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English Grammar - What is it?

English grammar is a plan or a blueprint of the English language. People who read and write English use this blueprint to construct words, groups of words (phrases) and sentences.

This plan helps at two levels:

for forming words; and
for building sentences.

It's like building a house.

When you construct a house, you buy all kinds of building material: bricks, cement, sand, iron rods, wood, etc. If you pile up one type of material over the other, you do not get a house. You need someone called an architect to build the house according to some plan in his or her head. Architects draw such plans on a special kind of paper. Such plans are called blueprints.

Poor people who cannot afford an architect become their own architects and use common sense to build their simple, ordinary-looking houses. They do not worry about whether they have the latest styles. They make sure that their houses suit their minimum need for shelter...but they too have a plan, though simple and not sophisticated.

When you come across difficult words such as sophisticated, its meaning is usually given, as above (not sophisticated = simple). So you may ignore the word if you wish.

However, I feel by retaining (keeping) the word there, you get an opportunity to improve your word power.

Similar is the case with English language.

English grammar is a kind of plan for English language. We have a name for the professional person who writes down the plan of a language. We call that person a grammarian. A grammarian studies the rules and structures of a language deeply — more deeply than other people.

Ordinary people use English only for their day-to-day ordinary needs of speaking and writing. They may want to know how to take part in a conversation in English, or how to write a letter, or fill an application form. Such people too need the plan (grammar) of English, though not as deeply as someone like the grammarian.

Grammarians as well as ordinary persons use some plan for building their sentences. Just as you don't pile one type of building material over the other, you don't keep words together in any order you like.

If you just throw in words together you do not get a sentence. Like this...

east the the sun in rises

You do not get a sentence. If you arrange those same words like this...

the sun rises in the east

we get some meaning out of it. Then we give this arrangement some more polish like this...

The sun rises in the east.

We have capitalized the first letter and added a full-stop (period) at the end of this arranged group of words. We call this a sentence. A plan, hiding behind this arrangement, helped us to put the words in the correct order, i.e. the order which brings meaning.

The Two Levels of English Grammar.

English grammar works at two levels.

The formation of words (Morphology). Words are like building material. Take cement. Many chemicals join together according to some chemical formula to become cement. Words are born out of word-parts (these parts have names such as stems, affixes, prefixes, suffixes, etc.). This whole science of word-formation has the high-sounding name of 'morphology.' Morphology is one of the two important parts of English grammar.
The construction of sentences (Syntax). Usually people tend to think of this part as grammar. Different words such as nouns, verbs, pronouns, and others, called 'parts of speech', come together to become sentences. The plan that people follow to build sentences from words has also a high-sounding name - syntax. Syntax is the other important part of English grammar.

You may ask me, "what about sentences making a paragraph?" Good question.

Smaller sentences come together to form more complicated sentences (they are called by names such as Complex, Compound, Complex-Compound sentences). The study of this is a part of syntax.

When we use sentences of all types to create paragraphs, we are busy with 'composition.' 'Composition' is a general name for anything a person creates out of parts. We do not usually consider it a part of grammar.

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