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grammar

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gram⋅mar

  [gram-er]
Use grammar in a Sentence
–noun
1. the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed; morphology and syntax.
2. these features or constructions themselves: English grammar.
3. an account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these constructions: a grammar of English.
4. Generative Grammar. a device, as a body of rules, whose output is all of the sentences that are permissible in a given language, while excluding all those that are not permissible.
5. prescriptive grammar.
6. knowledge or usage of the preferred or prescribed forms in speaking or writing: She said his grammar was terrible.
7. the elements of any science, art, or subject.
8. a book treating such elements.
Origin:
1325–75; ME gramery < OF gramaire < L gramatica < Gk grammatik (téchnē) grammatical (art); see -ar 2

Related forms:
gram⋅mar⋅less, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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gram·mar   (grām'ər)   
n.  

    1. The study of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences.

    2. The study of structural relationships in language or in a language, sometimes including pronunciation, meaning, and linguistic history.

    3. The system of inflections, syntax, and word formation of a language.

    4. The system of rules implicit in a language, viewed as a mechanism for generating all sentences possible in that language.

    5. A normative or prescriptive set of rules setting forth the current standard of usage for pedagogical or reference purposes.

    6. Writing or speech judged with regard to such a set of rules.

    7. The basic principles of an area of knowledge: the grammar of music.

    8. A book dealing with such principles.

    1. The system of inflections, syntax, and word formation of a language.

    2. The system of rules implicit in a language, viewed as a mechanism for generating all sentences possible in that language.

    3. A normative or prescriptive set of rules setting forth the current standard of usage for pedagogical or reference purposes.

    4. Writing or speech judged with regard to such a set of rules.

    5. The basic principles of an area of knowledge: the grammar of music.

    6. A book dealing with such principles.

    1. A normative or prescriptive set of rules setting forth the current standard of usage for pedagogical or reference purposes.

    2. Writing or speech judged with regard to such a set of rules.

    3. The basic principles of an area of knowledge: the grammar of music.

    4. A book dealing with such principles.

  4. A book containing the morphologic, syntactic, and semantic rules for a specific language.

    1. The basic principles of an area of knowledge: the grammar of music.

    2. A book dealing with such principles.


[Middle English gramere, from Old French gramaire, alteration of Latin grammatica, from Greek grammatikē, from feminine of grammatikos, of letters, from gramma, grammat-, letter; see gerbh- in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Cultural Dictionary

grammar

The rules for standard use of words. A grammar is also a system for classifying and analyzing the elements of language.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

grammar 
1176, gramarye, from O.Fr. grammaire "learning," especially Latin and philology, from L. grammatica, from Gk. grammatike tekhne "art of letters," with a sense of both philology and literature in the broadest sense, from gramma "letter," from stem of graphein "to draw or write." Restriction to "rules of language" is a post-classical development, but as this type of study was until 16c. limited to Latin, M.E. gramarye also came to mean "learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes" (c.1320), which included astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of "occult knowledge" (c.1470), which evolved in Scottish into glamour (q.v.). A grammar school (1387) was originally "a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught" [Johnson, who also has grammaticaster "a mean verbal pedant"]. In U.S. (1860) the term was put to use in the graded system for "a school between primary and secondary, where English grammar is taught."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

grammar
A formal definition of the syntactic structure of a language (see syntax), normally given in terms of production rules which specify the order of constituents and their sub-constituents in a sentence (a well-formed string in the language). Each rule has a left-hand side symbol naming a syntactic category (e.g. "noun-phrase" for a natural language grammar) and a right-hand side which is a sequence of zero or more symbols. Each symbol may be either a terminal symbol or a non-terminal symbol. A terminal symbol corresponds to one "lexeme" - a part of the sentence with no internal syntactic structure (e.g. an identifier or an operator in a computer language). A non-terminal symbol is the left-hand side of some rule.
One rule is normally designated as the top-level rule which gives the structure for a whole sentence.
A grammar can be used either to parse a sentence (see parser) or to generate one. Parsing assigns a terminal syntactic category to each input token and a non-terminal category to each appropriate group of tokens, up to the level of the whole sentence. Parsing is usually preceded by lexical analysis. Generation starts from the top-level rule and chooses one alternative production wherever there is a choice.
See also BNF, yacc, attribute grammar, grammar analysis.

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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