History of English grammars

The history of English grammars[1][2] begins late in the sixteenth century with the Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar. In the early works, the structure and rules of English grammar were based on those of Latin. A more modern approach, incorporating phonology, was introduced in the nineteenth century.

Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar, written with the seeming goal of demonstrating that English was quite as rule-bound as Latin, was published in 1586.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534).[9] Lily's grammar was being used in schools in England at the time, having been "prescribed" for them in 1542 by Henry VIII.[5] Although Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a "reformed spelling system" of his own invention, many English grammars, for much of the century after Bullokar's effort, were to be written in Latin; this was especially the case for books whose authors were aiming to be scholarly.[5] Christopher Cooper's Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ (1685) was the last English grammar written in Latin.[10]

Latin grammar traditions bore down oppressively on early English grammar writing. Any attempt by one author to assert an independent grammatical rule for English was quickly followed by declarations by others of the truth of the corresponding Latin-based equivalent.[11] As late as the early nineteenth century, Lindley Murray, the author of a widely used grammar, was having to cite "grammatical authorities" to bolster the claim that grammatical cases in English are different from the ones in Ancient Greek or Latin.[11]

The focus on tradition belied the role that other social forces had begun to play in the early seventeenth century. Increasing commerce, and the social changes in its wake, created a new impetus for grammar writing.[11] The greater British role in international trade in the second half of the century, created a demand for English grammars among speakers of other languages. Quite a few English grammars were published in European languages.[11] Grammars were also being written for "non-learned, native-speaker audiences" in Britain, such as women, merchants, tradesmen, and children.[11] As education and literacy had become more widespread by the early eighteenth century, many grammars, such as John Brightland's A Grammar of the English tongue (1759) and James Greenwood's Essay towards a practical English grammar, were intended for those without a Latin background, including the "fair sex" and children.[11]

If by the end of the seventeenth century, English grammar writing had made a modest start, totalling 16 grammars from the time of Bullokar's Pamphlet, by the end of the eighteenth century, a brisk pace had been set with some 270 titles added,[12] a large proportion published late in the century.[13] Both publishing and demand were to continue to mushroom. The first half of the nineteenth century would see the appearance of almost 900 new English grammar books.[12] Showing little originality, most took the tack of claiming—as justification for their appearance—that the needs of their particular target audience were still unmet or that a particular "grammatical point" had not been adequately treated in the preexisting texts, or oftentimes both.[12] Texts that aimed to be utilitarian and egalitarian were proliferating. Edward Shelley's The People's Grammar; or English Grammar Without Difficulties for 'the Million' (1848), for example, was written for "the mechanic and hard-working youth, in their solitary struggles for the acquirement of knowledge."[12] William Cobbett's popular mid-century book was titled, A Grammar of the English Language, In a Series of Letters: Intended for the Use of Schools and of Young Persons in General, but more especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Plough-Boys. Ann Fisher published her influential English grammar in 1745 and some 30 editions after that, making it one of the most popular early English grammars and the first written by a woman.

Eighteenth-century prescriptive grammars

Robert Lowth, Bishop of Oxford and thereafter of London, scholar of Hebrew poetry, and for a short time Oxford Professor of Poetry, was one of the best known of the widely emulated grammarians of the 18th century. A self-effacing clergyman, he published A Short Introduction to English Grammar, with critical notes (1762), his only work on the subject, without the author's name on the title page. His influence extended, through the works of his students Lindley Murray and William Cobbett, well into the late 19th century. He would also become, among prescriptive grammarians, the target of choice for criticism by later descriptivist linguists.[lower-alpha 1]

In America in 1765, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, founder and first president of King's College in New York City (now Columbia University) published An English Grammar; the First Easy Rudiments of Grammar Applied to the English Tongue. It "appears to have been the first English grammar prepared by an American and published in America."[14] In 1767, Johnson combined his grammar with a Hebrew grammar, and published it as An English and Hebrew grammar, being the first short rudiments of those two languages, suggesting the languages be taught together to children.[15] Johnson developed his grammars independently of Lowth, but later corresponded and exchanged grammars with him.[16] English grammar increasingly held great significance for people in the United States with little to no income, and educational backgrounds. Learning the basic principles of grammar helped a cross-section ranging from former slaves to rail splitters and weavers to speak and write with fluency and rise in their careers.[17]

In Britain, the women Ellin Devis, Dorothea Du Bois, Mrs. M. C. Edwards, Mrs. Eves, Ellenor Fenn (aka Mrs. Teachwell and Mrs. Lovechild), Ann Fisher, Jane Gardiner née Arden, Blanche Mercy, and Mrs. Taylor, published some twelve grammars in the late 18th-century, their books running into many editions over several decades.[18] English grammar was being seen to be important not only for better English writing but also for learning other languages thereafter.[19]

Nineteenth century to present

Modern-language studies became systematized during the nineteenth century.[20] In the case of English, this happened first in continental Europe, where it was studied by historical and comparative linguists.[20] In 1832, Danish philologist Rasmus Rask published an English grammar, Engelsk Formlære, part of his extensive comparative studies in the grammars of Indo-European languages.[20] German philologist Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, included English grammar in his monumental grammar of Germanic languages, Deutsche Grammatik (1822–1837).[20] German historical linguist Eduard Adolf Maetzner published his 1,700 page Englische Grammatik between 1860 and 1865; an English translation, An English grammar: methodical, analytical and historical appeared in 1874.[20] Contributing little new to the intrinsic scientific study of English grammar, these works nonetheless showed that English was being studied seriously by the first professional linguists.[20]

As phonology became a full-fledged field, spoken English began to be studied scientifically as well, generating by the end of the nineteenth century an international enterprise investigating the structure of the language. This enterprise comprised scholars at various universities, their students who were training to be teachers of English, and journals publishing new research.[20] All the pieces were in place for new "large-scale English grammars" which combined the disparate approaches of the previous decades.[20] The first work to lay claim to the new scholarship was British linguist Henry Sweet's A new English grammar: logical and historical, published in two parts, Phonology and Accidence (1892) and Syntax (1896), its title suggesting not only continuity and contrast with Maetzner's earlier work, but also kinship with the contemporary A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (begun 1884), later the Oxford English Dictionary (1895).[20] Two other contemporary English grammars were also influential.[21] English Grammar: Past and Present, by John Collinson Nesfield, was originally written for the market in colonial India. It was later expanded to appeal to students in Britain as well, from young men preparing for various professional examinations to students in "Ladies' Colleges."[21] Other books by Nesfield include A Junior Course In English Composition, A Senior Course In English Composition, but it was his A Manual Of English Grammar and Composition that proved really successful both in Britain and her colonies—so much so that it formed the basis for many other grammar and composition primers including but not limited to Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, and High School English Grammar and Composition, casually called Wren & Martin, by P. C. Wren and H. Martin. Grammar of spoken English (1924), by H. E. Palmer, written for the teaching and study of English as a foreign language, included a full description of the intonation patterns of English.[21]

The next set of wide-ranging English grammars were written by Danish and Dutch linguists.[22] Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, who had coauthored a few books with Henry Sweet, began work on his seven-volume Modern English grammar on historical principles in the first decade of the twentieth century.[22] The first volume, Sounds and Spellings, was published in 1909; it then took forty years for the remaining volumes on syntax (volumes 2 through 5), morphology (volume 6), and syntax again (volume 7), to be completed.[22] Jespersen's original contribution was in analyzing the various parts of a sentence in terms of categories that he named, rank, junction, and nexus, forgoing the usual word classes. His ideas would inspire the later work of Noam Chomsky and Randolph Quirk.[22]

The Dutch tradition of writing English grammars, which began with Thomas Basson's The Conjugations in Englische and Netherdutche in the same year—1586—as William Bullokar's first English grammar (written in English), gained renewed strength in the early 20th century in the work of three grammarians: Hendrik Poutsma, Etsko Kruisinga, and Reinard Zandvoort.[22] Poutsma's Grammar of late modern English, published between 1904 and 1929 and written for "continental, especially Dutch students," selected all its examples from English literature.[23]

Timeline of important English grammars

See also

Footnotes
  1. Lowth wrote against preposition stranding, using "whose" as the possessive case of "which", and using "who" instead of "whom" in certain cases.

Notes
  1. Proffitt, Michael, ed. (2023), "2. grammar (noun)", Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.), A treatise or book on grammar. Examples: 1530 'Folowyng the order of Theodorus Gaza, in his grammer of the Greke tonge.' J. Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement Epistle Ded; 1594 'I read it in the Grammer long agoe.' W. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus iv. ii. 23; ... 1693 'We have yet no English Prosodia, not so much as a tolerable Dictionary, or a Grammar.' J. Dryden, Discourse conc. Satire in J. Dryden et al., translation of Juvenal, Satires; 1751 'We are taught in common Grammars that Verbs Active require an Accusative.' J. Harris, Hermes i. ix. 179.(subscription required)
  2. Greenbaum, Sidney (1996), Oxford English Grammar, Oxford University Press, p. 23, ISBN 978-0-19-861250-6, The word grammar is used in a number of ways. It may refer to a book, in which case a grammar is analogous to a dictionary. And just as we have many English dictionaries, which vary in the number of their entries and the quality of their definitions, so we have many English grammars (or grammar books), which vary in their coverage and their accuracy. The largest English dictionary is the scholarly twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary, which traces the history of words and their meanings. Similarly, there are large scholarly grammars, notably the seven-volume Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, published at intervals between 1909 and 1949 and still consulted by scholars, and the more recent Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, published in 1985, that extends to nearly 1,800 pages.
  3. Aarts, Bas (2011), Oxford Modern English Grammar, Oxford University Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-19-953319-0, Many grammars of English were written in Latin up to the middle of the eighteenth century, though William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), the first grammar of English to be written in English, is an exception.
  4. Greenbaum, Sidney (1996), Oxford English Grammar, Oxford University Press, p. 37, ISBN 978-0-19-861250-6, The earliest known grammar of English was by William Bullokar, published in 1580 (sic), who wanted to show that English was as capable of grammatical analysis as was Latin.
  5. Linn 2008, p. 74
  6. Considine, John (2022), Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries, Dictionaries in the English-Speaking World, 1500–1800 series, Oxford University Press, p. 396, ISBN 978-0-19-883228-7, Just as Bullokar's Short introduction had been followed by the Booke at large in 1580, his Pamphlet for grammar appeared in 1586, as an octavo of eighty pages. Intended as a forerunner to a larger grammar which never appeared, it was, even in its abridged form, the first printed grammar of English.
  7. Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria (2015), Grammar, Rhetoric and Usage in English: Preposition Placement 1500–1900, Studies in English Language series, Cambridge University Press, pp. 25–26, ISBN 978-1-107-00079-7, The production of grammars of English increased dramatically during the second half of the eighteenth century, as Figure 2.1 shows. Publication rates in the early eighteenth century were still modest, following a slow development during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, starting with Willim Bullokar's Bref Grammar for English in 1586.
  8. Aarts, Bas; Bowie, Jill; Popova, Gergana (2020), "Introduction", in Aarts, Bas; Bowie, Jill; Popova, Gergana (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar, Oxford University Press, pp. xxiii–xxiv, ISBN 978-0-19-875510-4, Ever since William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar was published in 1586, countless grammars have been produced, with eighteenth-century authors particularly productive (Linn 2006). Each of these grammars is in many ways unique. Thus while Bullokar (1586:53) opined that English did not have much grammar ('As English hath few and short rules for declining words, so it hath few rules for joining words in sentence or in construction'; cited in Michael 1987:324), other grammarians struggled with the question of how many word classes to recognize.
  9. Lily 1709, original 1534
  10. Linn 2008, p. 74, Dons 2004, pp. 16–17
  11. Linn 2008, p. 75
  12. Linn 2008, p. 76
  13. Beal, Joan C. (July 2013). "The place of pronunciation in eighteenth-century grammars of English". Transactions of the Philological Society. 111 (2): 165–178. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12028.
  14. Lyman, Rollo La Verne, English Grammar in American Schools Before 1850, University of Chicago, 1922.
  15. English Short Title Catalogue, ESTC Citation No. W9287
  16. Schneider, Herbert and Carol, Samuel Johnson, President of King's College: His Career and Writings, Columbia University Press, 4 vols, 1929, Volume IV, index, p. 385
  17. Schweiger, Beth Barton (Winter 2010). "A Social History of English Grammar in the Early United States". Journal of the Early Republic. 30 (4): 535. doi:10.1353/jer.2010.a403326. JSTOR 40926064. S2CID 142679875.
  18. Cajka, Karen (2003). "The forgotten women grammarians of eighteenth-century England". Doctoral Dissertations (Doctoral Dissertations. Paper AAI3118940. ed.). University of Connecticut: 1–298. Retrieved 11 December 2015.
  19. Hilton, Mary; Shefrin, Jill (2009). Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 83.
  20. Linn 2008, pp. 78–79
  21. Linn 2008, p. 80
  22. Linn 2008, p. 81
  23. Linn 2008, p. 82
  24. Bullokar 1586a, Bullokar 1586b, Dons 2004, p. 7
  25. Dons 2004, pp. 8–9
  26. Dons 2004, pp. 10–12
  27. Dons 2004, pp. 10–12, Jonson 1756, original 1640
  28. Dons 2004, pp. 13–15
  29. Dons 2004, pp. 16–17
  30. Fisher 1750, original 1745
  31. Lowth 1775, original 1762
  32. Ash 1810, original 1763
  33. Ward 1765, Ward 1767
  34. Johnson 1766
  35. Priestley 1772, Hodson 2008
  36. Percy, Carol (1994). "Paradigms for their Sex? Women's Grammars in Late Eighteenth-Century England". Histoire Épistemologie Langage. 16: 123.
  37. DNB 00
  38. Murray 1809, original 1795, Murray 1838, original 1797
  39. Michael, Ian (1970). English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  40. Webster 1804, Webster 1822
  41. Cobbett 1883, original 1818
  42. Fowler 1881, original 1850
  43. Maetzner & Grece 1874a, Maetzner & Grece 1874c, Linn 2008, p. 79
  44. Sweet 1900, original 1892, Sweet 1898, Linn 2008, p. 79
  45. Poutsma & 1904–1929, Linn 2008, p. 81
  46. Kruisinga & 1909–1932, Linn 2008, p. 82
  47. Jespersen & 1909–1940
  48. Curme 1931, Curme 1935
  49. Zandvoort 1945, Linn 2008, p. 82
  50. Fries 1952, Linn 2008, p. 83
  51. Halliday 1984
  52. Quirk et al. 1985
  53. Biber et al. 1999
  54. Huddleston & Pullum 2002
  55. Carter & McCarthy 2006

References
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