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Linguists have defined grammar as a body of rules describing the properties of a language. Grammar is the mental representation of a speaker’s linguistic competence; a linguistic description of a speaker’s mental grammar. All animals have their language. Human language involves speech and signs. The language one understands is a result of brain development towards that language. An individual’s grammar of any language is therefore dependent on brain development as stimulated through exposure.
A couple of academically acclaimed studies point to the revelation that the first three years of a child are the most crucial stage for speech and language acquisition. They have dubbed the period as the ‘critical period’. There lies a challenge for linguists who attempt to write a descriptive grammar of linguistic competence. They need to understand a deep and complex system based on a set of sparse and often inaccurate data. One way linguists may understand the reality of a person’s grammar is by first understanding the aspects of grammar and making observations to the individual in study, based on these aspects.
Morphology being one of the core features in grammar is the study of the structure of words. A linguist will need to take into account his subject’s understanding and correct use of this phenomenon. Here, interest is entirely on the subject’s expertise in word structure and other units of meaning in a language such as affixes, parts of speech, and intonation. The subject’s ability to construct a word in different forms and relate that word to other words in his/her language is a key to the observing linguist.
Another important phenomenon is syntax. Syntax in language simply refers to sentence structure. A sentence has two parts. The subject, which is commonly regarded as the noun and the predicate that signifies what is being spoken of the subject. The observing linguist will here need to take heed of his/ her subject’s know-how in sentence construction. The observing linguist will here need to take heed of his/ her subject’s know-how in sentence construction.
The sample speaker indentified for linguistically motivated academic inquiry ought to be questioned for the ability to generate syntactic components from simplified forms to more complicated ones. On lofty platforms of syntactic constructions, the individual must posses the ability the make out complex and compound constructions. A common difficulty faced in syntax is problematic sentences. The observing linguist therefore needs to be careful to identify these kinds of sentences which are commonly classified into run-on sentences, sentence fragments and rambling sentences.
A third aspect of grammar is phonetics. This refers to the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the study of sounds and human speech. It majors on the physical properties of speech sounds and has three basic classifications. A subject’s performance in phonetics revolves around these three classifications.
As a gratifying start point, articulatory phonetics is looked into. It entails the phonetic inquiry on how sounds are articulated in regard to the positioning, shape and the inherent movement of the speech organs. Acoustic phonetics, as a second study, busies itself with the acoustic values of speech sounds. The so called acoustics are the spatial-temporal qualities of sound waves realized when a speaker of language is on speech. Terms characteristic of this qualities include: rate of re-surfacing, amplitude and the sound spread. Thirdly, as a branch of phonetics, is the auditory phonetics whose objective is to study how speakers of language perceive speech sounds. The linguist here wants to know how the hearers categorize sounds and the importance of the aural system and how it cooperates with the human brain. These are the features to consider in the phonetic aspect of grammar.
Phonology, therefore, as has been seen in the foregoing discussion, is the study of the vocal vibrations that lead to the creation of meaningful sounds within a language family that are shared across a homogenous linguistic community. These are the features to consider in the phonetic aspect of grammar. Lastly, a linguist will need to put into account his subject’s fare in phonology. Though commonly referred along with phonetics, phonology is an independent component of grammar. The linguist’s interest here should be to observe his subjects ability to employ phonemes and create different meanings, alternate sound in speech and involvement of sign language.
To conclude, a linguist interested in observing the reality of a person’s grammar needs to factor in the four basic aspects of grammar namely morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology. For one to be considered excellent in the grammar of a given language, they must be able to engage these four aspects in a manner that creates meaning in their use of that language. Aside from this though, it should be appreciated that any linguist, his competence notwithstanding, will be faced by unspeakable difficulty if he/she engages in the study of a language that he/she does not know to speak.
Therefore, not until a linguist is himself conversant with the language in question can he/she be able to make clear observation of the reality of a person’s grammar on the basis of the aspects of grammar. Therefore, not until a linguist is himself conversant with the language in question can he/she be able to make clear observation of the reality of a person’s grammar on the basis of the aspects of grammar.
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