of South America, in...
grammar by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás. In 1643 there appeared Ivan Uzhevych

Ivan Uzhevych

Ivan Petrovych Uzhevych was a Ruthenia grammarian.Very little is known about his biography: From 1637 he studied at Krak?w Jagiellonian University, then in 1643 he was a student of theology at the Coll?ge de Sorbonne, Paris....
's Grammatica sclavonica and, in 1762, the Short Introduction to English Grammar of Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth Fellow of the Royal Society was a Bishop of the Church of England, a professor of poetry at university of Oxford and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English language grammar....
was also published. The Grammatisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, a High German grammar in five volumes by Johann Christoph Adelung

Johann Christoph Adelung

Johann Christoph Adelung was a Germany grammarian and philologist.He was born at Spantekow, in Western Pomerania, and educated at the public schools of Anklam and Klosterbergen, and the University of Halle....
, appeared as early as 1774.

From the latter part of the 18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the emerging discipline of modern linguistics

Linguistics

Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic

Vuk Stefanovic Karad?ic was a Serbs linguistics and major reformer of the Serbian language....
arrived in 1814, while the Deutsche Grammatik of the Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were Germans academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time ....
was first published in 1818. The Comparative Grammar of Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp was a Germany linguistics known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages....
, the starting point of modern comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their history relatedness....
, came out in 1833.

Development of grammars

Grammars evolve through usage and also due to separations of the human population. With the advent of written representation

Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation is an area in artificial intelligence that is concerned with how to formally "think", that is, how to use a symbol system to represent "a domain of discourse" - that which can be talked about, along with functions that may or may not be within the domain of discourse that allow inference about the objects within the...
s, formal rules about language usage tend to appear also. Formal grammars are codifications

Codification (linguistics)

Codification is the process of standardizing and developing a norm for a language.Codifying a language can vary from case to case and depends on the stage of standardization that already exists....
of usage that are developed by repeated documentation over time, and by observation

Observation

Observation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments....
as well. As the rules become established and developed, the prescriptive concept of grammatical correctness can arise. This often creates a discrepancy between contemporary usage and that which has been accepted, over time, as being correct. Linguists tend to believe that prescriptive grammars do not have any justification beyond their authors' aesthetic tastes; however, prescriptions are considered in sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used....
as part of the explanation for why some people say "I didn't do nothing", some say "I didn't do anything", and some say one or the other depending on social context.

The formal study of grammar is an important part of education

Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
for children from a young age through advanced learning

Learning

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, Value s, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information....
, though the rules taught in schools are not a "grammar" in the sense most linguists

Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
use the term, as they are often prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Constructed language

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language?known Colloquialism or informally as a conlang?is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved natural languagely....
s (also called planned languages or conlangs) are more common in the modern day. Many have been designed to aid human communication

Communication

Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs...",, 1: an act or instance of transmitting and 3 a: "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or beha...
(for example, naturalistic Interlingua

Interlingua

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association . It is the second or third most widely used IAL and the most widely used International auxiliary language#Classification IAL: in other words, its vocabulary, grammar and other characteristics are largely...
, schematic Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed language international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L....
, and the highly logic-compatible artificial language Lojban

Lojban

Lojban is a constructed language, syntactically unambiguous human language based on First-order logic. Its predecessor is Loglan, the original logical language by James Cooke Brown....
). Each of these languages has its own grammar.

No clear line can be drawn between syntax and morphology. Analytic languages use syntax

Syntax

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
in synthetic language

Synthetic language

A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications , although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties....
s. In other words, word order is not significant and morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
is highly significant in a purely synthetic language, whereas morphology is not significant and syntax is highly significant in an analytic language. Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
and Afrikaans, for example, are highly analytic, and meaning is therefore very context – dependent. (Both do have some inflections, and have had more in the past; thus, they are becoming even less synthetic and more "purely" analytic over time.) Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
, which is highly synthetic

Synthetic language

Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
es and inflection

Inflection

Syntax

Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
can be made from elements that are placed in a largely arbitrary order. Latin has a complex affixation and simple syntax, while Chinese has the opposite.

Grammar frameworks

Various "grammar frameworks" have been developed in theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology , and semantics....
since the mid 20th century, in particular under the influence of the idea of a "Universal grammar

Universal grammar

Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans . It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages....
" in the United States. Of these, the main divisions are:

Transformational grammar
Transformational grammar

In linguistics, a transformational grammar, or transformational-generative grammar , is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Noam Chomsky tradition....
(TG)
Systemic functional grammar
Systemic functional grammar

Systemic functional grammar or systemic functional linguistics is a model of grammar that was developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s....
(SFG)
Principles and Parameters Theory
Principles and parameters

Principles and parameters is a framework in generative linguistics. Principles and parameters was largely formulated by the linguists Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik, though it was the culmination of the research of many linguists....
(P&P)
Lexical-functional Grammar
Lexical functional grammar

Lexical functional grammar is a grammar framework in theoretical linguistics, a variety of generative grammar. The development of the theory was initiated by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, in reaction to the direction research in the area of transformational grammar had begun to take....
(LFG)
Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar
Generalised phrase structure grammar

Generalised phrase structure grammar is a framework for describing the syntax and semantics of natural languages. GPSG was initially developed in the late 1970s by Gerald Gazdar....
(GPSG)
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Head-driven phrase structure grammar

Head-driven phrase structure grammar is a highly lexicalized, non-derivational generative grammar theory developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag ....
(HPSG)
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar

Dependency grammar is a class of syntactic theories developed by Lucien Tesni?re. It is distinct from phrase structure grammars, as it lacks phrasal nodes....
s (DG)
Role and reference grammar
Role and reference grammar

Role and Reference Grammar is a model of grammar developed by William Foley and Robert Van Valin, Jr. in the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar theories....
(RRG)

Education

Prescriptive grammar is taught in primary school (elementary school

Elementary school

An elementary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as Primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in many countries, especially in North America....
). The term "grammar school

Grammar school

A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries....
" historically refers to schools teaching Latin grammar

Latin grammar

Standard language

A standard language is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. As it is usually the form promoted in schools and the media, it is usually considered by speakers of the language to be more "correct" in some sense than other dialects....
taught contrasts with dialect

Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
s or vernacular

Vernacular

Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to Lingua franca, official standards or global languages....
s which may be the objects of study in descriptive grammar but which are not taught prescriptively. The standardized "first language

First language

A first language is the language a human being learns from birth. A person's first language is a basis for sociolinguistic identity....
" taught in primary education may be subject to political

Language politics

Language politics is a term used to describe political consequences of linguistic differences between people, or on occasion the political consequences of the way a language is spoken and what words are used....
controversy, since it establishes a standard defining nationality

Nationality

Nationality is a the relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state....
or ethnicity.

The pre-eminence of Parisian French has reigned largely unchallenged throughout the history of modern French literature. Standard Italian

Italian language

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, but on the speech of Florence

Florence

Florence is the Capital city of the Italy Regions of Italy of Tuscany and of the provinces of Italy Province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany and has a population of 364,779 ....
due to the influence of Florentines had on early Italian literature

Italian literature

Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italian people or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....
. Similarly, standard Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
is not based on the speech of Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the Capital and largest city of Spain. It is the Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its Madrid metropolitan area is the Largest urban areas of the European Union in the European Union after Paris aire urbaine, Greater London Urban Area, a...
, but on the one by educated speakers from more northerly areas like Castile and León

Castile and León

Castile and Le?n , known formally as the Community of Castile and Le?n is one of the seventeen Autonomous communities of Spain of Spain. It was constructed from Old Castile and Le?n in 1983....
. In Argentina

Argentina

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is a country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city....
and Uruguay

Uruguay

Uruguay is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.7 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area....
the Spanish standard is based on the local dialects of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the Capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southern shore of the R?o de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent....
and Montevideo

Montevideo

Montevideo is the largest city, the capital and chief port of Uruguay. Montevideo is the only city in the country with a population over 1,000,000....
(Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish is a dialectal variant , of the Spanish language which is mainly spoken in the areas in and around the R?o de la Plata drainage basin , between Argentina and Uruguay....
). Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
has two official written standards, respectively Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by virtually all the 189 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
and European Portuguese

European Portuguese

European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese language spoken in continental Portugal, as well in the Azores and Madeira islands. The word ?European? was chosen to avoid the clash of ?Portuguese Portuguese?....
.

Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic languages language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. It is also spoken as a second language among Norwegian-Americans in the United States of America, especially in the central northern states....
has two standards, Bokmål
Bokmål

Bokm?l , also known as Riksm?l or Dano-Norwegian, is the more commonly used of the two Norwegian language written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk....
and Nynorsk
Nynorsk

Nynorsk is one of the two official Norwegian language standard languages, the other being Bokm?l. Just above 10% of the Norwegian population use Nynorsk as their primary written language....
the choice between which is subject to controversy

Norwegian language struggle

The Norwegian language struggle is an ongoing controversy within Norway culture and politics related to spoken and written Norwegian. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to the Denmark-Norway of Norway....
: Each Norwegian municipality can declare one of the two its official language, or it can remain "language neutral". Nynorsk is endorsed by a minority of 27% of the municipalities. The main language used in primary schools normally follows the official language of its municipality, and is decided by referendum within the local school district. Standard German

Standard German

Standard German is the standard language of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas....
emerged out of the standardized chancellery use of High German in the 16th and 17th centuries. Until about 1800, it was almost entirely a written language, but now it is so widely spoken that most of the former German dialects are near-extinct.

Standard Mandarin

Standard Mandarin

Standard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, is the official modern Spoken Chinese used in People's Republic of China and Republic of China, and is one of the four official languages of Languages of Singapore....
has official status as the standard spoken form of the Chinese language

Chinese language

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
(PRC), the Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , also known as Nationalist China is a country in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition into a multi-party democratic state with Political status of Taiwan....
(ROC) and the Republic of Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country microstate located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. It lies 137 kilometres north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands....
. Pronunciations of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. The Beijing dialect is the basis of Standard Mandarin, the standard official Chinese spoken language that is used by the People's Republic of China , the Republic of China , and Singapore....
of Mandarin Chinese, while grammar and syntax are based on modern vernacular Chinese

Vernacular Chinese

Vernacular Chinese is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken Chinese and associated with Standard Mandarin....
. Modern Standard Arabic

Literary Arabic

Literary Arabic or Standard Arabic is the literary and standard variety of Arabic used in writing and in formal speech. It is part of the Arabic language macrolanguage....
is directly based on Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad Caliphate and Abbasid Caliphate times ....
, the language of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Qur?an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur?an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God....
. The Hindustani language

Hindustani language

Hindustani , also known as "Hindi-Urdu," is a term covering several closely related dialects in Pakistan and northern India, especially the vernacular form of the two national languages, Standard Hindi and Urdu language, also known as Khariboli, but also several nonstandard dialects of the Hindi languages....
has two standards, Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
and Urdu

Urdu

Urdu is a Central_Indo-Aryan_languages#Central_Zone_.28Madhya_or_Hindi.29 Indo-Aryan languages of the Indo-Iranian languages, belonging to the Indo-European languages family of languages....
.

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar has designated March 4, 2008 as National Grammar Day.

External links

, wikibook
Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a Wikimedia Foundation wiki for the creation of free content b:WB:WIW that anyone can edit....
in English and Portuguese
Free grammar forum for the English and Spanish languages
: a free online grammar community with Grammar Q&A's, ESL, and other help.
: a community of grammarians acting as grammar watchdog.

Grammar

Etymology

History

Development of grammars

Grammar frameworks

Education

See also

External links