ENGLISH GRAMMAR QUESTIONS - CLASSIC VS. DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
 
 

QUESTION 22 - CLASSIC vs. DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR


October 10, 2018

Based on our recent investigations, it came out that—surprisingly!—most linguists have absolutely no idea of what is the entire fuss about, with classic grammar and descriptive grammar. Naturally, ordinary people are completely out of the loop.

This is not good, dear friends, because our World has become a large village, lately. Therefore, important information (as is, say, social/economical/political contracts, scientific data, statistics, rates, new discoveries etc) need to be properly translated from English to other languages, and backwards. We can do that, but only if we use a single grammatical reference—an adequate one that covers all the possible and impossible aspects of grammar.
RED LEAVES
Descriptive grammar is just a limited, incomplete and, unfortunately, an incorrect interpretation of grammar. Why is that? How comes? Well, we are going to explain things, in some details, right on this page.

[Attention: theoretically, this article is addressed to (top) English language grammarians. However, it is also our intention to explain "things" as plain and logic as possible, so that (almost) anybody should get a solid grasp of the entire problem.]

Grammar assembly


A. GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

Classic grammar has been developed over centuries, by thousand of intellectuals, some known plus very many unknown, English and foreign scholars alike. Unfortunately, classic grammar went on becoming, somehow, abandoned after the second WW, in favor of descriptive grammar.

Now, in spite of the modern fashion in grammar, O G POPA, the author of "Logically Structured English Grammar 4" (plus many other books), has been working steadily, for the past 20 years, on vamping up classic grammar onto new (logic) perspectives. Consequently, classic grammar has evolved a lot, way beyond any recent endeavors of descriptive grammar.

The picture on right illustrates the processes involved in a classic grammar analysis. The directory sequence to follow is:

1. grammar principles;
2. syntactic functions (+case analyses);
3. morphologic elements.

Grammatical processes specified above are going to be detailed, more or less, into the following paragraphs.



B. DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR ORIGINS

Whenever we intend to analyze something, the best thing possible is to start with a little bit of history, in order to explain "the cause" and "the roots" of things. As mentioned, descriptive grammar has captivated grammarians' attention after the 2nd WW. What happened, the IT programmers (plus many other scientists) went on developing the protocols on theoretical requirements of AI [Artificial Intelligence].

As a result, a true AI needs to "understand" messages (to perfection), to learn from experience and from the environment (including from written texts), and then to express itself (also perfectly clear). Such specialized requirements mean one thing only: AI must know grammar!

Now, in order to program a machine to understand grammar, all grammatical aspects need to be dissected to the finest and simplest "forms"—of the "0/1" type, and that is extremely difficult to program. Consequently, teams of linguists, mathematicians, and programmers have elaborated a few "grammar protocols", each one developed as a new mathematical interpretation of grammar. Those were the very first "versions" of the future descriptive grammar.



C. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR?
GREEN LEAF
C.1 Please think of descriptive grammar as being a bunch of programmed grammatical modules for AI—for mechanical (logic) intelligence. Naturally, there are a lot of new mathematical terms in this programmed-grammar, as a first important observation. So, is that a bad thing, or a good one? Well . . . neither; it has nothing to do with being a good or a bad thing. You see, we already have grammatical terms, in classic grammar, for everything descriptive grammar attempts to re-name. Therefore, why should we need new mathematical terms to rename the old, well known, grammatical ones; besides, what about the KISS principle?

C.2 The second interesting aspect about descriptive grammar is the way it was formed, in the first place. It has been mentioned previously that, in order to program grammar for AI, a particularly deep level of details was imperatively needed. More specific, we are talking here about the level of "local groups/phrases" that are currently analyzed in Morphology, in classic grammar, via "local agreements"—so, there is again nothing new under the sun, in reality.

Machines are able to understand only the concrete "form analyses" employed in Morphology, not the abstract "functional analyses" of Sentence Syntax. Further, AI needs to understand the meaning of each word, within its local word-cluster (taken as one functional group/phrase). Overall, it seems that descriptive grammar is a phrase driven analysis, as opposed to sentence analysis in classic grammar. Consequently, it comes out that descriptive grammar is an incomplete grammatical interpretation, since it is not finished at sentence level


Re-evaluated by O G POPA in LSEG4, it is sufficient to consider only sentences and expressions in a classic grammatical analysis. Accordingly, there are a few specific requirements for a sentence to become qualified as being a "syntactic sentence"; otherwise, it remains a "morphologic expression".
 

LSEG 4TH EDITIONDescriptive grammar ends its analysis at group/phrase level, for each word, intentionally, so that it remains an "open system of endless possibilities"—the perfect ground for countless grammatical speculations. Fine with us; however, descriptive grammar has no practical value, in society, since it is totally useless.

The result today is, education throughout the World has no universal, correct, logic grammatical interpretations to sustain it. That is a pandemic tragedy that has already manifested itself in a global economy crisis, hectic and unpredictable international and national politics, plus in generalized terror, violence and vulgarism in our day to day social life. In addition, intelligent evolution, revolutionary inventions, plus advanced intellectual developments are all severely impaired, due to the blunt descriptive grammar's lack of universal communication (and of logic cohesion).

C.3 Another major characteristic of descriptive grammar is the fact that it works with the so called "morpho-syntax" methodology. This presumably implies that the linguists are free to mix syntactical notions with the morphological ones, to their hearts' content. Sorry, Sir, but it doesn't work that way. Morphology and Syntax domains have too little in common; in order to relate morphological elements to syntactical functions we need to perform a "case analysis" first.

The category of case works as an indicator, to help us relate one specific morphologic element to the corresponding syntactic functionality it has, within its particular sentence structure. Unfortunately, the case has never been thoroughly investigated by the (English) linguists, since ever, therefore most grammar books (and particularly those published in the English nations) do not present (and they do not work properly with) the category of case. That results in a mumbo-jumbo of grammar.


It is worth highlighting here that O G POPA has investigated the category of case as never before in grammar history. Consequently, grammatical correspondence between morphology and syntax, via the (proper) case, has become perfectly functional, logic, and . . . it simplifies the theory a lot! Sure, except, all those advanced wonderful developments of grammar are currently unpublished, for the time being.  
 

C.4 The final major characteristic of descriptive grammar is precisely . . . classic grammar! Regardless of any arguments "modern linguists" would invoke, the entire descriptive grammar is only a non-functional fraction of the classic grammar, explained in different words. Note that descriptive grammar has been developed, initially, from classic grammar, though only to suit the needs of the linguists for "an open system of endless possibilities"—and that is the entire mystery about it. Aside from those dandy mathematical terms (totally inappropriate), descriptive grammar brings/explains exactly NOTHING NEW, dear people!
Principles Functions and Elements of Grammar


D. THE LATEST ACHIEVEMENTS IN CLASSIC GRAMMAR

If there is nothing new in (the senseless) descriptive grammar, there are plenty of exciting developments in the good old classic grammar, as it is presented in "Principles Functions and Elements of Grammar" [PFEG] ISBN 978 606 92635 87. Unfortunately, this book is unpublished, and it will remain unpublished, for the time being [due to the current sky rocketing inflation, and to the (actual) lack of funds].

Now, back to the latest achievements in classic grammar, we present here only a glimpse of the bird's eye view.

1. Particularly importantfundamentally, in factin PFEG are presented the requirements needed to qualify sentences as being syntactical and/or morphological.
2. The entire Morphology is presented in a most simple and logic pedagogical format, to help the students most.
3. The mechanism of "Relational-Logic Syntactic Framework" [© O G POPA] simplifies the entire Sentence Syntax functionality dramatically, to just "the bare bones".
4. The backbone of Sentence Syntax, the Predicate, is presented correctly, as never before in grammar history.
5. Sentence Syntax analysis is seamlessly extended to Complex Sentence Syntax analysis.
6. Fundamental notions of (the literary) Style, particularly those that take precedence over grammar, are explained in "live" discriminating examples.
7. Using Punctuation to control grammar comes in a complete, compact presentation, marked by exhaustive examples + comments.
8. Plus many, many more tiny aspects needed to assembly a complete, pedagogical, grammatical instrument: the simplest possible, entirely functional and logic, and valid for any language on the Planet (and in the Universe).

As mentioned, project PFEG is addressed to linguist professionals and top specialists; for ordinary people, and also for students, teachers, instructors, educators, etc we have "Logically Structured English Grammar 4" book, plus "LSEG4-Exercises Workbook"—they help a lot!
 
 
 
 
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