History of English grammars

Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar, written with the seeming goal of demonstrating that English was quite as rule-bound as Latin, was published in 1586. Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534). Lily's grammar was being used in schools in England at the time, having been "prescribed" for them in 1542 by Henry VIII.

Latin grammar traditions bore down oppressively on early English grammar writing. Any attempt by one author to assert an independent grammatical rule for English was quickly followed by declarations by others of the truth of the corresponding Latin-based equivalent. As late as the early nineteenth century, Lindley Murray, the author of a widely used grammar, was having to cite "grammatical authorities" to bolster the claim that grammatical cases in English are different from the ones in Ancient Greek or Latin.

The focus on tradition belied the role that other social forces had begun to play in the early seventeenth century. Increasing commerce, and the social changes in its wake, created a new impetus for grammar writing. The greater British role in international trade in the second half of the century created a demand for English grammars among speakers of other languages. Quite a few English grammars were published in European languages.

In Britain, as education and literacy spread in the early eighteenth century, many grammars, such as the several editions of John Brightland's Grammar of the English Tongue and James Greenwood's Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, were written for "non-learned, native-speaker audiences" who did not know the rudiments of Latin. These audiences included women (the "fair sex"), apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, and children.

If by the end of the seventeenth century, English grammar writing had made a modest start, totaling 16 grammars from the time of Bullokar's Pamphlet, by the end of the eighteenth century, a brisk pace had been set with some 270 titles added, though it was less than half that number if later editions were not included; a large proportion were published late in the century, Both publishing and demand were to continue to mushroom. The first half of the nineteenth century would see the appearance of almost 900 new English grammar books.

Eighteenth-century prescriptive grammars

The 18th century saw the emergence of prescriptive grammars in English. A prescriptive grammar refers to a set of norms or rules governing how a language should or should not be used rather than describing the ways in which a language is actually used.

Ann Fisher published 'A New Grammar' in 1745 which was among the earliest in the 18th century.

Robert Lowth, published A Short Introduction to English Grammar, with critical notes (1762), his only work on the subject.

In America in 1765, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, founder and first president of King's College in New York City (now Columbia University) published An English Grammar; the First Easy Rudiments of Grammar Applied to the English Tongue. It "appears to have been the first English grammar prepared by an American and published in America." In 1767, Johnson combined his grammar with a Hebrew grammar, and published it as An English and Hebrew grammar, being the first short rudiments of those two languages, suggesting the languages be taught together to children. Johnson developed his grammars independently of Lowth, but later corresponded and exchanged grammars with him. English grammar increasingly held great significance for people in the United States with little to no income, and educational backgrounds. Learning the basic principles of grammar helped a cross-section ranging from former slaves to rail splitters and weavers to speak and write with fluency and rise in their careers.

In Britain, the women Ellin Devis, Dorothea Du Bois, Mrs. M. C. Edwards, Mrs. Eves, Ellenor Fenn (aka Mrs. Teachwell and Mrs. Lovechild), Jane Gardiner née Arden, Blanche Mercy, and Mrs. Taylor, published some twelve grammars in the late 18th-century, their books running into many editions over several decades. English grammar was being seen to be important not only for better English writing but also for learning other languages thereafter.

Nineteenth century to present

Modern-language studies became systematized during the nineteenth century. In the case of English, this happened first in continental Europe, where it was studied by historical and comparative linguists. In 1832, Danish philologist Rasmus Rask published an English grammar, Engelsk Formlære, part of his extensive comparative studies in the grammars of Indo-European languages. German philologist Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, included English grammar in his monumental grammar of Germanic languages, Deutsche Grammatik (1822–1837). German historical linguist Eduard Adolf Maetzner published his 1,700 page Englische Grammatik between 1860 and 1865; an English translation, An English grammar: methodical, analytical and historical appeared in 1874. Contributing little new to the intrinsic scientific study of English grammar, these works nonetheless showed that English was being studied seriously by the first professional linguists.

As phonology became a full-fledged field, spoken English began to be studied scientifically as well, generating by the end of the nineteenth century an international enterprise investigating the structure of the language. This enterprise comprised scholars at various universities, their students who were training to be teachers of English, and journals publishing new research. All the pieces were in place for new "large-scale English grammars" which combined the disparate approaches of the previous decades. The first work to lay claim to the new scholarship was British linguist Henry Sweet's A new English grammar: logical and historical, published in two parts, Phonology and Accidence (1892) and Syntax (1896), its title suggesting not only continuity and contrast with Maetzner's earlier work, but also kinship with the contemporary A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (begun 1884), later the Oxford English Dictionary (1895).

The next set of wide-ranging English grammars were written by Danish and Dutch linguists. Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, who had coauthored a few books with Henry Sweet, began work on his seven-volume Modern English grammar on historical principles in the first decade of the twentieth century. The first volume, Sounds and Spellings, was published in 1909; it then took forty years for the remaining volumes on syntax (volumes 2 through 5), morphology (volume 6), and syntax again (volume 7), to be completed. Jespersen's original contribution was in analyzing the various parts of a sentence in terms of categories that he named, rank, junction, and nexus, forgoing the usual word classes. His ideas would inspire the later work of Noam Chomsky and Randolph Quirk.

The Dutch tradition of writing English grammars, which began with Thomas Basson's The Conjugations in Englische and Netherdutche in the same year—1586—as William Bullokar's first English grammar (written in English), gained renewed strength in the early 20th century in the work of three grammarians: Hendrik Poutsma, Etsko Kruisinga, and Reinard Zandvoort.

Timeline of important English grammarians

• 1551. John Hart The Opening of the Unreasonable Writing of our Inglish Toung
• 1586. William Bullokar: Brief Grammar of English.
• 1594. Paul Greaves: Grammatica Anglicana.
• 1612. Thomas Tomkis De Analogia Anglicani Sermoni liber Grammaticus, Royal Manuscript Collection of the British Library (12.F.xviii).
• 1617. Alexander Hume: Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue.
• 1619/1621. Alexander Gill: Logonomia Anglica.
• 1634. Charles Butler: English Grammar.
• 1640. Ben Jonson: The English Grammar.
• 1646. Joshua Poole: The English Accidence.
• 1653. John Wallis: Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ.
• 1654. Jeremiah Wharton: The English Grammar.
• 1662. James Howell: A New English Grammar.
• 1669. John Newton: School Pastime for Young Children: or the Rudiments of Grammar.
• 1671. Thomas Lye: The Child's Delight.
• 1685. Christopher Cooper: Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ.
• 1688. Guy Miège: The English Grammar.
• 1693. Joseph Aickin: The English grammar.
• 1700. A. Lane: A Key to the Art of Letters.
• 1745. Ann Fisher A New Grammar.
• 1761. Joseph Priestley: The Rudiments of English Grammar:Adapted to the Use of Schools.
• 1762. Robert Lowth: A short introduction to English grammar: with critical notes.
• 1763. John Ash: Grammatical institutes: or, An easy introduction to Dr. Lowth's English grammar.
• 1765. William Ward: An Essay on English Grammar.
• 1766. Samuel Johnson: A dictionary of the English Language...: to which is prefixed, a Grammar of the English Language.
• 1772. Joseph Priestley: The Rudiments of English Grammar: Adapted to the Use of Schools.
• 1775. Ellin Devis: The Accidence
• 1772. Dorothea Du Bois: Short English Grammar
• 1795. Lindley Murray: English grammar: adapted to the different classes of learners.
• 1799. Jane Gardiner: Young Ladies’ Grammar
• 1804. Noah Webster: A Grammatical Institute of the English Language.
• 1809. William Hazlitt: A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue
• 1818. William Cobbett: A Grammar of the English Language, In a Series of Letters.
• 1850. William Chauncey Fowler: English grammar: The English language in its elements and forms.
• 1874. Eduard Adolf Maetzner, An English grammar: methodical, analytical, and historical. With a treatise on the orthography, prosody, inflections and syntax of the English tongue, and numerous authorities cited in order of historical development. (English translation of Englische Grammatik (1860–65)).
• 1892/98. Henry Sweet: A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical (Part 1: Introduction, Phonology, and Accidence; Part 2: Syntax).
• 1898. John Nesfield. A Manual of English Grammar and Composition.
• 1904–1929. Hendrik Poutsma: A Grammar of Modern English (5 volumes).
• 1909–1932. Etsko Kruisinga: A Handbook of Present-day English.
• 1909–1949. Otto Jespersen: A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles.
• 1931/1935. George O. Curme: A Grammar of the English Language.
• 1945. R. W. Zandvoort: A Handbook of English Grammar.
• 1952. Charles C. Fries: The Structure of English: An Introduction to the Construction of English Sentences.
• 1984. M. A. K. Halliday: An Introduction to Functional Grammar.
• 1985. Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik: A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.
• 1996. Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar. 652 pages.
• 1999. Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan: Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.
• 2002. Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. 1842 pages.
• 2006. Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy: Cambridge Grammar of English: A Comprehensive Guide. 973 pages.
• 2011. Bas Aarts: Oxford Modern English Grammar. 410 pages.

References

References

1. (2023). "Oxford English Dictionary".
2. Greenbaum, Sidney. (1996). "Oxford English Grammar". Oxford University Press.
3. Aarts, Bas. (2011). "Oxford Modern English Grammar". Oxford University Press.
4. Greenbaum, Sidney. (1996). "Oxford English Grammar". Oxford University Press.
5. {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
6. Considine, John. (2022). "Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries". Oxford University Press.
7. Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. (2015). "Grammar, Rhetoric and Usage in English: Preposition Placement 1500–1900". Cambridge University Press.
8. (2020). "The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar". Oxford University Press.
9. {{Harvnb. Lily. 1709, original 1534
10. Although Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a "[[English-language spelling reform. Linn. 2008. Dons. 2004
11. {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
12. (1711). "A Grammar of the English Tongue". John Brightland.
13. (1711). "An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar". Samuel Keeble, John Lawrence, Jonah Bowyer, R. & I. Bonwick, and Rob. Halsey.
14. (2008). "Grammars, grammarians and grammar-writing in eighteenth-century England". Mouton De Gruyter.
15. {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
16. Greenbaum, Sidney. (1996). "Oxford English Grammar". Oxford University Press.
17. (July 2013). "The place of pronunciation in eighteenth-century grammars of English". Transactions of the Philological Society.
18. (November 2002). "Ann Fisher: first female grammarian". Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics.
19. Lyman, Rollo La Verne, ''English Grammar in American Schools Before 1850'', University of Chicago, 1922.
20. English Short Title Catalogue, ESTC Citation No. W9287
21. Schneider, Herbert and Carol, ''Samuel Johnson, President of King's College: His Career and Writings'', Columbia University Press, 4 vols, 1929, Volume IV, index, p. 385
22. Schweiger, Beth Barton. (Winter 2010). "A Social History of English Grammar in the Early United States". Journal of the Early Republic.
23. (2003). "The forgotten women grammarians of eighteenth-century England". University of Connecticut.
24. (2009). "Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices". Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
25. {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
26. Two other contemporary English grammars were also influential. ''English Grammar: Past and Present'', by [[John Collinson Nesfield]], was originally written for the market in [[colonial India]]. It was later expanded to appeal to students in Britain as well, from young men preparing for various professional examinations to students in "Ladies' Colleges." Other books by Nesfield include ''A Junior Course In English Composition, A Senior Course In English Composition'', but it was his ''A Manual Of English Grammar and Composition'' that proved to be greatly successful both in Britain and her colonies—so much so that it formed the basis for many other grammar and composition primers including but not limited to ''Warriner's English Grammar and Composition'' and ''High School English Grammar and Composition'', casually called [[Wren & Martin]], authored by [[P. C. Wren]] and H. Martin. ''Grammar of spoken English'' (1924), by H. E. Palmer, written for the teaching and study of [[ESL. English as a foreign language]], included a full description of the [[Intonation (linguistics). Linn. 2008
27. {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
28. Linn. 2008
29. {{Harvnb. Bullokar. 1586a, {{Harvnb. Bullokar. 1586b, {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004
30. {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004
31. {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004
32. {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004. Jonson. 1756, original 1640
33. {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004
34. {{Harvnb. Dons. 2004
35. {{Harvnb. Fisher. 1750, original 1745
36. {{Harvnb. Lowth. 1775, original 1762
37. {{Harvnb. Ash. 1810, original 1763
38. {{Harvnb. Ward. 1765, {{Harvnb. Ward. 1767
39. {{Harvnb. Johnson. 1766
40. {{Harvnb. Priestley. 1772, {{Harvnb. Hodson. 2008
41. (1994). "Paradigms for their Sex? Women's Grammars in Late Eighteenth-Century England". Histoire Épistemologie Langage.
42. DNB 00
43. {{Harvnb. Murray. 1809, original 1795, {{Harvnb. Murray. 1838, original 1797
44. (1970). "English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800". Cambridge University Press.
45. {{Harvnb. Webster. 1804, {{Harvnb. Webster. 1822
46. {{Harvnb. Cobbett. 1883, original 1818
47. {{Harvnb. Fowler. 1881, original 1850
48. {{Harvnb. Maetzner. Grece. 1874a, {{Harvnb. Maetzner. Grece. 1874c, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
49. {{Harvnb. Sweet. 1900, original 1892, {{Harvnb. Sweet. 1898, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
50. {{Harvnb. Poutsma. 1904–1929, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
51. {{Harvnb. Kruisinga. 1909–1932, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
52. {{Harvnb. Jespersen. 1909–1940
53. {{Harvnb. Curme. 1931, {{Harvnb. Curme. 1935
54. {{Harvnb. Zandvoort. 1945, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
55. {{Harvnb. Fries. 1952, {{Harvnb. Linn. 2008
56. {{Harvnb. Halliday. 1984
57. {{Harvnb. Quirk. Greenbaum. Leech. Svartvik. 1985
58. {{Harvnb. Biber. Johansson. Leech. Conrad. Finegan. 1999
59. {{Harvnb. Huddleston. Pullum. 2002
60. {{Harvnb. Carter. McCarthy. 2006