10 Types of Grammar (and Counting)

Different Ways of Analyzing the Structures and Functions of Language

Melissa Bowerman reminds us that "[d]ifferent kinds of grammars make
different assumptions about the nature of the knowledge which
underlies linguistic performance" (Early Syntactic Development).聽
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By Richard Nordquist
Grammar & Composition Expert

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Updated March 19, 2016.

So you think you know grammar? All well and good, but which type of grammar do
you know?

Linguists are quick to remind us that there are different varieties of grammar--that is,
different ways of describing and analyzing the structures and functions of language.

One basic distinction worth making is that between descriptive grammar and
prescriptive grammar (also called usage). Both are concerned with rules--but in
different ways. Specialists in descriptive grammar examine the rules or patterns that
underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. In contrast, prescriptive
grammarians (such as most editors and teachers) try to enforce rules about what
they believe to be the correct uses of language.

But that's just the beginning. Consider these 10 varieties of grammar--and take your
pick. (For more information about a particular type, click on the highlighted term.)

1. Comparative Grammar
The analysis and comparison of the grammatical structures of related languages.
Contemporary work in comparative grammar is concerned with "a faculty of language that
provides an explanatory basis for how a human being can acquire a first language . . .. In this
way, the theory of grammar is a theory of human language and hence establishes the
relationship among all languages" (R. Freidin, Principles and Parameters in Comparative
Grammar. MIT Press, 1991).
聽

1. Generative Grammar
The rules determining the structure and interpretation of sentences that speakers accept as
 belonging to the language. "Simply put, a generative grammar is a theory of competence: a
model of the psychological system of unconscious knowledge that underlies a speaker's
ability to produce and interpret utterances in a language" (F. Parker and K. Riley, Linguistics
for Non-Linguists. Allyn and Bacon, 1994).
聽
2. Mental Grammar
The generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that
other speakers can understand. "All humans are born with the capacity for constructing a
Mental Grammar, given linguistic experience; this capacity for language is called the
Language Faculty (Chomsky, 1965). A grammar formulated by a linguist is an idealized
description of this Mental Grammar" (P. W. Culicover and A. Nowak, Dynamical Grammar:
Foundations of Syntax II. Oxford University Press, 2003).
聽
3. Pedagogical Grammar
Grammatical analysis and instruction designed for second-language students. "Pedagogical
grammar is a slippery concept. The term is commonly used to denote (1) pedagogical
process--the explicit treatment of elements of the target language systems as (part of)
language teaching methodology; (2) pedagogical content--reference sources of one kind or
another that present information about the target language system; and (3) combinations of
process and content" (D. Little, "Words and Their Properties: Arguments for a Lexical
Approach to Pedagogical Grammar." Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar, ed. by T. Odlin.
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
聽
4. Performance Grammar
A description of the syntax of English as it is actually used by speakers in dialogues.
"[P]erformance grammar . . . centers attention on language production; it is my belief that
the problem of production must be dealt with before problems of reception and
comprehension can properly be investigated" (John Carroll, "Promoting Language Skills."
Perspectives on School Learning: Selected Writings of John B. Carroll, ed. by L. W. Anderson.
Erlbaum, 1985).
聽
5. Reference Grammar
A description of the grammar of a language, with explanations of the principles governing the
construction of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Examples of contemporary reference
grammars in English include A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by
Randolph Quirk et al. (1985), the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999),
and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002).
聽
6. Theoretical Grammar
The study of the essential components of any human language. "Theoretical grammar or
syntax is concerned with making completely explicit the formalisms of grammar, and in
providing scientific arguments or explanations in favour of one account of grammar rather
than another, in terms of a general theory of human language" (A. Renouf and A. Kehoe, The
Changing Face of Corpus Linguistics. Rodopi, 2003).
聽
7. Traditional Grammar
The collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about the structure of the language. "We
say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction between
what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it, according to a pre-
established standard. . . . The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a
historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language" (J. D. Williams, The
Teacher's Grammar Book. Routledge, 2005).
聽
8. Transformational Grammar
A theory of grammar that accounts for the constructions of a language by linguistic
transformations and phrase structures. "In transformational grammar, the term 'rule' is used
 not for a precept set down by an external authority but for a principle that is unconsciously
yet regularly followed in the production and interpretation of sentences. A rule is a direction
for forming a sentence or a part of a sentence, which has been internalized by the native
speaker" (D. Bornstein, An Introduction to Transformational Grammar. University Press of
America, 1984).
聽
9. Universal Grammar
The system of categories, operations, and principles shared by all human languages and
considered to be innate. "Taken together, the linguistic principles of Universal Grammar
constitute a theory of the organization of the initial state of the mind/brain of the language
learner--that is, a theory of the human faculty for language" (S. Crain and R. Thornton,
Investigations in Universal Grammar. MIT Press, 2000).
聽

If 10 varieties of grammar aren't enough for you, rest assured that new grammars
are emerging all the time. There's word grammar, for instance. And relational
grammar. Not to mention case grammar, cognitive grammar, construction grammar,
lexical functional grammar, lexicogrammar,聽 head-driven phrase structure grammar
. . . and many more.
聽

Next:
Reflections on Grammar From 1776 to the Present
聽

Related

 theoretical grammar
 Grammar - An Introduction in English
 What Is Generative Grammar?
 mental grammar

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sentence structure (English

grammar)
Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms
"The ability to speak or write by constructing the complex objects
which are sentences is something that only humans can do. Other
animals can communicate, but sentence structure is beyond them"
(Nigel Farb, Sentence Structure, 2005).聽 (RonTech2000/Getty Images)
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Updated June 29, 2016.

Definition

In English grammar,聽 sentence structure is the arrangement of words, phrases, and

clauses in a sentence. The grammatical meaning of a sentence is dependent on this
structural organization, which is also called syntax or syntactic structure.

In traditional grammar, the four basic types of sentence structures are the simple
sentence, the compound sentence, the complex sentence, and the compound-
complex sentence.

The most common word order in English sentences is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO).

When reading a sentence, we generally expect the first noun to be the subject and
the second noun to be the object. This expectation (which isn't always fulfilled) is
known in linguistics as the canonical sentence strategy.

See Examples and Observations below. Also see:

 Sentence Parts and Sentence Structures

 Active Voice and Passive Voice
 Exercise in Identifying Sentences by Structure
 Garden-Path Sentence
 Grammar
 Grammatical Function
 Grammaticality
 Parsing and Parts of Speech

 Sentence Combining
 Sentence Diagramming
 Sentence Processing
 Syntactic Ambiguity
 Word Class
聽

Sentence Structure and Usage

 Comma Splice, Fused Sentence, and Run-On Sentence
 Dangling Modifier, Misplaced Modifier, and Squinting Modifier
 Fragment and Sentence Fragment
 Parallelism and Parallel Structure
聽

Examples and Observations

 One of the first lessons learned by the student of language or linguistics is that there is more
to language than a simple vocabulary list. To learn a language, we must also learn its
principles of sentence structure, and a linguist who is studying a language will generally be
more interested in the structural principles than in the vocabulary per se."
(Margaret J. Speas, Phrase Structure in Natural Language. Kluwer, 1990)

聽
 "Sentence structure may ultimately be composed of many parts, but remember that the
foundation of each sentence is the subject and the predicate. The subject is a word or a
group of words that functions as a noun; the predicate is at least a verb and possibly includes
objects and modifiers of the verb."
(Lara Robbins, Grammar and Style at Your Fingertips. Alpha Books, 2007)
聽
 Meaning and Sentence Structure
"People are probably not as aware of sentence structure as they are of sounds and
words, because sentence structure is abstract in a way that sounds and words are
not. . . . At the same time, sentence structure is a central aspect of every
sentence. . . .

"We can appreciate the importance of sentence structure by looking at examples

within a single language. For instance, in English, the same set of words can convey
different meanings if they are arranged in different ways. Consider the following:
 (5) The senators objected to the plans proposed by the
generals.
(6) The senators proposed the plans objected to by the
generals.
 The meaning of the sentence in (5) is quite different from that of (6), even though
the only difference is the position of the words objected to and proposed. Although
both sentences contain exactly the same words, the words are structurally related
to each other differently; it is those differences in structure that account for the
difference in meaning."
(Eva M. Fern 谩 ndez and Helen Smith Cairns, Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics.
Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
聽
 Information Structure: The Given-Before-New Principle
"It has been known since the Prague School of Linguistics that sentences can be divided into
a part that anchors them in the preceding discourse ('old information') and a part that
conveys new information to the listener. This communicative principle may be put to good
use in the analysis of sentence structure by taking the boundary between old and new
information as a clue to identifying a syntactic boundary. In fact, a typical SVO sentence such
as Sue has a boyfriend can be broken down into the subject, which codes the given
information, and the remainder of the sentence, which provides the new information. The
old-new distinction thus serves to identify the VP [verb phrase] constituent in SVO
sentences."
(Thomas Berg, Structure in Language: A Dynamic Perspective. Routledge, 2009)

聽
 Producing and Interpreting Sentence Structures in Speech
"The grammatical structure of a sentence is a route followed with a purpose, a phonetic goal
for a speaker, and a semantic goal for a hearer. Humans have a unique capacity to go very
rapidly through the complex hierarchically organized processes involved in speech
production and perception. When syntacticians draw structure on sentences they are
adopting a convenient and appropriate shorthand for these processes. A linguist's account of
the structure of a sentence is an abstract summary of a series of overlapping snapshots of
what is common to the processes of producing and interpreting the sentence."
(James R. Hurford, The Origins of Grammar: Language in the Light of Evolution II. Oxford
University Press, 2011)
聽
 The Most Important Thing to Know About
Sentence Structure
"Linguists investigate sentence structure by
inventing sentences, making small changes to
them, and watching what happens. This means
that the study of language belongs to the
scientific tradition of using experiments to
understand some part of our world. For
example, if we make up a sentence (1) and then
make a small change to it to get (2), we find that
the second sentence is ungrammatical, as
indicated by the asterisk.

(1) I saw the white house.

(2) *I saw the house white.
 "Why? One possibility is that it relates to the
words themselves; perhaps the word white and
the word house must always come in this order.
But if we were to explain in this way we would
need separate explanations for a very large
 number of words, including the words in the
sentences (3)-(6), which show the same pattern.

(3) He read the new book.

(4) *He read the book new.
(5) We fed some hungry dogs.
(6) *We fed some dogs hungry.
 "These sentences show us that whatever
principle gives us the order of words, it must be
based on the class of word, not on a specific
word. The words white, new, and hungry are all
a class of word called an adjective; the words
house, book, and dogs are all a class of word
called a noun. We could formulate a
generalization, which holds true for the
sentences in (1)-(6):

(7) An adjective cannot immediately follow a noun.

 "A generalization . . . like (7) is an attempt to
explain the principles by which a sentence is put
together. One of the useful consequences of a
generalization is to make a prediction which can
then be tested, and if this prediction turns out to
be wrong, then the generalization can be
improved. . . . The generalization in (7) makes a
prediction which turns out to be wrong, when
we look at sentence (8).

(8) I painted the house white.

 "Why is (8) grammatical while (2) is not, given
that both end on the same sequence of house
white? The answer is the most important thing
to know about sentence structure . . .:

The grammaticality of a sentence depends not on the

sequence of words but how the words are combined into
phrases."
 (Nigel Fabb, Sentence Structure, 2nd ed.
Routledge, 2005)
聽

Related

 What Is a Grammatical Function in English?

 The Given-Before-New Principle in Linguistics
 What Are Constituents in English Grammar?
 Grammatical Categories in English

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Reflections on Grammar From 1776

to the Present
What Grammar Is, What It's Not, and Why It's Well Worth Studying
"Unfortunately, or luckily," wrote Edward Sapir, "no language is
tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak" (Language, 1921).聽 (Riko
Pictures/Getty Images
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By Richard Nordquist
Grammar & Composition Expert

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Updated July 22, 2016.

Ancient attitudes to grammar still survive: many people
are in awe of it, know little about it, tend to fear or
dislike it, often find it baffling and boring if exposed
to it at school, and yet a minority is fascinated by it:
a field in which precise scholarship and nit-picking
pedantry have co-existed for centuries.
(Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar, 1996)

One of the first articles I composed for this website back in 2006 was titled "What Is
Grammar?" And ever since then, as a member of the fascinated minority, I've been
attempting to clarify my response to that seemingly simple question. So consider this
an appendix to my earlier article: a gathering of reflections that I hope will
contribute to an understanding of what grammar is, what it's not, and why it's well
worth studying.

 George Campbell on the Business of Grammar (1776)

It is not the business of grammar, as some critics seem preposterously to imagine, to give law
to the fashions which regulate our speech. On the contrary, from its conformity to these, and
from that alone, it derives all its authority and value. For what is the grammar of any
language? It is no other than a collection of general observations methodically digested, and
comprising all the modes previously and independently established, by which the
significations, derivations, and combinations of words in that language are ascertained. It is
of no consequence here to what causes originally these modes or fashions owe their
existence 鈥攖 o imitation, to reflection, to affectation, or to caprice; they no sooner obtain
and become general than they are laws of the language, and the grammarian's only business
is to note, collect, and methodize them.
(George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776)
 Noah Webster on English Grammar (1789)
After all my reading and observation for the course of ten years, I have been able to unlearn
a considerable part of what I learnt in early life, and at thirty years of age can with
confidence affirm that our modern grammars have done much more hurt than good. The
authors have labored to prove what is obviously absurd, namely, that our language is not
made right; and in pursuance of this idea have tried to make it over again, and persuade the
English to speak by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own. Hence they have rejected
many phrases of pure English, and substituted those which are neither English nor sense. . . .

[It] is our business to find what the English language is, and not, how it might have been
made. The most difficult task now to be performed by the advocates of pure English, is to
restrain the influence of men, learned in Greek and Latin, but ignorant of their own tongue.
(Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, 1789)
聽
 William Cobbett on the Uses of Grammar (1818)
Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly,
but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give our words any other
meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express. This, therefore, is a science of
substantial utility.
(William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters, 1818)
聽
 Ralph Waldo Emerson on Grammar and Life (1837)
Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, in the insight into trades
and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the
one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our
perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through
the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we
get tiles and cope-stones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar.
Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar," August 31, 1837)
聽
 Gertrude Buck on "Make-Believe Grammar" (1909)
English grammar forfeit[s] its justification to a place in the curriculum of studies as the
science or theory of the English sentence, if it continues to treat its subject-matter in a
fashion essentially unscientific, averting the eyes from the facts of genuine speech and
writing, to analyze instead a fictitious construction of its own; if it studies and presents to
pupils, in lieu of the living language, an artificial substitute manufactured by the grammarian
and without real existence or usefulness in the world; if it holds and conveys to students
false conceptions of the English language not only as English but also as language itself. This
is "make-believe grammar" in its deadliest aspect. Until we have done with it entirely we
cannot begin to enter into the possibilities which real grammar offers to education in these
present days.
(Gertrude Buck, "Make-Believe Grammar." The School Review, January 1909)
聽
 Thomas Lounsbury on the Teaching of Grammar and Rhetoric (1911)
For as grammar is nothing but the generalization of the facts of utterance, so rhetoric is
nothing but the generalization of the facts of style. In both cases the facts must be known
before the generalizations can be appreciated or even understood. The child does not learn
his language from his grammar. After he has learned it in other ways, grammar steps in and
furnishes him a scientific analysis of what he has been doing. So rhetoric gives the student
the names of the different styles and describes the particular characteristics which go to
make up the one that is presumably perfect. But the perfect style itself it does not and it
cannot impart.
(Thomas R. Lounsbury, "Compulsory Composition in Colleges." Harper's Monthly Magazine,
November 1911)
聽
 Edward Sapir on Leaks in Grammar (1921)
Were a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine of conceptual
expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars
leak.
(Edward Sapir, Language, 1921)
聽
 Otto Jespersen on the Evolution of Language (1922)
Language, then, began with half-musical unanalyzed expressions for individual beings and
solitary events. Languages composed of, and evolved from, such words and quasi-sentences
are clumsy and insufficient instruments of thought, being intricate, capricious and difficult.
But from the beginning the tendency has been one of progress, slow and fitful progress, but
still progress towards greater and greater clearness, regularity, ease and pliancy. No one
language has arrived at perfection.
(Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin, 1922)
聽
 Leonard Bloomfield on Linguistics (1933)
It is only within the last century or so that language has been studied in a scientific way, by
careful and comprehensive observation . . .. Linguistics, the study of language, is only in its
beginnings. The knowledge it has gained has not yet become part of our traditional
education; the 鈥済 rammar 鈥?and other linguistic instruction in our schools confines itself
to handing on the traditional notions. Many people have difficulty at the beginning of
language study, not in grasping the methods or results (which are simple enough), but in
stripping off the preconceptions which are forced on us by our popular-scholastic doctrine.
(Leonard Bloomfield, Language, 1933)
聽
 Ernest Gowers on Grammarians' Fetishes (1954)
The old-fashioned grammarian certainly has much to answer for. He created a false sense of
values that still lingers. Too much importance is still attached to grammarians' fetishes and
too little to choosing the right words. But we cannot have grammar jettisoned altogether;
that would mean chaos.
(Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, 1954)
聽
 Noam Chomsky on Generative Grammar (1965)
A grammar of a language purports to be a description of the ideal speaker-hearer's intrinsic
competence. If the grammar is, furthermore, perfectly explicit 鈥攊 n other words, it does
not rely on the intelligence of the understanding reader but rather provides an explicit
analysis of his contribution 鈥攚 e may (somewhat redundantly) call it a generative grammar.
A fully adequate grammar must assign to each of an infinite range of sentences a structural
description indicating how this sentence is understood by the ideal speaker-hearer.
(Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965)
 M.A.K. Halliday on a Single Grammatical System (1972)
The lexical system is not something that is slotted in afterwards to a set of slots defined by
the grammar. The lexicon 鈥攊 f I may go back to a definition I used many years ago 鈥攊 s
simply the most delicate grammar. In other words, there is only one network of lexico-
grammatical options. And as these become more and more specific, they tend more and
more to be realized by the choice of a lexical item rather than by the choice of a grammatical
structure. But it is all part of a single grammatical system.
(M.A.K. Halliday, in an interview with Herman Parret, 1972. Interviews with M.A.K. Halliday:
Language Turned Back on Himself, 2013)
 Randolph Quirk et al. on Words and Meanings (1985)
Words must be combined into larger units, and grammar encompasses the complex set of
rules specifying such combination. Meaning relations in the language system are the business
of semantics, the study of meaning, and semantics therefore has relevance equally within
lexicology and within grammar. Finally, the meaning of linguistic expressions when uttered
within particular types of situation is dealt with in pragmatics, which is concerned with the
communicative force of linguistic utterances. Two terms are employed for the
interconnection of grammar and the uses of grammar: text linguistics and discourse analysis.
 All types of organization (but notably lexicology and grammar) enter into the structure of
texts, which constitute spoken and written discourse.
(Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive
Grammar of the English Language. Longman, 1985)
聽
 David Crystal on the Rules of Grammar (2006)
[G]rammar is the study of all the contrasts of meaning that it is possible to make within
sentences. The "rules" of grammar tell us how. By one count, there are some 3,500 such
rules in English.
(David Crystal, The Fight for English, 2006)
聽
 Ronald Langacker on the Meaningfulness of Grammar (2008)
[G]rammar is meaningful. This is so in two respects. For one thing, the elements of grammar
鈥攍 ike vocabulary items 鈥攈 ave meanings in their own right. Additionally, grammar
allows us to construct and symbolize the more elaborate meanings of complex expressions
(like phrases, clauses, and sentences). It is thus an essential aspect of the conceptual
apparatus through which we apprehend and engage the world. And instead of being a
distinct and self-contained cognitive system, grammar is not only an integral part of cognition
but also a key to understanding it.
(Ronald W. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction, 2008)

More About Grammar

 Why Does Grammar Matter?
 Ten Types of Grammar
 Why Should We Study English Grammar?

Related

 Definitions and Discussions of Grammar in English

 What Is Cognitive Grammar?
 More of 'Make-Believe Grammar' by Gertrude Buck
 Grammar - An Introduction in English