Grammar

Grammar or linguistics (Latin [ars] grammatica, Ancient Greek [τέχνη] γραμματική [téchnē] grammatikḗ, German 'Kunst des Schreibens', from Ancient Greek γράμμα grámma, German 'Geschriebenes', 'letter') refers in linguistics to any form of systematic description of language. In this context, the term grammar stands on the one hand for the set of rules itself, but on the other hand also for the theory about a particular language or language family (grammar theory). Parts of recent grammatical research, largely inspired by Noam Chomsky, deal with the question of how far natural languages can be reduced to formal languages.

The adjectives grammatical and grammatical (from Late Latin grammaticalis) are today mostly used synonymously in the meanings "concerning grammar" or "according to the rules of grammar". In some cases, however, the latter meaning is not assigned to the word grammatical. Accordingly, as negated form ungrammatical (for "not corresponding to the rules of grammar") is much more common.

The demarcation of grammar from other fields

Grammar is, on the one hand, the term for a field of knowledge that is the subject of "grammar theory", that is, the linguistic system itself, in its abstract form. In linguistics, this term covers all areas in which the structure of linguistic units is studied, i.e. the theory of forms of words (i.e. morphology), the construction of sentences (syntax), phonology, as well as the theory of meaning (semantics), insofar as it relates to rules for the construction of linguistic meaning.

On the other hand, the term "a grammar" refers to a concrete description of a single language. Here, other areas are often treated as well, even if they are not the subject of grammar theory: for example, stylistics, rhetoric and verse theory (metrics), in some grammars, especially of historical languages, also number representation, weights and measures, and time calculation.

Grammar does not include the study of processes in the use of a language, which are dealt with by pragmatics, discourse analysis or sociolinguistics. However, these fields often have repercussions for the description of the language system.

Types grammars

In terms of objectives, a distinction can be made between prescriptive or normative (prescriptive) grammars on the one hand and descriptive (descriptive) grammars on the other. A normative grammar pursues the goal of teaching a certain form of a language as a binding standard. In contrast, the approach of descriptive grammars is to describe a language as competent native speakers actually use it spontaneously (without perceiving what is said as a slip of the tongue). In this perspective, no distinction is then made between "good" and "incorrect or bad language use" (so that certain forms are to be avoided), but disputed grammatical phenomena can, if necessary, be assigned as typical to certain styles of speech, types of text or social groups, but otherwise documented from a neutral point of view. A descriptive approach thus usually leads to the recognition of different varieties (language variants), which can be characterized by their social evaluation. The term "grammatically incorrect" is then reduced to grammatical phenomena which do not occur in any variety of a language. In the content covered, normative and descriptive grammars need not necessarily differ greatly, since even the definition of a standard variety presupposes its description in the first instance. Also, descriptive grammars usually cannot cover the whole range of variation, but often deal with an idealized form, i.e. a standard variant of a language.