The History of Grammars of the English Language
The history of English grammars is roughly divided into two periods. The first is age of prescientific grammar beginning with the end of the 16th century and lasting till about 1900. It includes two types of grammars.
The first type of grammars in the history of English grammars is the early prenormative grammars of English, beginning with William Bullokar’s Bref Grammar for English (1585).
By the middle of the 18th century, when many of the grammatical phenomena of English had been described, the early English grammars gave way to a new kind of grammar, a prescriptive (normative) grammar, which stated strict rules of grammatical usage.
Early grammar (descriptive)
Until the 17th century the term “grammar” in English was applied only to the study of Latin. This usage was a result of the fact that Latin grammar was the only grammar learned in schools and that until the end of the 16th century there were no grammars of English.
The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar, written with the seeming goal of demonstrating that English was quite as rule-bound as Latin, was published in 1586. Bullokar’s grammar was modeled on William Lily’s Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices. Thus, in Bullokar’s grammar there were 5 cases of nouns and 6 genders (cf 6 cases and 6 genders in Latin).
In the earliest English grammars the parts of speech were divided into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech (W. Bullokar).
Declinable words included nouns, pronouns, verbs and particles, indeclinable were adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.
At the beginning of the 18th century another scheme of classification appeared in J. Brightland’s grammar. He reduced the number of parts of speech to four; names (i.e. nouns), qualities (i.e. adjectives), affirmations (i.e. verbs), and particles, which included the four so-called indeclinable parts of speech.
J. Brightland introduces the notion “sentence”. In his grammar sentences are divided into simple and compound. The simple sentence is defined as containing one affirmation (verb) and one name. The compound sentence consists of two or more simple sentences.
Prescriptive grammars (from the II half of the 18th c.)
The most influential grammar of the period was R. Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar, first published in 1762.
The aim of prescriptive grammars was to reduce the English language to rules and to set up a standard of correct usage. The rise of prescriptive grammar met the demand for setting usage and for codifying and systematizing grammar.
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A very important innovation in the concept of the compound sentence was its subdivision into the compound sentence proper, with coordinated component parts, and the complex sentence, characterized by subordination of clauses. In this way the dichotomic classification of sentences into simple and compound was changed into a trichotomic division, according to which sentences are divided into simple, compound and complex.
Second period
Classical scientific grammar
By the end of the 19th century prescriptive grammar had reached the peak of its development. A grammar of a higher type was needed, a grammar which could give a scientific explanation of the grammatical phenomena. The appearance of H. Sweet’s New English Grammar, logical and Historical (1891) met this demand.
Scientific grammar was understood by its authors to be a combination of both descriptive and explanatory grammar.
Sweet describes the three main features characterizing the part of speech, namely meaning, form and function.
Classical Scientific English Grammar in the Modern Period
Authors’ aim was to describe English grammar scientifically as a whole.
Of all the authors of scientific grammars of the classical type O. Jespersen is the most original. His morphological system differs from the traditional in that he lists only five parts of speech substantives, adjectives, verbs, pronouns (the latter include pronominal adverbs and articles) and “particles”, in which he groups adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Like Sweet he proposes three principles of classification meaning, form and function.
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