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The 18th Century Grammarians
B(caps)efore the 18th century, there had been few attempts to make English grammar more formal and stable. However, these works were generally written for the purpose of teaching foreign learners the language or providing basis for learning Latin grammar. An example was Ben Johnson’s "An English grammar … for the Benefit of Strangers," published in 1640. It was in the 18th century that English grammar was viewed as a subject worthy of study by itself. An earlier writer, John Wallis ("Grammatical Linguae Anglicante," 1653), had observed that the Latin structure defers significantly from that of English, and therefore, describing English using Latin grammar was not proper. It was like forcing English to the methods and rules of Latin. In the 18th century, the grounds were set to witness descriptions of grammar that had its peculiar nature and syntax. Unfortunately, most of the compilers of the English grammar were only trained in Latin and Greek and still tried to preserve some of the classical concepts that are foreign to English.
The works of the grammarians began with the work of Joseph Priestly (1761) titled "The Rudiments of English Grammar." A month later, Dr. Robert Lowth, a bishop of London, published "Short Introduction to English Grammar" (1762). About 22 editions of this book appeared in the 18th century and became very influential. Subsequent four publications were mere imitations of Lowth’s grammar. For instance, John Ash’s "Grammatical Institutes" (1763) was intended to serve as an Easy Introduction to Dr. Lowth’s English Grammar. In 1784, Noah Webster published "A Grammatical Institute of the English Language," which enjoyed much circulation and influence in America. Most of these works were by men who did not have any special training in language. Lowth, for example, was a clergyman, and their works were a mixture of philosophical matters with language and did not really answer the great questions of grammatical descriptions. Over 200 works on grammar and rhetoric were published between 1750 and 1800. What really was their aim and what did they achieve? It is undeniable that the 18th-century English grammarians attempted a coherent prescriptive tradition, within which they aimed at:
(a) Codifying the principles of the language and reducing it to rules;
(b) Settling disputed points and deciding on cases of divided usage; and
(c) Pointing out common errors, correcting such supposed errors, and improving the language.
(a) The grammarians were to demonstrate that English was capable of order and systematic procedure for achieving correctness. Lowth had argued that the supposed irregularity in the language was the problem of users and not with the language itself. People had taken their skills in the language for granted and proceeded without being conscious of any rules. So the grammarians were to systematize the facts of English grammar and draw up rules by which questions could be examined and decided.
(b) They were to settle disputed cases of grammar and usage. They were not just to make rules but also pronounce judgment where necessary. There were no longer going to be cases of uncertainty. A grammatical construction is either right or wrong, and it was the job of the grammarians to decide.
(c) Dr. Lowth again observed that the best way to judge whether a construction was right or wrong was to lay down rules and illustrate them by examples. But besides showing what was right, it was necessary pointing out what was wrong. So the grammarians would identify grammatical errors and demonstrate how such errors would be corrected.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Explain the aims of the 18th-century grammarians.
3.2 The Rise of Prescriptive Grammar
In terms of achievement, the grammarians were going to do for grammar what Johnson’s Dictionary had done for vocabulary. The dictionary had handled most questions of spelling and lexicon in a fairly systematic way, and attention was now on grammar. Now the grammarians set out to prescribe. To prescribe in this context means that people were told what to say; the grammar was to be static, which invariably implied that anything out of the specifications was condemned and proscribed. For example, expressions like "had rather," "had better," were condemned; "I would rather" was accepted. There was preference for "different from" rather than "different than" or "to," and the rejection of "between you and me." "He is taller than I" was accepted rather than "taller than me." "Shall" was approved for the first-person pronoun, while "will" for the third person etc. Do not forget that no consensus was reached among the grammarians in this rule-making process. However, a decision was usually taken after such questions as reason and examples from Latin or Greek had been considered.
William Ward in his "Grammar of the English Language" (1765) drew up for the first time a full set of prescriptions that formed a background to the rules found in modern English books. This publication was strengthened by Lindey Murray’s "English Grammar" (1795). The books by Lowth and Murray and those they influenced have been quite controversial and were often considered as the origins of most of the grammatical controversies in today’s English.
To make grammatical rules, the grammarians were guided by three considerations: reason (or analogy), history of the word or phrase involved, and the examples of Greek and Latin. The third point formed the basis upon which many questions of grammar were decided. Some grammarians felt that descriptive comparisons among these languages (English included) could be turned into prescriptive rules especially since they were working towards a universal grammar, and the idea of universal grammar was derived from the traditions of Latin and Greek. However, there was in the 18th century a definite feeling that trying to fit English into the pattern of Latin grammar was a disadvantage. This feeling was sustained in the next century when the interest in universal grammar declined.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
1. What does Prescriptive Grammar mean?
2. What do you think were the achievements of the 18th-century grammarians?
4.0 CONCLUSION
What we still have today as traditional grammar that tells us what is right and wrong has its foundation in the 18th-century grammarians. Bishop Robert Lowth in 1762 said: “the principal design of a Grammar of any Language is to teach us to express ourselves with propriety in the Language; and to enable us to judge every phrase and form of construction, whether it be right or wrong” (Crystal 2001:79). So the grammarians set out to provide for English grammar a platform for determining what was correct about spoken or written English and what was wrong. In doing this, they prescribed certain forms as correct and proscribed others as incorrect.
This approach, however, brought about a serious argument - the question of whether correctness should be determined by usage or grammatical rules. Shouldn’t dictionaries and grammars rather reflect usage, describing current practice than prescribe rules? This view has since been adopted by modern descriptive grammarians in their study and analysis of language.
5.0 SUMMARY
Before the 18th century, English grammar had no definite rules. And it was difficult to determine what correct or incorrect sentence was since there were no standards. The assignment before the 18th century grammarians were to:
(i) Codify the principles of the language and reduce it to rules;
(ii) Point out common errors; correct such errors and improve on the language;
(iii) Settle disputed points and decide on cases of divided usage.
They set about to achieve the above by applying reason, common sense, history, logic, and references to Latin and Greek. At the end, they were able to formulate rules for the language, prescribing some grammatical forms as correct and proscribing some grammatical forms as incorrect. Some of these publications have been controversial while some have been condemned as containing a lot of blunders. One of the most important arguments against their approach had been that English grammar should reflect usage showing current practice rather than proscribed rules.
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