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The 18th century saw the emergence of prescriptive grammars in English. A prescriptive grammar refers to a set of norms or rules governing how a language should or should not be used rather than describing the ways in which a language is actually used.
Ann Fisher (later Slack; c. 9 December 1719 – 2 May 1778) was an English grammarian and successful author of several books. With A New Grammar (1745), she became the first woman to publish on modern English grammar, although Elizabeth Elstob had published a grammar of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) in 1715.
Devis's grammar was recommended by her peers as a general introduction to Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). [ 4 ] Devis taught at several schools in fashionable areas of London, and her pupils include Maria Edgeworth , Frances Burney and her sister Susannah, Hester Thrale and later her daughter Cecilia Piozzi.
In 1751 appeared the work by which he became best known, Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar. [4] In the direction of prescriptive grammar, it influenced Robert Lowth's English grammar of 1762. [9] Harris also published Philosophical Arrangements and Philological Inquiries. His works were collected and published in 1801 ...
During the second half of the 20th century, the prescriptivist tradition of usage commentators started to fall under increasing criticism. Thus, works such as the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, appearing in 1993, attempt to describe usage issues of words and syntax as they are actually used by writers of note, rather than to judge them by standards derived from logic, fine ...
An example of Bickham's lettering and engraving skills. George Bickham the Elder (1684–1758) was an English writing master and engraver . He is best known for his engraving work in The Universal Penman , a collection of writing exemplars which helped to popularise the English Round Hand script in the 18th century.
The grammar of Old English differs greatly from Modern English, predominantly being much more inflected.As a Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system similar to that of the Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as ...
Differences in scale are important to this meaning: for example, English grammar could describe those rules followed by every one of the language's speakers. [2] At smaller scales, it may refer to rules shared by smaller groups of speakers. A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be known as a grammar, or as a grammar book.