Gramtica e fala comum

It is necessary to know grammar, and it is better to write grammatically than not, but it is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated. Usage is the only test.
(William Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938)

Usage: consenso social baseado em prticas verbais (da classe mdia educada!?)
"English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education--sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across a street." (E. B. White) "The present-day scholarly concept of usage as a social consensus based on the practices of the educated middle class has emerged only within the last century. For many people, however, the views and aims of the 17th-18c fixers of the language continue to hold true: they consider that there ought to be a single authority capable of providing authoritative guidance about 'good' and 'bad' usage. For them, the model remains that of the Greek and Latin, and they have welcomed arbiters of usage such as Henry Fowler who have based their prescriptions on this model. In spite of this . . ., no nation in which English is a main language has yet set up an official institution to monitor and make rules about usage. New words, and new senses and uses of words, are not sanctioned or rejected by the authority of any single body: they arise through regular use and, once established, are recorded in dictionaries and grammars. This means that, with the classical model of grammar in rapid decline, the users of English collectively set the standards and priorities that underlie all usage."

(Robert Allen, "Usage." The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. T. McArthur. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992)

Etiqueta (usage) vs. Rationale (gramtica)

"Usage is trendy, arbitrary, and above all, constantly changing, like all other fashions--in clothing, music, or automobiles. Grammar is the rationale of a language; usage is the etiquette." (I. S. Fraser and L. M. Hodson, "Twenty-One Kicks at the Grammar Horse." The English Journal, Dec. 1978)

Gramtica: base para a expresso feliz de ns prprios

Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves. The more we are aware of how it works, the more we can monitor the meaning and effectiveness of the way we and others use language. It can help foster precision, detect ambiguity, and exploit the richness of expression available in English. And it can help everyone--not only teachers of English, but teachers of anything, for all teaching is ultimately a matter of getting to grips with meaning.

(David Crystal, "In Word and Deed," TES Teacher, April 30, 2004)

Gramtica: a definio mais simples

O estudo sistemtico e a descrio de uma lngua

Gramtica descritiva vs. Gramtica prescritiva

Descriptive grammars are essentially scientific theories that attempt to explain how language works. The goal of the descriptivist is to simply state how language actually works. People spoke long before there were linguists around to uncover the rules of speaking. The intent of descriptive grammar is to posit explanations for the facts of language use, and there is no assumption of correctness or appropriateness. Prescriptive grammars, on the other hand, are the stuff of high school English teachers. They 'prescribe,' like medicine for what ails you, how you 'ought' to speak."
(Donald G. Ellis, From Language to Communication. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999)

The term 'descriptive' is misleading, because it can be taken to imply a taxonomic, merely labeling non-explanatory approach(). However descriptive grammar is not merely descriptive, it provides analyses, theories, and explanations."
(Christopher Beedham, Language and Meaning: The Structural Creation of Reality. John Benjamins, 2005)

Gramtica tradicional
The collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about the structure of the language. "We say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it, according to a pre-established standard. . . . The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language."

(J. D. Williams, The Teacher's Grammar Book. Routledge, 2005)

Prescritivismo, normativismo, tenses

"There has always been a tension between the descriptive and prescriptive functions of grammar. Currently, descriptive grammar is dominant among theorists, but prescriptive grammar is taught in the schools and exercises a range of social effects."
(Ann Bodine, "Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar." The Feminist Critique of Language, ed. D. Cameron. Routledge, 1998) "The prescriptive grammarians went out of their way to invent as many rules as possible which might distinguish polite from impolite speech. They didn't find very many--just a few dozen, a tiny number compared with all the thousands of rules of grammar that operate in English. But these rules were propounded with maximum authority and severity, and given plausibility by the claim that they were going to help people to be clear and precise. As a result, generations of schoolchildren would be taught them, and confused by them." (David Crystal, The Fight for English. Oxford Univ. Press, 2006)

Gramtica generativa The rules determining the structure and interpretation of sentences that speakers accept as belonging to the language. "Simply put, a generative grammar is a theory of competence: a model of the psychological system of unconscious knowledge that underlies a speaker's ability to produce and interpret utterances in a language. (F. Parker and K. Riley, Linguistics for NonLinguists. Allyn and Bacon, 1994)

Gramtica mental The generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand. "All humans are born with the capacity for constructing a Mental Grammar, given linguistic experience; this capacity for language is called the Language Faculty (Chomsky, 1965). A grammar formulated by a linguist is an idealized description of this Mental Grammar." (P. W. Culicover and A. Nowak, Dynamical Grammar: Foundations of Syntax II. Oxford Univ. Press, 2003)

Gramtica transformacional
A theory of grammar that accounts for the constructions of a language by linguistic transformations and phrase structures. "In transformational grammar, the term 'rule' is used not for a precept set down by an external authority but for a principle that is unconsciously yet regularly followed in the production and interpretation of sentences. A rule is a direction for forming a sentence or a part of a sentence, which has been internalized by the native speaker."

(D. Bornstein, An Introduction to Transformational Grammar. Univ. Press of America, 1984)

Gramtica cognitiva
"A Cognitive Grammar is based on the following assumptions . . .:
The grammar of a language is part of human cognition and interacts with other cognitive faculties, especially with perception, attention, and memory. . . . The grammar of a language reflects and presents generalizations about phenomena in the world as its speakers experience them. . . . Forms of grammar are, like lexical items, meaningful and never 'empty' or meaningless, as often assumed in purely structural models of grammar. The grammar of a language represents the whole of a native speaker's knowledge of both the lexical categories and the grammatical structures of her language. The grammar of a language is usage-based in that it provides speakers with a variety of structural options to present their view of a given scene."

(G. Radden and R. Dirven, Cognitive English Grammar. John Benjamins, 2007)

Gramtica pedaggica
Grammatical analysis and instruction designed for second-language students. "Pedaogical grammar is a slippery concept. The term is commonly used to denote (1) pedagogical process--the explicit treatment of elements of the target language systems as (part of) language teaching methodology; (2) pedagogical content--reference sources of one kind or another that present information about the target language system; and (3) combinations of process and content." (D. Little, "Words and Their Properties: Arguments for a Lexical Approach to Pedagaogical Grammar." Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar, ed. by T. Odlin. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994)

Repensando a tradio gramatical no ocidente

Mas mesmo assim? S assim? No h mais nada para dizer?

Repensando a tradio gramatical no ocidente

1. Tipos de gramtica:

- gramtica traditional (herdada da tradio greco-romnica) Est intimamente ligada ao estudo da retrica, constitui-se, em escola gramatical e usada como elemento prescritivo da lngua padro. lingustica formal (seguindo ou sendo fortemente influenciada pelo trabalho de Noam Chomsky) A lngua representada como uma espcie de lgebra uma lista de regras, muitas destas usadas para descrever os limites da lngua, que so encarados como sendo limitaes de origem neurolgica. lingustica funcional (influenciada pelas propostas, sobretudo, de Michael Halliday) Tem uma orientao de pendor mais sociolgico, na medida em que procura relacionar a lngua com a sociedade e compreender os modos como o uso da lngua incorporou a sua estrutura (dimenso retrica). uma abordagem lingustica extensivamente usada no ensino, na lingustica computacional e em semitica social.

No esquema anterior, a expresso gramtica tradicional designa a escola estabelecida, no a rica tradio gramatical ao servio da retrica que influenciou largos sculos da cultura ocidental. A gramtica funcional , em parte, a recuperao e elaborao da longa prtica gramatical e da tradio retrica.

OBJECTIVOS TRADICIONAL

FUNO SOCIAL

(Escola)
FORMAL

padronizar a lngua limitaes neurolgicas design ecolgico

'prescritiva'

'descritiva'

(Chomsky)
FUNCIONAL

'retrica'

(Halliday)

Gramticas, terminologias, e etc.

E ns professores, autores de manuais, programas, etc.

Que escolher?
Que escolhas foram j realizadas?