Grammar imposes a gender agreement to achieve agreement.
Grammar is the science that studies the components of a language and their combinations. The concept finds its origin in the Latin term grammatĭca and refers to the art of mastering a language correctly , both in speech and writing.
To better understand these meanings we can establish a sentence as an example: «Sara was studying English because she wanted to obtain the First Certificate, for which her teacher always worked with her on the grammar of the language since it was the way to pass and obtain the degree. » .
What does it consist of?
Grammar, therefore, can be defined as the group of principles, rules and precepts that govern the use of a particular language (in this regard, it is important to keep in mind that each language has its own grammar). As a science, it is considered part of linguistics .
The study of language consists of four levels: the phonetic-phonological level , the syntactic-morphological level , the lexical-semantic level and the pragmatic level . Although the differences between these levels lack precision, the study of grammar is usually restricted to the syntactic-morphological level.
A discourse analysis from grammar examines how words are organized in sentences.
history of grammar
In addition to everything mentioned above, it must be emphasized that those who began to propose and develop grammar were the Greeks, among whom, in addition to Aristotle and Socrates , Crates de Malos stood out, who in the 2nd century BC. C. was the director of the Pergamon Library . Along with this figure, we must not overlook Elito Donato , who was characterized as the most important grammarian of the Latin language during the 4th century.
However, it must be made clear that the oldest document on grammar is dated 480 BC. C. in India and was made by Pánini . The name of this work is “Astadhiaia” .
The grammatical mood is a feature that affects how verbs are conjugated.
The study of a language
Based on the above, we can establish that when the grammar of a specific language is studied, it is approached from several points of view. Thus, first of all, you learn everything related to phonetics , which is the production of sounds. The branch of grammar devoted to the analysis of a language's sound system (including stress and intonation) is known as phonology .
In addition to the phonological level, emphasis is placed on morphology ; that is, the construction of words. Morphological analysis examines the internal components, such as the theme, the root or lexeme, the suffixes and the prefixes.
The syntax of the language is also not overlooked, which consists of studying how words are combined and the relationships between them. Morphology and syntax form the morphosyntactic level of analysis.
Semantics is also considered, which revolves around the construction of expressions; and etymology , thanks to which the origin of the words that are part of the language in question is analyzed.
Types of grammar
Among the different types of grammar or approaches in the analysis of this discipline , prescriptive grammar or normative grammar can be mentioned (it presents, in an authoritative manner, the rules of use for a specific language, disregarding non-standardized constructions); descriptive grammar (describes the current use of a language, without judging in a prescriptive way); traditional grammar (the ideas about grammar that have been inherited from Greece and Rome ); functional grammar (which provides a general perspective in relation to the organization of natural language); generative grammar (a formal approach to the syntactic study of languages) and formal grammar (which appears in computational linguistics).
Historical grammar , meanwhile, looks at how a language evolved over time. Comparative grammar , for its part, investigates the relationship between different languages.
Different approaches to the Spanish language, for example, lead to it being considered as an inflectional and fusional language (generally using inflection to mark the links between its elements). Furthermore, it is stated that it has a grammar similar to that of other Romance languages.
Its elements
It is important to indicate that multiple elements make up the grammar of a language. Among them are different types of words, such as adjectives , adverbs , articles , conjunctions , prepositions , pronouns , nouns and verbs .
At the same time, properties or modes such as grammatical aspect , grammatical case , grammatical category , grammatical agreement and grammatical tense must be considered. The combination of these elements must be done in the appropriate way so that grammatical errors do not occur and communication can be achieved.
Whether in simple sentences, compound sentences or subordinate clauses, the elements of grammar must be used as the rules indicate. Let's take the example of verb tenses : it is not correct to indicate that "Juan did not go to school tomorrow" since the conjugation of the verb appears in the past ( "was" ) and the adverb "tomorrow" refers to a future day, with the which the structure of the sentence is poorly put together.