The history of grammar theory — страница 3

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expressed by a group of closely connected sentences, but early English grammarians identified the period with the sentence, so that the marks of punctuation (named after the parts of the period which they divided, such as the comma, the least part of the period, the colon, a member of the period, and the period itself, which denoted the mark of punctuation pointing to its completion) were at the same time intended to divide sentences and their parts, which as yet had no special names. As some colons were rather long, another mark of punctuation was added, the semicolon (a half-member), which was so named by analogy with the already existing terms. It was only in Brightland's grammar that the concept of the sentence was included in syntax proper. In Brightland's grammar sentences

are divided dichotomically into simple and compound. The simple sentence is defined as containing one affirmation (verb) and one name, signifying the subject of the affirmation expressed or understood. The compound sentence consists of two or more simple sentences. Alongside the logical terms introduced into syntax, the term "object" (deriving from medieval scholastic philosophy) was added to denote the third "principal" part of the sentence. But morphological terms (such as the nominative case or word, the noun, etc.) continued to be used in the description of the parts of the sentence. The concept of the compound sentence, which, judging by Brightland’s examples, denoted both complex and compound sentences, according to a classification introduced, much

later, was also due to logic, where propositions or judgments were divided into simple and compound. The second part of his syntax deals with the "construction of words" (as it does in older grammars). Prescriptive Grammars. The age of prescriptive grammar begins in the second half of the 18th century. 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 authors of prescriptive grammars believed that, their task was not only to prescribe, to provide rules for distinguishing what is right from what is wrong, but also to proscribe expressions which they considered to be wrong. In the

second half of the 18th century it was the grammarians who took upon themselves the responsibility of dictating the laws of grammar and usage. These grammarians settled most disputed points of usage by appealing to reason, to the laws of thought or logic, which were considered to be universal and to be reflected in the Universal, that is, Logical or Philosophical Grammar. But as O. Jespersen correctly observes, "In many cases what gives itself out as logic, is not logic at all, but Latin grammar disguised." There is then nothing whatever in logic which obliges the predicative to stand in the same case as the subject, that is, in the nominative. From the point of view of modern grammatical theory some changes which had taken place in the description of the morphological

system did not contribute to its improvement. In spite of the authority of Lowth and Murray, who had retained the scheme of nine parts of speech, the succeeding grammarians reverted to the system of eight parts of speech. They chose to class the article with the adjective, as it had been done in earlier grammars (e. g. in Wallis's grammar), rather than increase the number of the parts of speech beyond eight. In this case it was the older tradition which prevailed. This classification remains the most popular one in prescriptive and classical scientific grammars of the modern period. Another morphological problem which in the earliest grammars had caused considerable disagreement among grammarians and admitted of various solutions came to be settled to the satisfaction of the

authors of prescriptive grammars. This was a problem which continues to be subject of dispute to this day — the number of cases in English. Lowth adopted a two-case system for nouns and a three-case system for pronouns, and the term "possessive case", which is extremely popular now. The paradigm of the declension of personal pronouns included the nominative case, the possessive pronoun as a form of the possessive case and the objective case, the latter term also having been most likely introduced by Lowth. After a great deal of vacillation, Murray, in the later editions of his grammar, decided to adopt the three-case system for nouns. The three-case system was adopted almost unanimously by all prescriptive grammars of the 19th century and later, until in the 1920's