kokirinoko

In the essay “Some Languages Have No Grammar” by Winifred Baur, she argues against this claim made in the title. She first defines what grammar is: “the set of rules which the people of the language follow when they speak” (Baur 77). She invokes a made-up language, Spelitzian, to prove this, and after listing examples she concludes that if Spelitzian had no grammar, mutual understanding of the language would be impossible and it would therefore be useless for communication; thus it would not really be a language but a “contradiction” (84).

Next Baur opposes the assumption that “some languages have more grammar than others” (79). Using Latin and Maori as examples, she compares two very different grammatical systems. Maori uses particles to denote the words’ functions, while Latin uses a declension system to mark words’ purposes. However, word order is relatively free in both of these languages. She compares these systems to English, where word order is fixed to mark words’ functions.

As with Latin, many believe that Russian grammar is “harder” than that of other languages. Russian, like Latin, has six declensions; words decline with different endings for both the singular and the plural form. Russian nouns also have three genders, and they all decline differently. Because of its declensions, Russian word order is relatively lax, although generally the order for transitive phrases is subject-verb-object.

In contrast, most people believe that Japanese grammar is relatively benign (compared with its three distinct writing systems). Japanese, like Maori, uses particles to mark nouns’ purposes. In the sentence 私はお茶を飲みます (watashi ha o-cha wo nomimasu), the particle は (ha, pronounced “wa”) marks 私, I, as the “topic” of the sentence (and the topic of any sentence that would follow until は is used again to mark another topic). The particle を (wo, pronounced “o”) marks お茶, tea, as the direct object. (Actually, the おbefore 茶 makes the 茶 formal; in informal speech, the sentence would read 茶[を]飲む and the particle could potentially be dropped.) 飲みますis the polite form of 飲む, to drink. Because of particle use, word order is not necessarily important as long as it fulfills one stipulation: the verb must come at the end. The sentence above, “I drink tea,” could also potentially read お茶を私は飲みます to express the general idea. Usually, though, the word order is “subject-object-verb”.

One of the real “complexities” of Japanese grammar comes from its relative “simplicity”; in Japanese, most meanings are derived from context; if something has already been stated, it is usually left out. A sentence could be as simple as 飲みました, “Ate.” To a native English speaker, this could be confusing. Who ate? What did they eat? In long conversations, it can be difficult to keep track of the dialogue.

Baur is correct in her assertion that all languages have grammar. A language by definition must have a grammar because otherwise communication would make no sense and the entire reason for having a language would be defeated. As we discussed in class, rules exist so we can understand each other easily and so that there is a standard by which others may acquire the language. It also helps keep the language relatively constant so that it doesn’t change too drastically in a short period of time. Even if a language doesn’t have a “grammar book” or any explicitly ordained rules (prescribed grammar), there is descriptive grammar because it explains how people communicate; thus if there is mutually understandable communication, there is a descriptive grammar. Furthermore, children of any language generally learn its grammar with the same degree of ease or difficulty. In any case, any language that claims to have no grammar is not really a language at all.