Descriptive Grammar
A linguist’s description including the units, structure, and rules. An explicit statement of what speakers know about their language
The way we are using the word grammar differs from most common usages. In our sense, the grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language-rules for combining sounds into the word (we called Phonology), rules of word formation (we called Morphology), rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences (we called Syntax), rules for assigning meaning (we called Semantics), and the grammar with a mental dictionary (called a Lexicon). In the modern science of linguistic, grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The aim of descriptive grammar is to describe the grammatical system of language that is what speakers of language unconsciously know, which enables them to speak and understand language. Similarly, descriptive “rules” about a language may be thought of as defining the language. For example, English has a rule “An article precedes its noun”: the glass broke, not glass the broke. The rules of grammar state which combinations of words are possible in the language and which are not. For example of an impossible sentence in English was Home computer now much are cheaper. The rule that disallows that sentence is a descriptive rule, a rule that describes how people use their language.
In descriptive grammar, the interest is not in what should be, but in what is: the language that people use all the time, the whole range of different varieties they use in their normal everyday lives, including the varieties they use in their most casual or intimate moments, as well as the varieties thy use formal, careful speech and writing. In the practice of descriptive grammar no judgment is made about what is right or wrong; speakers of the language are held to be the highest authorities. Literally, “what they say goes.” Correct grammar,” that is, grammatically, is exemplified in ANY sentences and discourses felt by a native speaker to be the normal way to talk.