The emergence of grammar in the Western world

Abstract

The origins of Western grammar (and grammar teaching) lie in ancient Greece. Grammar took shape as a text-based discipline, taking as its object the literary language of the past. The focus was on mastering the morphological structures of classical Greek, of which the forms had to be memorized, and activated through the analysis of literary texts. The teaching of grammar involved the flexible use of manuals, offering the indispensable terminological apparatus and the descriptive categories. The parts-of-speech system remained the corner piece of Western grammar. The condensation of grammatical doctrine in manuals was supplemented with grammatical exercising, focusing on verbal and nominal morphology, and, sporadically, issues of syntax. Grammatical education was extended, through copying, memorizing and analysing of model texts, with lexical and phraseological materials.