Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Grammar |
GrammarNoun1. Studies of the formation of basic linguistic units. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "grammar" was first used: 1176. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
Computing | Grammar A formal definition of the syntactic structure of a language (see syntax), normally given in terms of production rules which specify the order of constituents and their sub-constituents in a sentence (a well-formed string in the language). Each rule has a left-hand side symbol naming a syntactic category (e.g. "noun-phrase" for a natural language grammar) and a right-hand side which is a sequence of zero or more symbols. Each symbol may be either a terminal symbol or a non-terminal symbol. A terminal symbol corresponds to one "lexeme" - a part of the sentence with no internal syntactic structure (e.g. an identifier or an operator in a computer language). A non-terminal symbol is the left-hand side of some rule. One rule is normally designated as the top-level rule which gives the structure for a whole sentence. A grammar can be used either to parse a sentence (see parser) or to generate one. Parsing assigns a terminal syntactic category to each input token and a non-terminal category to each appropriate group of tokens, up to the level of the whole sentence. Parsing is usually preceded by lexical analysis. Generation starts from the top-level rule and chooses one alternative production wherever there is a choice. See also BNF, yacc, attribute grammar, grammar analysis. Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. |
Dream Interpretation | To dream that you are studying grammar, denotes you are soon to make a wise choice in momentous opportunities. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Literature | Grammar Zenodotos invented the terms singular, plural, and dual. The scholars of Alexandria and of the rival academy of Pergamos were the first to distinguish language into parts of speech, and to give technical terms to the various functions of words. The first Greek grammar was by Dionysios Thrax, and it is still extant. He was a pupil of Aristarchos. Julius Cæsar was the inventor of the term ablative case. English grammar is the most philosophical ever devised; and if the first and third personal pronouns, the relative pronoun, the 3rd person singular of the present indicative of verbs, and the verb "to be" could be reformed, it would be as near perfection as possible. It was Kaiser Sigismund who stumbled into a wrong gender, and when told of it replied, "Ego sum Imperator Romanorum, ct supra grammaticam ' (1520, 1548-1572). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
In computer science a formal grammar is a way to describe a formal language, i.e., a set of finite-length strings over a certain finite alphabet. They are named formal grammars by analogy with the concept of grammar for human languages.
The basic idea behind these grammars is that we generate strings by beginning with a special start symbol and then apply rules that indicate how certain combinations of symbols may be replaced with other combinations of symbols. For example, assume the alphabet consists of 'a' and 'b', the start symbol is 'S' and we have the following rules:
then we can rewrite "S" to "aSb" by replacing 'S' with "aSb" (rule 1), and we can then rewrite "aSb" to "aaSbb" by again applying the same rule. This is repeated until the result contains only symbols from the alphabet. In our example we can rewrite S as follows: S -> aSb -> aaSbb -> aababb. The language of the grammar then consists of all the strings that can be generated that way; in this case: ba, abab, aababb, aaababbb, etc.
- 1. S -> aSb
- 2. S -> ba
Formal definition
A formal grammar G consists of the following components:
string in (Σ U N)* -> string in (Σ U N)*
- A finite set N of nonterminal symbols.
- A finite set Σ of terminal symbols that is disjoint from N.
- A finite set P of production rules where a rule is of the form
(where * is the Kleene star and U is set union) with the restriction that the left-hand side of a rule (i.e., the part to the left of the ->) must contain at least one nonterminal symbol. Usually such a formal grammar G is simply summarized as (N, Σ, P, S).
- A symbol S in N that is indicated as the start symbol.
The language of a formal grammar G = (N, Σ, P, S), denoted as L(G), is defined as all those strings over Σ that can be generated by starting with the start symbol S and then applying the production rules in P until no more nonterminal symbols are present.
Example
Consider, for example, the grammar G with N = {S, B}, Σ = {a, b, c}, P consisting of the following production rules
and the nonterminal symbol S as the start symbol. Some examples of the derivation of strings in L(G) are:
- 1. S -> aBSc
- 2. S -> abc
- 3. Ba -> aB
- 4. Bb -> bb
(where the used production rules are indicated in brackets and the replaced part is each time indicated in bold).
- S -> (2) abc
- S -> (1) aBSc -> (2) aBabcc -> (3) aaBbcc -> (4) aabbcc
- S -> (1) aBSc -> (1) aBaBScc -> (2) aBaBabccc -> (3) aaBBabccc -> (3) aaBaBbccc -> (3) aaaBBbccc -> (4) aaaBbbccc -> (4) aaabbbccc
It is clear that this grammar defines the language { anbncn | n > 0 } where an denotes a string of n a's.
Formal grammars are identical to Lindenmayer systems (L-systems), except that L-systems are not affected by a distinction between terminals and nonterminals, L-systems have restrictions on the order in which the rules are applied, and L-systems can run forever, generating an infinite sequence of strings. Typically, each string is associated with a set of points in space, and the "output" of the L-system is defined to be the limit of those sets.
Classes of grammars
Some restricted classes of grammars, and the languages that can be derived with them, have special names and are studied separately. One common classification system for grammars is the Chomsky hierarchy, a set of four types of grammars developed by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. The difference between these types is that they have increasingly stricter production rules and can express fewer formal languages. Two important types are context-free grammars and regular grammars. The languages that can be described with such a grammar are called context-free languages and regular languages, respectively. Although much less powerful than unrestricted grammars, which can in fact express any language that can be accepted by a Turing machine, these two types of grammars are most often used because parsers for them can be efficiently implemented. For example, for context-free grammars there are well-known algorithms to generate efficient LL parsers and LR parsers.
Context-free grammars
In context-free grammars, the left hand side of a production rule may only be formed by a single non-terminal symbol. The language defined above is not a context-free language, but for example the language { anbn | n > 0 } is, as it can be defined by the grammar G2 with N={S}, Σ={a,b}, S the start symbol, and the following production rules:
- 1. S -> aSb
- 2. S -> ab
Regular grammars
In regular grammars, the left hand side is again only a single non-terminal symbol, but now the right-hand side is also restricted: It may be nothing, or a single terminal symbol, or a single terminal symbol followed by a non-terminal symbol, but nothing else (sometimes a broader definition is used, one can allow longer strings of terminals or single non-terminals without anything else while still defining the same class of languages).
The language defined above is not regular, but the language { anbm | m,n > 0 } is, as it can be defined by the grammar G3 with N={S,A,B}, Σ={a,b}, S the start symbol, and the following production rules:
- 1. S -> aA
- 2. A -> aA
- 3. A -> bB
- 4. B -> bB
- 5. B -> ε
Terminology
Yet to write
- concrete syntax tree, abstract syntax tree
- left derivation, right derivation
- ambiguous grammar
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Formal grammar."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
simple:GrammarGrammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a language. That set of rules is also called the grammar of the language, and each language has its own distinct grammar. Grammar is part of the general study of language called linguistics.
The subfields of grammar are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
Speakers of a language follow that language's grammar as a common convention of mutual intelligibility. Violation of the grammar makes one's speech difficult to understand (as in "barked dog me at time for long"). The formal study of grammar is an important part of education from a young age through advanced learning, though the rules taught in schools are not a "grammar" in the sense most linguists use the term, as they are often prescriptive rather than descriptive.
Grammars evolve through usage and human population separations. With the advent of a written representation, formal rules about language usage tend to appear also. Formal grammars are codifications of usage that are developed by observation. As the rules become established and developed the concept of grammatical correctness can arise. This can often create a gulf between contemporary usage and that which is accepted as correct. However, it is accepted by a majority of modern linguists that no person whose brain functions are not severely impaired speaks "ungrammatically" in any well-defined, objective sense.
Planned languages are more common in the modern day. Many have been designed to aid human communication (such as Esperanto) or created as part of a work of Fiction (such as the Klingon language and Elvish language). Each of these artificial languages has its own grammar.
Programming languages used for the purpose of computer programming (such as Java) have grammars, but do not resemble human languages very much. These are called formal grammars. In particular, they conform precisely to a grammar generated by a push down finite state automaton, with arbitrarily complex commands. They usually lack questions, exclamations, simile, metaphor and other features of human languages.
There are a number of types of grammar that linguists recognise.
It is a myth that analytic languages have simpler grammar than synthetic languages. That languages have different levels of grammatical complexness can be shown to be false by realizing the fact that changes to words are not the only kind of grammar. Chinese is very context dependent. In other words, context accomplishes the same role as declension and conjugation. (Chinese does have some inflections, and more so in the past.) Latin, which is synthetic, uses affixes and inflections to accomplish the same role that Chinese does with syntax. Because Latin words are quite (though not completely) self-contained, a sentence can be made from scattered elements. In short, Latin has a complex affixion and a simple syntax, while Chinese has the opposite.
- Prescriptive grammar -- an attempt to tell the users of the language how to use it in order to speak correctly. Such grammars are not normally considered to have any real linguistic justification beyond their authors' aesthetic tastes.
- Descriptive grammar -- the method of describing the language as it is being used, regardless whether it is considered correct or not. All languages develop and change, often adding new forms and dropping old rules.
- Teaching grammar -- a combination of prescriptive and descriptive approaches with the aim of teaching a language to children and foreigners. In teaching grammars it is often necessary to simplify in order to achieve success, as neither the prescriptive nor the descriptive approaches are logical or easy to understand in all details.
- Generative grammar -- A technical linguistic term. A generative grammar for a particular language specifies, for each string of words, whether or not that string constitutes a grammatical sentence in that language. It does not provide a set of rules for constructing or parsing sentences.
Grammars of specific languages
- Arabic grammar
- Chinese grammar
- English grammar
- Esperanto grammar
- Finnish language grammar
- French grammar
- German grammar
- Hebrew grammar
- Italian grammar
- Japanese grammar
- Latin grammar
- Russian grammar
- Spanish grammar
- Swedish grammar
Grammatical terms
- adjective
- adjunct
- adverb
- article
- aspect
- auxiliary verb
- case
- clause
- closed class word
- comparative
- complement
- compound noun and adjective
- conjugation
- dangling modifier
- declension
- expletive
- function word
- gender
- infinitive
- measure word (classifier)
- modal particle
- modifier
- mood
- noun
- number
- object
- open class word
- part of speech
- particle
- phrase
- phrasal verb
- predicate (also verb phrase)
- preposition
- pronoun
- pseudo-Anglicism
- sandhi
- subject
- superlative
- tense
- uninflected word
- verb
- voice
Grammatical devices
- Affixion
- Alternation
- Reduplication
- Word Order
Related Topics
- Syntax
- Systemic functional grammar
- Word grammar
- Functional grammar
- Transformational-generative grammar
- Role and reference grammar
- Phrase structure rules
- Government and Binding
- Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
- Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG)
- List of -onyms
- Principles and Parameters
- Minimalist Program
- List of words widely abused in English
- Disputed English grammar
In computer science, the syntax of each programming language is defined by a formal grammar. In theoretical computer science and mathematics, formal grammars define formal languages. The Chomsky hierarchy defines several important classes of formal grammars.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Grammar."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Croatian grammars before the 20th century
1604 Bartol Kašić, Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (Rome). (A description of Croatian literary idioms based on the Čakavian and tokavian dialects)
1639 Rajmund Đamanjić, Nauk za dobro pisati latinskijem slovima riječi jezika slovinskoga (How to spell Croatian words in Latin characters) (complicated spelling solutions).
1649 Jakov Micaglia, Grammatika talianska ukratko illi kratak nauk za naucitti latinski (A short Italian grammar or short instructions on how to master Latin) (containing a dictionary).
1665 Juraj Križanić, Gramatično iskazanje ob ruskom jeziku (A grammatical outline of the Russian language), Tobolsk (A general Slavic grammar based on data concerning the Slavic languages which were available to the author). Characteristics of the Croatian literary language were marked, so that “it contains a standard 17th century Croatian grammar”
1728 Ardelio della Bella, Instruzioni della lingua illirica, in: Dizionario Italiano"Latino"Illirico, Venice.
1761 Blaž Tadijanović, Svašta po malo iliti kratko složenje imena i riči u ilirski i njemački jezik (Miscellany, or a short Illyrian and German grammar).
1767 Matija Antun Reljković, Nova slavonska i nimačka gramatika (A new Slavonian and German grammar).
1778 Marijan Lanosović, Neue Einleitungzurslavonischen Sprache, Osijek (with Slavonisches Worterbuch at the end).
1793 Josip Jurin, Grammatica Illyricae iuventuti Latino Italoque sermone instruendae accomodata, Venice.
1803 Josip Voltiggi, Grammatica illirica, in: Ricoslovnik illiricskoga, italianskoga i nimacskoga jezika s’ jednom pridpostavljenomm grammatikom illi pismenstvom: sve ovo sabrano i sloxeno od Jose Voltiggi Istranina, (A dictionary of the Illyrian, Italian and German languages with a grammar and orthography) Vienna.
1808 Francesco Maria Appendini, Grammatica della lingua Il lirica, Dubrovnik. (The grammar points to the supraregional character of the neo" tokavian dialect which replaced the former Cakavian and tokavian literary idioms in southern provinces).
1812 ime Starčević, Nova ričoslovnica ilirička (A new Illyrian grammar), Trieste (an attempt to come closer to the vernacular by describing the language of folk proverbs; the four"accent system of the Ikavian variant of the tokavian dialect was described for the first time).
1833 Ignjat Alojzije Brlić, Grammatik der illyrischen Sprache, Ofen.
1836 Vjekoslav Babukić, Osnova slovnice slavjanske narječja ilirskoga (Foundations of the Slavic grammar of the Illyrian dialect) (first published in Danica ilirska in 1836).
1839 Antun Mažuranić, Temelji ilirskoga i latinskoga jezika za početnike (Foundations of the Illyrian and Latin languages), Zagreb.
1843 Ilija Rukavina Ljubački, Abanderungs = und Abwandlungs = Formen nebst den Regeln der Aussprache und Rechtschreibung, Trieste.
1847 Lavoslav Furholzer, Horvatsko"slavonska slovnica za početnike (A Croatian"Slavonian grammar for beginners), Varaždin.
1850 Rudolf Froehlich, Theoretische"praktische Taschen"Grammatik der illirischen Sprache, Vienna.
1850 Andrija Stazić, Grammatica della lingua illirica ad uso degli amatori nazionali e stranieri che bramano d’impararla. Zadar.
1850 Jerolim Sutina, Principi di grammatica illirica esposti da Girolamo Suttina, in: Vocaboli di prima necessita..., Zadar.
1851 Andrija Stazić, Slovnica serbsko"ilirskoga jezika za decu u Dalmaciji i u druzih deržavah jugoslavjanskih (A grammar of the Serbian"Illyrian language for children in Dalmatia and other Yugoslav countries), Split.
1852 Fran Kurelac, Kako da sklanjamo imena ili greške hrvatskih pisac glede sklonovanja 2"A padeža množine (How to decline nouns, or mistakes of Croatian writers with respect to the second case plural) (a study).
1854 Andrija Torkvat Brlić, Grammatik der illyrischen Sprache, Vienna.
1854 Fran Volarić, Ilirska slovnica za početne učionice (An Illyrian grammar for elementary schools), Trieste.
1855 Ivan Danilo, Grammatica della lingua illirica, Zadar.
1855 Andrija Stazić, Grammatica illirica pratica secondo il metodo di Ahne di Ollendorff, Split.
1859 Antun Mažuranić, Slovnica hervatska (A Croatian grammar).
1859 Adolfo Veber Tkalčević, Skladnja ilirskoga jezika za niže gimnazije (Syntax of the Illyrian language for grammar schools), Vienna.
1860 Vinko Pacel, Slovnica jezika Hrvatskoga ili Srbskoga (A grammar of the Croatian or Serbian language), Zagreb.
1862 Adolfo Veber Tkalčević, Slovnica za četvrti razred katoličkih glavnih učionah u Carevini austrijanskoj (A grammar for the fourth class of Catholic schools in the Austrian Empire), Vienna.
1864 Vatroslav Jagić, Gramatika jezika hervackoga (A grammar of the Croatian language), Zagreb.
1865 Vinko Pacel, Oblici književne hrvaštine (Forms of the Croatian literary heritage), Karlovac.
1867 Pero Budmani, Grammatica della lingua serbo"croata, Vienna (The term Serbo"Croatian was here used in a title of a grammar for the first time).
1869 Paul Pierre, Abrege de grammaire francaise"croate et de dictionnaire francais"croate, Zagreb.
1871 Adolfo Veber Tkalčević, Slovnica hervatska za srednja učilišta (A Croatian grammar for secondary schools), Zagreb.
1873 Ivan Danilo, Slovnica za srednja učilišta nižega reda (A grammar for lower secondary schools), Zadar.
1873 Dragutin Parčić, Grammatica della lingua slava (illirica) compilata da P. Carlo A. Parčić, Zadar.
1879 Mirko Divković, Hrvatske gramatike I. dio. Oblici. (Croatian grammar. I part. Forms).
1880 Mirko Divković, Nauka o izreci. (Sentence grammar).
1880 Josip Vitanović, Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika. (Grammar of the Croatian language).
1881 Mirko Divković, Hrvatske gramatike II. dio. Sintaksa za školu. (Croatian grammar. Part II. Syntax for schools).
1893 Rudolf Strohal, Hrvatska slovnica (Croatian grammar).
1899 Tomo Maretić, Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskog jezika (Grammar and stylistics of the Croatian or Serbian language).
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "List of books on Croatian grammar."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A subfield of linguistics, syntax is the study of the rules, or "patterned relations," that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. It concerns how different words which are categorized as nouns, adjectives, verbs etc. (goes back to Dionysios Trax) are combined into clauses which in turn combine into sentences.
Cognitive linguistics
- phonetics
- phonology
- morphology
- syntax
- grammar
- semantics
- lexical semantics
- stylistics
- pragmatics
In the framework of transformational-generative grammar (see also transformational grammar for information on the development of the theory) the structure of a sentence is represented by Phrase Structure Trees. Such a tree provides three types of information about the sentence it represents:
see also: Phrase, Phrase structure rules and Syntactic categories In computer science, the term syntax is used to denote the literal text of something written in a formal language or programming language, as opposed to its semantics or meaning.
- the linear order of the words in the sentence (though not in all theories of syntax)
- the groupings of words into syntactic categories
- the hiearchial structure of the syntactic categories.
The analysis of programming language syntax usually entails the transformation of a linear sequence of tokens (a token is akin to an individual word or punctuation mark in a natural language) into a hierarchical syntax tree (abstract syntax trees are one convenient form of syntax tree). This process, called parsing, is in some respects analogous to syntactic analysis in linguistics; in fact, certain concepts, such as the Chomsky hierarchy and context-free grammars, are common to the study of syntax in both linguistics and computer science. However, the applications of these concepts vary widely between the two fields, and the practical resemblances are small.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Syntax."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
| BNF,CF grammar | English | Backus normal form | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Beginning | Rudiments, elements, outlines, grammar, alphabet, ABCE. |
Grammar | Noun: grammar, accidence, syntax, praxis, punctuation; parts of speech; jussive; syllabication; inflection, case, declension, conjugation; us et norma loquendi; Lindley Murray; (schoolbook); correct style, philology; (language). Verb: parse, punctuate, syllabicate. |
Language | Lexicology, philology, glossology, glottology; linguistics, chrestomathy; paleology, paleography; comparative grammar. |
School | School book, horn book, text book; grammar, primer, abecedary, rudiments, manual, vade mecum; encyclopedia, cyclopedia; Lindley Murray, dictionary, lexicon. |
Day school, boarding school, preparatory school, primary school, infant school, dame's school, grammar school, middle class school, Board school, denominational school, National school, British and Foreign school, collegiate school, art school, continuation school, convent school, County Council school, government school, grant-in-aid school, high school, higher grade school, military school, missionary school, naval school, naval academy, state-aided school, technical school, voluntary school, school; school of art; kindergarten, nursery, creche, reformatory. | |
Solecism | Verb: use bad grammar, faulty grammar; solecize, commit a solecism; murder the King's English, murder the Queen's English, break Priscian's head. |
Noun: solecism; bad grammar, false grammar, faulty grammar; slip of the pen, slip of the tongue; lapsus linguae; slipslop; bull; barbarism, impropriety. | |
Teaching | Exercise, task; curriculum; course, course of study; grammar, three R's, initiation, A.B.C.; (beginning). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Mmmm aah. bad grammar overload (The Simpsons; writing credit: Artur Brauner; Paul Hengge) Don't question the king's grammar! (VeggieTales: King George and the Ducky; writing credit: Daniel Reitz) Don't let the excitement spoil your grammar, Eddy (Ed, Edd n' Eddy; writing credit: Jan Dirchsen; Mikkel Dyrting) Good grammar. (Even Stevens; writing credit: Sarah Jane Cunningham) | |
Clever | Life is like a grammar lesson: You find the past perfect and the present tense. (references; author: unknown) | |
Tongue Twisters | Gertie's great-grandma grew aghast at Gertie's grammar. (references; author: unknown) | |
Song Titles | Country Grammar (performing artist: Nelly) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
| ||
Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
| ||
High Tech |
| ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Abraham Lincoln statue, sculpted by Pietro Mezzara, located in front of a grammar school in San Francisco, California. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Mrs. Doris MacDougal (right), a teacher in the third grade and principal of the McLain Grammar School in Rockland, Maine, talking with another teacher. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | The grammar school and guild chapel, Stratford. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Grammar School, No. 56, New York City--Assembled for morning exercises. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Vineyard St. Grammar School, June 1922. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Elbert Hubbard | Grammar is the grave of letters. |
Friedrich Nietzsche | I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar. |
MoliFre | Grammar, which can govern even Kings. |
Octavio Paz | Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | Everything obeys success, even grammar. |
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Joyce, James | But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. |
Gulliver's Travels | Swift, Jonathan | My son Johnny, named so after his uncle, was at the Grammar School, and a towardly child |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Children | Bosnia and Herzegovina | Language questions were resolved by using both Latin and Cyrillic script, and by requirements that teachers not penalize students for lexicon or grammar usage identified more with one language variant than another. (references) |
Economic History | Poland | U.S. companies should ensure that translations from English to Polish are performed only by professional translators who are knowledgeable with modern business Polish and grammar. (references) |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | HYPOCRITE, n. One who, profession virtues that he does not respect secures the advantage of seeming to be what he depises. I I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
Lyndon B. Johnson | 1963-1969 | There are hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers who never completed grammar school-who will see their children graduate from college. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Grammar" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.79% of the time. "Grammar" is used about 2,420 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 99.79% | 2,415 | 3,709 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.21% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Total | 100.00% | 2,420 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "grammar": CF grammar ♦ Chomsky grammar ♦ Comparative grammar ♦ descriptive grammar ♦ extended Affix Grammar ♦ functional unification grammar ♦ generative grammar ♦ girls' grammar school ♦ grammar analysis ♦ grammar book ♦ grammar school ♦ immediate constituent grammar ♦ it's a bad grammar ♦ modern grammar school ♦ Montague grammar ♦ Pleuk grammar development system ♦ rule of grammar ♦ systemic grammar ♦ the rules of grammar ♦ universal grammar ♦ weakly adequate grammar. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "grammar": grammar-based, grammar-book, grammar-school, grammar-schools, grammar-secondary, grammar-sensitive, grammar-the. | |
Ending with "grammar": bio-grammar, ex-grammar, formal-grammar, lexicon-grammar, t-grammar, unification-grammar, window-grammar, word-grammar. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
grammar | 2,320 | grammar lesson plan | 57 |
english grammar | 1,408 | camille grammar | 57 |
grammar spencer | 547 | german grammar | 54 |
grammar rule | 262 | grammar guide | 50 |
grammar help | 235 | correct grammar | 50 |
kelsey grammar | 223 | grammar lesson | 49 |
country grammar | 214 | spelling and grammar | 49 |
spanish grammar | 195 | spanish grammar exercise | 47 |
grammar check | 156 | country grammar lyrics | 45 |
french grammar | 152 | grammar question | 44 |
grammar quiz | 117 | latin grammar | 44 |
grammar test | 112 | grammar school | 44 |
grammar worksheets | 107 | shurley grammar | 43 |
grammar game | 102 | esl grammar | 43 |
grammar checker | 86 | grammar usage | 43 |
english grammar exercise | 80 | teaching grammar | 43 |
grammar exercise | 78 | grammar gorilla | 42 |
nelly country grammar | 75 | japanese grammar | 41 |
grammar punctuation | 58 | grammar software | 39 |
english grammar rule | 58 | basic grammar | 37 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "grammar"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | grammatika. (various references) | |
Albanian | gramatikë, hyrje në shkencë. (various references) | |
Arabic | كتاب لتعليم النحو, قواعد (regulation), صرف ونحو. (various references) | |
Basque | gramatika. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | граматичен (grammatical), граматика. (various references) | |
Chinese | 語法 , 语法 (grammatical, syntactic, syntactical), 文法 . (various references) | |
Czech | gramatika (grammar book), mluvnice. (various references) | |
Danish | grammatik. (various references) | |
Dutch | grammatica, spraakleer, spraakkunst. (various references) | |
Esperanto | gramatiko. (various references) | |
Faeroese | mállæra. (various references) | |
Farsi | کتاب دستور, علم دستور, صرف ونحو, دستورزبان . (various references) | |
Finnish | kielioppi (syntax). (various references) | |
French | grammaire. (various references) | |
German | Grammatik, sprachlehre. (various references) | |
Greek | γραμματική (gramamr), "ραμματική. (various references) | |
Hebrew | חכמת "לשון (linguistics), "יק"וק, "ק"וק. (various references) | |
Hungarian | nyelvtan (gram). (various references) | |
Indonesian | gramatika, tata bahasa. (various references) | |
Italian | grammatica. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 語法 (diction, syntax), 文法書 , 文法 , 文法 , 文典 , グラフ理論 (glamorous, glamour, glamour girl, glamour stock, glove, gram, gramme, Grammy, graph theory). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ぶ"ぽうしょ, ぶ"ぽう (dividing a fief, hiving off, swarming), ぶ"て" (branch of a firm, branch store, equinox, fork, junction), "ほう (defense of the constitution or religious doctrines, diction, incorrect report, misinformation, noon gun, syntax), グラマー (glamour, glamour girl). (various references) | |
Korean | 문법 (grammatical). (various references) | |
Manx | lioar ghrammeydys, grammeydys, grammar. (various references) | |
Norwegian | grammatikk. (various references) | |
Occitan | gramatica. (various references) | |
Papiamen | gramátika. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ammargray.(various references) | |
Portuguese | gramática. (various references) | |
Romanian | gramaticå, gramaticã, folosire a formelor gramaticale. (various references) | |
Russian | грамматика (grammatics). (various references) | |
Sepedi | popopolelo. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | gramatika. (various references) | |
Spanish | gramática, gramatica. (various references) | |
Swedish | språklära (grammer), grammatik (grammer). (various references) | |
Turkish | gramer kuralları, gramer, temel prensipler, dilbilgisi, dílbílgísí. (various references) | |
Turkmen | grammatika (r). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | граматична система, граматика. (various references) | |
Welsh | gramadeg. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | grammatike tekhne. (various references) |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | grammatica, literatura. (various references) |
| Old French | 900-1400 | grammaire. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "grammar": grammarian, grammarians, grammars. (additional references) | |
| |
"Grammar" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: aramar, cramar, gamar, gammar, gramar, gramer, grammaar, grammer, gramnaar, gramnar, grampa, granma, granna, Grasmoor, gravmag, Gremmo, Grumbar, ramar. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "grammar" (pronounced gra"mer) |
| 4 | -r a" m er | crammer, rammer. |
| 3 | -a" m er | enamor, clamor, dammer, glamor, glamour, hammer, jammer, slammer, stammer. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-g-m-m-r-r" | |
-1 letter: marram. | |
-2 letters: gamma, grama, magma. | |
-3 letters: agar, agma, gama, gram, maar, mama, raga. | |
-4 letters: aga, ama, arm, gam, gar, mag, mar, rag, ram. | |
-5 letters: aa, ag, am, ar, ma, mm. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-g-m-m-r-r" | |
+1 letter: grammars. | |
+3 letters: aerogramme, grammarian. | |
+4 letters: aerogrammes, grammarians, mismarriage. | |
+5 letters: chromatogram, micromanager, mismarriages, programmable, programmatic. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Familiar 8. Quotations: Fiction | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Quotations: Speeches 11. Usage Frequency 12. Expressions | 13. Expressions: Internet 14. Translations: Modern 15. Translations: Ancient 16. Abbreviations | 17. Acronyms 18. Derivations 19. Rhymes 20. Anagrams | 21. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
