Traditional Categories, Traditional Analysis, The Prescriptive and Descriptive Approach

Instituto de Educación Superior Pedagógico Público “San Francisco de Asís” de Chincha
“Año de la Universalización de la Salud”

“Camino a la Santidad de la mano de Nuestros Fundadores”
TRADITIONAL CATEGORIES, TRADITIONAL ANALYSIS, THE PRESCRIPTIVE AND

DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH.
CARRERA PROFESIONAL: IDIOMAS INGLÈS VII

DOCENTE: MARÍA YSABEL MARTÍNEZ NINAHUAMÁN.
I. DATOS GENERALES
AREA GRAMATICA I
UNIDAD I “TYPES OF GRAMMAR”
CICLO VII
DURACIÓN Del 15 al 19 de Junio
HORAS DE 12 horas semanales
ESTUDIO
ACTIVIDADES No presenciales
II. Traditional Grammar Analysis

Example: The student /did/the homework.
Analytically, the vertical line indicates the elements to the left are the
subject of the sentence and on the other hand the elements to the right are
the predicate of the sentence. Again, the slanted line indicates that the
element to the left is the verb of the sentence and the element to the right
is the object. Then, the words are indentified individually by parts-of-
speech. For instance, student and homework are nouns the former is subject
and the second is object, the as an article and did as a verb.
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR REVIEW
III. grammatical category
A grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within

the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more
possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually
exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include:
- Tense, the placing of a verb in a time frame, which can take values such
as present and past.
- Number, with values such as singular, plural, and sometimes dual, trial,
paucal, uncountable or partitive, inclusive or exclusive
- Gender, with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter
- Noun classes, which are more general than just gender, and include
additional classes like: animated, humane, plants, animals, things, and
immaterial for concepts and verbal nouns/actions, sometimes as well
shapes.
- Locative relations, which some languages would represent using
grammatical cases or tenses, or by adding a
possibly agglutinated lexeme such as a preposition, adjective, or particle.
Although the use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should
be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical
categories (considered syntactic categories) largely correspond to the parts
of speech of traditional grammar, and refer to nouns, adjectives, etc.
A phonological manifestation of a category value (for example, a word ending
that marks "number" on a noun) is sometimes called an exponent.
Grammatical relations define relationships between words and phrases with
certain parts of speech, depending on their position in the syntactic tree.
Traditional relations include subject, object, and indirect object.
IV. Manifestation of categories
Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection. In English, for

example, the number of a noun is usually marked by leaving the noun
uninflected if it is singular, and by adding the suffix -s if it is plural (although
some nouns have irregular plural forms). On other occasions, a category may
not be marked overtly on the item to which it pertains, being manifested only
through other grammatical features of the sentence, often by way of
grammatical agreement.
For example:
The bird can sing.
The birds can sing.
In the above sentences, the number of the noun is marked by the absence or
presence of the ending -s.
The sheep is running.
The sheep are running.
In the above, the number of the noun is not marked on the noun itself (sheep
does not inflect according to the regular pattern), but it is reflected in
agreement between the noun and verb: singular number triggers is, and plural
number are.
The bird is singing.
The birds are singing.
In this case the number is marked overtly on the noun, and is also reflected
by verb agreement.
However:
The sheep can run.
In this case the number of the noun (or of the verb) is not manifested at all
in the surface form of the sentence, and thus ambiguity is introduced (at
least, when the sentence is viewed in isolation).
Exponents of grammatical categories often appear in the same position or

"slot" in the word (such as prefix, suffix or enclitic). An example of this is the
Latin cases, which are all suffixal: rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosā ("rose", in
the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative).
Categories can also pertain to sentence constituents that are larger than a
single word (phrases, or sometimes clauses). A phrase often inherits category
values from its head word; for example, in the above sentences, the noun
phrase the birds inherits plural number from the noun birds. In other cases
such values are associated with the way in which the phrase is constructed;
for example, in the coordinated noun phrase Tom and Mary, the phrase has
plural number (it would take a plural verb), even though both the nouns from
which it is built up are singular.
V. Understanding Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar: We can talk about
these different approaches to language as descriptive grammar vs.
prescriptive grammar.
- Prescriptive gramar: describes when people focus on talking about how a
language should or ought to be used. One way to remember this
association is to think of going to a doctor’s office. When a doctor gives
you a prescription for medication, it often includes directions about how
you should take your medication as well as what you should not do when
taking your medication. In a similar way, a prescriptive grammar tells you
how you should speak, and what type of language to avoid. This is commonly
found in English classes as well as other language classes, where the aim
is to teach people how to use language in a very particular (typically
described as ‘proper’ or ‘correct’) way.
- Descriptive grammar, Linguistics takes a descriptive approach to

language: it tries to explain things as they actually are, not as we wish
them to be. When we study language descriptively, we try to find the
unconscious rules that people follow when they say things like sentence.
The schoolbook approach to language is typically prescriptive. It tries to
tell you how you should speak and write.
on the other hand, focuses on describing the language as it is used, not
saying how it should be used. For example, think about a prescriptive rule
like Don’t split infinitives. A descriptive grammarian would see a sentence
like “To boldly go where no man has gone before” and would try to describe
how the mental grammar can cause that ordering of words, rather than
saying that the surface form is faulty due to prescriptive rules (which
would require the sentence “To go boldly where no man has gone before”).
Linguistics takes this approach to language.
A key contrast is to be found between these two approaches. A
descriptive grammarian would say that a sentence is “grammatical” if a
native speaker of the language would produce that sentence in speaking.
The descriptive grammarian would then try to describe how that sentence
is produced through theorizing about the mental processes that lead up
to the surface form. A prescriptive grammarian, on the other hand, would
say that something is grammatical only if the surface form conforms to
a set of rules that the grammarian believes should be followed in order
for a certain grammar style is achieved. (Note that I have tried to
emphasize that the descriptive grammarian hears a form and tries to
describe the mental processes underneath the produced (spoken) form,
while a prescriptive grammarian does not hypothesize about the mental
grammar at all, but is merely concerned with ‘editing’ the surface form.)
VI. REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS Y LINKOGRAFICAS:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timo_Honkela/public
ation/2914789_Independent_Component_Analysis_of_W
ord_Contexts_and_Comparison_with_Traditional_Categor
ies/links/09e4150dd92ac6d08b000000/Independent-
Component-Analysis-of-Word-Contexts-and-Comparison-
with-Traditional-Categories.pdf
https://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=navigating/intro/prescripti
ve
https://studfile.net/preview/5110913/
https://essentialsoflinguistics.pressbooks.com/chapter/1-3-mental-grammar/
https://www.academia.edu/4882088/Traditional_Grammar_Deficiencies_in_Comprehe
nsive_Persian_Grammar_Descriptive_Linguistics_
https://slideplayer.com/slide/10702145/
Parker, Frank, and Kathryn Riley. Linguistics for Non-Linguists: A Primer With Exercises. 5th
ed., Pearson, 2009
H. Ritter and T. Kohonen, “Self-organizing semantic maps,” Biological Cybernetics, vol.

61, pp. 241–254, 1989.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7d4f/f4c428ac0bcc1fbcf959707ec9696f92a529.pdf

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Instituto de Educación Superior Pedagógico Público “San Francisco de Asís” de Chincha

“Año de la Universalización de la Salud”

TRADITIONAL CATEGORIES, TRADITIONAL ANALYSIS, THE PRESCRIPTIVE AND

CARRERA PROFESIONAL: IDIOMAS INGLÈS VII

II. Traditional Grammar Analysis

A grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within

IV. Manifestation of categories

Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection. In English, for

The bird can sing.

The birds can sing.

The sheep is running.

The sheep are running.

The bird is singing.

The birds are singing.

The sheep can run.

Exponents of grammatical categories often appear in the same position or

- Descriptive grammar, Linguistics takes a descriptive approach to

VI. REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS Y LINKOGRAFICAS:

H. Ritter and T. Kohonen, “Self-organizing semantic maps,” Biological Cybernetics, vol.

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