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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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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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