The Rules of Grammar
Let’s say that you happen to be one of those people that has a very limited vocabulary, understanding how to combine the same words into different sequences to impart different meanings can be very affective, here is a great example: “Sheila heard him screaming at her” or “Sheila heard her screaming at him” both of these sentences employ the exact same words, but by rearranging the order of the words “her” and “him” we were able to give the words different meanings. Grammar is the only thing that makes this possible. Grammar by definition is a languages set of rules that dictate the ordering and combining of words to make them into understandable sentences.
When children first begin to speak it is usually in short 2 or 3 word sentences, this is would be described as telegraphic, or short, simple sequences of words without tenses, plurals, or function. In order to develop the capability of making whole sentences children must first acquire the knowledge to to utilize other forms of speech. In the English language this means understanding how to use the correct subject verb order, as in ” Corey chased the dog.”
Grammatical skill in using morphemes is also necessary as they are the meaningful units that make up words. Morphemes have the responsibility of of marking nouns so they show possession and plurality, and verbs so that they will show tense. It should be noted the often times morphemes do make mistakes because they cannot decipher how to apply the appropriate rules at times. One example of this is that after understanding how to create the past tense verb tense using -ed or -d the rule may not be applied which can create nonwords like “beated.”
