Graham Burton discusses the origins of grammar and how we can use a corpus to modernise old constructions and improve our teaching and learning.
Most English Language teachers would have few problems answering the question: ‘What is the grammar of English?’. Terminology like ‘tense’, ‘modal verb’, ‘relative clause’ and so on roll off the tongue of an experienced teacher. There are established ways of analysing the English language, dividing it up, labelling it, and so on. But where did all of this actually come from?
Historical background
The first known grammatical description of English was William Bullokar’s 1586 Pamphlet for Grammar. Bullokar wanted to show that English was rule-based and could be analysed in the same way as classical languages like Latin. This was not something that was widely believed at the time. He therefore ‘imported’ grammatical descriptions of Latin and applied them as best he could to the English language. As well as the grammatical framework, he also imported Latin terminology like ‘verb’ (from Latin ‘verbum’), clause (Latin ‘clausa’) and perfect (Latin ‘perfectus’) in his descriptions. Despite a number of attempts to change them, the Latin labels have stuck.
Not long after Bullokar’s publication came the first ever pedagogic grammar of English – Ben Jonson’s 1640 English Grammar. As you’d expect from a grammar from almost 400 years ago, there are some peculiarities – adjectives are considered to be a type of noun, for example. But what is perhaps most remarkable about Jonson’s grammar is how familiar many of the language points chosen for description would be to a contemporary EFL teacher. Take a look yourself and see what you think.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English grammar had become big business. Hundreds of English grammar books were published. So, when the modern era of ELT started to emerge around the beginning of the 20th century, there was already an established grammatical tradition. But there is still plenty that feels alien in published ELT materials from the early 20th century. For example, the modern reader glancing at a popular 1930’s coursebook would probably be baffled by the reference to the ‘paulo-post conjugation’. In reality, this was simply ‘going to future’, but the alternative terminology shows just how fluid grammatical description can be.
Using a corpus to modernise grammar
Although there is a centuries-old tradition of describing English grammar, that doesn’t mean things can’t change. Resources like the Cambridge English Corpus mean we have tools to do just this. We are able to look for structures that perhaps don’t have a name, but are useful for learners. I’ve always felt that there + be + noun + –ing (e.g.”There were three people in the restaurant eating dinner.”) is an incredibly useful structure. We can find hundreds of examples in the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC), but it’s not a structure we typically focus much on, perhaps for no better reason than that it just doesn’t have a name.
Another great thing about corpora is that they can show us new things about structures we already know all about. Take the past continuous, for example. A search in the CLC for examples of past continuous will produce examples of all the familiar functions we teach in ELT. But, it will also throw up sentences like, “Were you wanting to see someone?“, or “I was hoping that you could help me with it“. The use of past continuous to create indirectness and politeness isn’t one we typically teach. However, it seems useful and easy enough to explain to learners. Is it something we should think about teaching at, say, B2? Are there any grammatical structures that you think would be useful to teach that perhaps don’t have a name? Or can you think of any additional functions of well-known structures that we don’t teach?
If you’ve enjoyed this post, here are some practical ideas for teaching clause elements.