A reflection by Fred McArdle, West Brunswick, Victoria

I think it is safe to say that grammar, meaning the formal and technical analysis of how English sentences work, has disappeared from most educational environments. Yet we can still distinguish between one who speaks “well” [or grammatically] and one who does not. So what is this grammar which we can sense, if not describe?

There are lots of definitions of grammar, but the one I like is more or less this: if an educated English speaker/writer can understand the speech or writing of another such person without any hiccups, then it is probably expressed quite “grammatically”. In other words, the two people follow the same structural rules. For example, if I answer your question, “Who’s there?”, by saying, “It is me” [or, much more likely, "It's me"], this is perfectly correct grammatically, despite the wish of some people to dispute this.

Another “conservative” understanding is that one should never split an infinitive. [Any verb with "to" in front is usually an infinitive, e.g., "to run", or "to see", etc.]. So, some people bristle on hearing such statements as “I tried to quietly walk around the house”. And I can quite sympathise with them in this case, because the expression is awkward. But consider this sentence: “They decided to secretly investigate building a new kind of car engine”. If you move the adverb “secretly” to follow the verb [as the conservative view would insist, so as not to split the infinitive "to investigate"], the sentence becomes “They decided to investigate secretly building a new kind of car engine”. Then we cannot tell whether the word “secretly” applies to the investigation or the building. So the original sentence fits with my definition of good grammar better than the second way. The second one is quite ambiguous, offering a “hiccup”, or interruption to understanding.

This raises a “rule” which I have learned over the years, a rule which might be called “proximity” – if something is close to some other element in the sentence, it tends to belong to it. This is why it is “incorrect” to say, for example, ” Crossing the road, a car knocked over the little boy”, if it was the boy crossing the road, not the car. Because the phrase “crossing the road” is next to the term “a car”, one’s mind automatically assumes that the car was crossing the road, at least until the logic of everyday events cuts in and corrects the initial understanding. But this tiny delay is a “hiccup” in the understanding process; therefore it is better “grammar” to say or write it in a different way which does not interfere with fluency of understanding, e.g., “A car knocked over the little boy as he was crossing the road”, or even possibly “As he was crossing the road, a car knocked over the little boy”. In this last sentence, the word “he” can only apply to the boy, not the car – no ambiguity.

The underlying grammar of English is fascinating, but only if you are fascinated, and I suspect the fascination was driven out of most of us as kids because of restricted understanding and very limited aims in primary schools. Those of us who find it interesting are “survivors” of the system rather than products of it, I believe.

I would argue that the study of grammar is best treated as a hobby, unless you are learning a second language. In that case, the structure of grammar becomes the “set of tools” with which you have to work to compare the two languages. In fact, I think the best way to “teach” grammatical terminology may be in sorting out why certain sentences don’t work well, or don’t “sound right” [although this test only works if you have a fairly solid understanding intuitively anyway]. For example, if you try to sort out with a child why you shouldn’t say “more better”, the tools you will need are terms like “adjective”, “comparative”, adverb”, and possibly even “superlative” ["most", "best" "biggest", etc]. Just as you need spanners and so on to work with nuts and bolts, you need grammatical terms to work with words in sentences. And it is in the using of these terms for a practical purpose that I believe they are learned.

Another important fact is that grammar actually changes over time, with usage. The main measure that most grammarians use to judge the “correctness” of an expression is exactly that – usage, or the majority of educated people in fact say or write things. Thus, although “It is I” may well have been used a lot, and therefore would have been “correct”, in nineteenth century England or wherever, “It is me”, or more likely “It’s me”, is perfectly acceptable nowadays, and is, in fact, the norm. If in doubt, you may apply a test – try to find even one person whom you know that would ever say “It is I” except to be funny.

It is quite possible to perceive change actually happening around you. I have noticed that what used to be a phrase, “any more”, as in “He doesn’t come around any more like he used to”, has become almost universally a single word, “anymore”. It is not a change I like, because I think something of subtlety is lost, but who am I to stand in the way of the juggernaut of change ?

Another factor, of course, is that grammar is not always consistent, which is a bit frustrating. For example, if I write the sentence “Standing in the swimming pool, I saw a boy with his hat on”, it is impossible to be quite sure, without a context, whether it is the boy or “I” who stands in the pool., Yet in spoken language, there will be intonation, pauses, etc., which will probably reduce or eliminate the ambiguity.

The difference between spoken and written grammatical “power” can be illustrated by taking a sentence like “The little boy ran down the lane”, which looks harmless enough in print. But if you regard this sentence as an answer to a question, the superiority of speech over writing becomes clearer.
Q: Who ran down the lane? A: The LITTLE BOY ran down the lane.
Q: Did the little boy or the girl run down the lane? A: The little BOY ran down the lane.
Q: Which boy ran down the lane? A: The LITTLE boy ran down the lane.
Q: How did the little boy go down the lane? A: The little boy RAN down the lane.
Q: Which way did the little boy run in the lane? A: The little boy ran DOWN the lane.
Q: Which route did the little boy take? A: The little boy ran DOWN the LANE,
etcetera……..
To cover all these different intonations [and meanings], we only use the one written sentence!

In regard to home education, I would love our children to constantly notice how language works, and ask lots of questions about words and sentences, and especially to deliberately distort sentences for fun.

There are lots of very good books on grammar, some old and some new, but I cannot work out how any person would actually use them profitably except as occasional reference books to sort out a question.

PS Did you notice in the second last paragraph the split infinitives, “to constantly notice” and “to deliberately distort”? If not, then perhaps you can immediately see that split infinitives are quite unimportant.