The English Grammar

Jonson, Benjamin [Ben]; Herford, C. H.; Simpson, Percy; Simpson, Evelyn

doi:10.1093/oseo/instance.00015680

Cited by 23 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Latin grammars, for example that of Lily (Gwosdek 2013), were in their turn the guiding paradigm for English grammars. This approach was seen in influential grammars such as those of Jonson (1640Jonson ( /1909 and Lowth (1762Lowth ( /1799, which set a trend that continued until relatively recently, that of prescriptivism, along with explicit proscriptions, typically aimed squarely at the grammar of speaking. Jonson referred to some types of diminutive endings as 'abusions of speech' rather than as 'proper English words' (p. 82).…”

Section: The Embedding Of Grammar In Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

Carter¹,

McCarthy²

2015

Applied Linguistics

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This article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a rethinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin grammar in England, with its emphasis on speaking the target language. Later grammars were dominated by written standards, a situation that persisted till the 20th century, when recording technology and spoken corpora enabled new insights into the grammar of everyday speaking. We highlight those insights which especially challenge grammars derived only or mainly from written sources. We evidence the view that conversational grammar is non-sentence-based, co-constructed and highly interactive, and that it poses questions concerning metalanguage. We briefly review debates concerning spoken grammar and ELT/ESL pedagogy. We then consider 21st-century Internet technologies and e-communication, and implications for the spoken/written grammar distinction, arguing that description and pedagogy may need to undergo further rethinking in light of the multi-modality which characterises e-language. SOME HISTORICAL NOTES Why this article? A quarter of a century ago, English language pedagogy had entered a new era, one in which the homogenous notion of 'proficiency' had been replaced by skills-based, communicative approaches that included the speaking skill. Amid this revolution, grammar remained largely unscathed, clinging to the models and descriptions beloved of the old era. Against this background, in 1995, we published two papers advocating a greater role for the grammar of everyday speaking in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language, including one in this journal (Carter and McCarthy 1995; McCarthy and Carter 1995). We offered evidence from spoken data that everyday conversations manifested common grammatical phenomena that were marginalised in description and neglected in pedagogy. Twenty years on, we now aim to synthesise interim achievements, and to ponder where the study of spoken grammar and its applications might take us in the future. Many of the arguments against the incorporation of spoken grammar into second language pedagogy have been

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Section: The Embedding Of Grammar In Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

Carter¹,

McCarthy²

2015

Applied Linguistics

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“…The observations on pronunciation by Gildon (c.1665–1724) & Brightland (d. 1717) provide a great deal of information about the articulation of sounds and the correspondences between sound and spelling, but, apart from the verses which sum up his main points, both the information and the style in which it is presented hark back to the orthoepists of the seventeenth century, and to Ben Jonson's () The English Grammar . The section is divided into three chapters: vowels, double vowels and consonants, each of which begins with a definition of the major category, goes on to subdivide this and then provides descriptions of articulation and rules for sound/spelling correspondences for each ‘letter’.…”

Section: The Influence Of Elocutionists On Eighteenth‐century Grammarmentioning

confidence: 99%

The place of pronunciation in eighteenth‐century grammars of English

Beal

2013

Trans of the Philol Soc

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The entry on 'grammar' in the first edition of the OED (volume 4, 1901) includes the following information: 'Until a not very distant date, Grammar was divided by English writers (following the precedent of Latin grammarians) into Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody, to which Ortho€ epy was added by some authors'. The ECEG database is a useful tool for investigating the nature and extent to which eighteenthcentury grammars paid attention to matters of pronunciation. Although a search for ortho€ epy as a division of grammar only yields ten hits, the facility for searching within the comments sections allows the researcher to find many more grammars which include information about pronunciation. In this paper, I report on the use of the ECEG database to answer the following research questions: (i) does the rise of the elocution movement in the second half of the eighteenth century lead to a greater or lesser emphasis on pronunciation in grammars published after 1760? (ii) is there any evidence of grammar-writers being influenced by elocutionists such as Thomas Sheridan (1762, 1780) and John Walker (1791)? Finally, I report on the ways in which this information might be included in a planned database of eighteenth-century phonology.

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“… 17 Jonson himself in The English Grammar (1972 [1640]: 84) states ‘if a Sentence be with an Interrogation, we use this note (? )’.…”

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Lone pronoun tags in Early Modern English: ProTag constructions in the dramas of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare

Mycock¹,

Misson²

2020

English Language and Linguistics

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Recent research into right-dislocated pronouns has provided details of the form and functions of lone pronoun tag (ProTag) constructions in Present-day British English. In this article, we present the first systematic investigation of ProTag constructions in an earlier variety, Early Modern English. Using as our corpus the dramatic works of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare – writers already known to make use of tag questions in their works – we identified and analysed ProTag constructions. Our findings reveal that ProTag constructions in Early Modern English differ from their Present-day British English equivalents with respect to possible functions: in the earlier variety ProTag constructions could have a ‘Question’ function, the same as tag questions. We also found the relative frequency of demonstrative ProTags compared to personal ProTags to be significantly different: personal ProTags are far more frequently attested than demonstrative ProTags in our corpus of Early Modern English drama texts; this is the reverse of what has been found for Present-day British English. We propose that a key factor in the observed change is extension of the types of referents that demonstrative ProTags can have. This study offers a new perspective on ProTag constructions, their classification and development.

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The English Grammar

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

The place of pronunciation in eighteenth‐century grammars of English

Lone pronoun tags in Early Modern English: ProTag constructions in the dramas of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare

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