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1500
First Period
Early (Prenormative) Grammar -
First Grammars in the History of English
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. -
Pamphlet for Grammar
The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar. It was modeled on William Lily’s Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices.
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R. Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar
The most influential grammar of the period was R. Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar. Robert Lowth was the first and the best known of the widely emulated grammarians of the 18th century. -
H. Sweet’s New English Grammar
The appearance of H. Sweet’s New English Grammar. “This work is intended to supply the want of a scientific English grammar”. -
Parts of the Sentence
J. C. Nesfield’s grammar should be mentioned. The author
chose a system, according to which the sentence has four distinct parts: the Subject, the Predicate and the Adjunct of the Predicate. -
Second Period
Classical Scientific Grammar -
H. R. Stokoe’s Understanding of Syntax
H. R. Stokoe’s Understanding of Syntax was also largely influenced by the views of prescriptive grammarians like Nesfield. -
Analytic Syntax (A representation of the structure of English)
Jespersen published his Analytic Syntax, in which he attempted to represent the structure of English. -
English as an Analytical Language
Jespersen tries to prove that English as an analytical language has reached a higher stage of development than other European Languages. -
Transformational Generative Grammar
N. Chomsky introduced and developed a new method widely known as Transformational Generative Grammar. It was first presented in Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (1957) and has been revised in his Aspect of the Theory of Syntax (1965).