Download CHAPTER V THE INCONSISTENCY OF TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

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IAIN Salatiga
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The 18th century which had a high regard for
order and regularity and grammarians felt the
need to codify English as that its rules would
be fixed for all time in keeping with the
“universal truth” of language. In this they
failed to recognize that language is a
constant state of change and cannot be
defined even within the static rules of any
stage of its development.
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The grammarians at this time may have been
trying to provide logical statements about
“correct” usage but their assumptions were
mostly intuitive and very often inconsistent.
Some of the rules formulated at that time have
left their mark on Modern English. One such
example is the rules that the word “than” should
be followed by a pronoun in the nominative case
and it can be considered as an abbreviation of a
whole sentence of which it would be a subject.
“He is taller than I”, for instance, is considered
correct, as opposed to “He is taller than me”.
Everyday usage, of course, still favors the latter.
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Traditional grammar held away right through the
19th century into the 20th century, particularly in
language teaching. The study of languages in
19th century, however, had some positive result.
There was an awakening of interest of modern
language in general and the prestige of the
classical languages (LATIN) was forgotten. Latin
was no longer used as prestigious means of
communication between educated people. The
remarkably perceptive work of Ancient Indian
grammarians on Sanskrit, notably of Panini, was
discovered and as a result there was a new
breakthrough in comparative philology and the
classification of language.
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Structural grammar is a means of analyzing
written and spoken language. It is concerned
with how elements of a sentence such as
morphemes, phonemes, phrases, clauses and
parts of speech are put together. Under this form
of linguistic analysis, it is how these elements
work together that is most important, as the
relationships between the elements typically have
a greater meaning than any of the single
elements. The study of this method therefore is
an important tool for improving clarity in
communication.
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1. Some students like to study in the
morning.
2. The smart teacher returned the homework
after she noticed the error.
3. Fay Ahmed goes to the library.
4.The boys are studying because they have a
test.
5. The man who is standing there is my
father.
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6. My grandfather died when I was five years
old.
7. There is a dead black cat under the red
chair.
8. She was crying, for her mother was
seriously ill.
9. The lost expensive heavy black leather bag
is here.
10. I like this park since it is close to my
house.
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A good way of comparing traditional and
structural grammar is to examine their
approach to the questions of word categories
or parts of speech. Traditional grammar often
defines parts of speech by their meanings:
e.g., ‘a noun is the name of a person, place or
thing’ (some grammarians added “quality” or
“abstract entity” to complete this definition).
At best a definition of this kind is not entirely
helpful, and serious difficulties arise because
traditional grammar is not consistent.
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Alongside such semantic definitions occur definitions
based on functions, so that an adverb, for example,
we defined as ‘a word which modifies as verb or
another adverb’. Confusion arises when these two
criteria overlap.
In the sentence “A house is not a home”, no one
would be in any doubt in justification that the word
“home” belongs to the category of “noun”. After all, it
is the name of a place. What happens in a sentence
such as “He runs home”? Surely ‘home’ is still the
name of a place, but, as we can see, it also modifies
the verb ‘runs’. Here the two categories of noun and
adverb as defined in traditional grammar overlap thus
invalidating the criteria on which the distinction was
made in the first place.
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ADJECTIVE, faster, fastest.1.moving or able to
move, operate, function, or take effect
quickly; quick; swift; rapid:a fast horse; a fast
pain reliever; a fast thinker.
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2.done in comparatively little time; taking a
comparatively short time:a fast race; fast
work.
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1. She hold me fast.
2. Yesterday I started my fast.
3. He is a fast runner.
4. Hundreds of ​prisoners ​began a fast
in ​protest about ​prison​ conditions.
5. One ​day a ​week he fasts
for ​health ​reasons.
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Dealing with the above problem, it is
important to consider that the structural
linguist classify parts of speech in an entirely
different way. They took account of the
important supra-segmental phonemes of
stress, pitch and included a transcription of
these intonational features in their analysis.
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By making use of what inflexions remain in
the modern English and the typical ordering
of words in a sentence, they were able to
classify parts of speech purely by form and
the linear sequence indicating their function.
For instance, read this table below and study
how different intonation on each utterance
will be understood differently and they
indicate different function on each utterance.
Let’s check it out! 
NO
MOVIE QUOTES
1
2
"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives
extraordinary."
"There's no place like home."
CHARACTER/ACTOR-ACTRESS+
MOVIE TITTLE/YEAR
John Keating/Robin Williams+ Dead
Poets Society/1989
Dorothy Gale/Judy Garland+ The
Wizard of Oz/1939
3
"I'm the king of the world!"
4
"Elementary, my dear Watson."
5
"Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty
ape."
6
"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
Scarlett O'Hara/Vivien Leigh+ Gone
with the Wind/1939
7
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
8
"Mama always said life was like a box of
chocolates. You never know what you're gonna
get."
"I'll be back."
Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins+
Psycho/1960
Forrest Gump/Tom Hanks+ Forrest
Gump/1994
9
10
"Bond. James Bond."
Jack Dawson/Leonardo DiCaprio+
Titanic/1997
Sherlock Holmes/ Basil Rathbone+
The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes/1939
George Taylor/Charlton Heston+
Planet of the Apes/1968
The Terminator/Arnold
Schwarzenegger+ The
Terminator/1984
James Bond/Sean Connery+ James
Bond/1962