Traditional grammar and the teaching of linguistics

Traditional grammar plays a curious role in the teaching of linguistics. It is acknowledged as the intellectual tradition of modern linguistic theory, and it is assumed as a prerequisite for doing linguistic analysis. However, crucial as it is to an understanding of modern linguistic theory, traditional grammar is rarely a part of the linguistics curriculum. Whatever knowledge students have of traditional grammar comes from instruction in grade school and high school English classes. This has two unfortunate consequences. First, there is a great range in the degree of understanding of the basic concepts of traditional grammar, such as the parts of speech and parts of the sentence. Second and more serious, traditional grammar is taught prescriptively, as part of a received cultural tradition, rather than as a theory of language. This means that most students consider traditional grammar differently from other theories about language to which they are subsequently exposed. They are rarely encouraged to view traditional grammar as a theory of language in its own right and subject it to evaluation in terms of internal consistency and empirical testing.