Wilson Follett in “On the Need of Some Grammar” from the Modern American Usage states that grammar is essential in governing language. In the essay Follett asserted that gramma is significant element that can enable the language to form meaning and thus enable one’s knowledge of the sentence construction. This can also enable the language to be officially used according to its proper structure. Grammar then is the logical relations of the words according to its meaning and structure, such as syntax, parts of speech subject verb predicate and logic of the sentence.
In as much as the language has changed still the type of grammar needed is the traditional type. The focus of traditional grammar is syntax, where parts of the speech work together to create meaning. Syntax takes the role of providing prescriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar is a set of rules on the use of language and depends mostly on the way that people think language should be used. In such type of grammar there is wrong and the right language. The focus of this type of grammar is to look at the individual parts that make up a sentence and the meaning that they have. Most importantly, it describes the formulation of a sentence.
Although there is need for traditional grammar linguists say that we need only morphology. Morphology is the study of forms and the construction of words guided by science. It tells linguists that language is a set of facts that it does not merit any form of composing English based on form. The focus of morphology is to describe the structure of words and patterns of word formation in language. The most important goal of morphology is to put down the principle that relates to the form and meaning of a morphological expression. Secondly, it seeks to explain how morphological unit are integrated and the resulting formations interpreted. The main aim of linguists is that users of language should be able to acquire language skills and use them creatively to express their emotions.
Although early descriptive grammar was helpful, the activities of modern linguists are harmful. Modern linguistic activities, which analyze and collect speech-ways makes descriptive grammar superficial and unimportant and thus poses a danger in the preservation of the ancient ways in which language is used to tell a narrative. Besides, the modern grammar approach focuses much more on objectivism. The focus of objectivist is only to enforce correctness through the maintenance of nouns rather than using the subjective perspective of understanding the context of material according to the subject rather the reader’s interpretation. Therefore the modern approaches are not beneficial to language since they focus much more on the stringent use of language to get meaning.
