Three grammars that, since the 50's, have supplemented or offered alternatives to traditional grammar are discussed in this article. The role of grammar in communicative utterances and the underlying considerations in describing a grammatical system are analyzed. Then, brief summaries about and comments on structural linguistics, tagmemic grammar,…

The approaches of traditional grammar, descriptive linguistics, and generative grammar are largely complementary rather than exclusive. Traditional grammar defines eight parts of speech according to meaning or function and concerns itself almost wholely with the written language. Descriptive linguistics postulates that English has a set of unique…

An innovative approach to facilitate student mastery of Spanish linguistic structures requiring manipulation of the direct object is described in this article. The method, derived originally from William Bull's "Spanish for Teachers," also enables students to apply the transformational method to sentences containing nominalized adjectives,…

Speech delivered at the Deutscher Neuphilologentag," Munster, West Germany, April 2, 1970. (DS)

This article proposes use of one aspect of transformational-generative grammar as a simple explanation of the use of English articles. In this method, nouns are analyzed to determine their definiteness and whether they are countable, as tests for using "a" and "the." (CHK)

Speech given February 10, 1970, at the Hessisches Lehrerfortbildungswerk," Reinhardswaldschule. (DS)

This book discusses the relevance of applied linguistics to foreign language teaching and supports the point of view that linguistics is relevant as the source of assumptions rather than as the source of conclusions. In foreign language teaching, the assumptions based on linguistics must ultimately be evaluated on their ability to explain the…