ABSTRACT
Grammar has been a familiar part of the school teaching of languages for many centuries, and its very familiarity has given rise to some inconsistencies in the use of the word grammar. Grammar is thus organized on the two dimensions already referred to syntagmatic and paradigmatic. The historical development of the grammar of a language from one period to another is a very necessary part of the linguist's study, where the evidence is available. In the European tradition grammar has been built on the word as the basic unit. But linguists have pointed out that within the grammatical structure of words smaller and, in fact, minimal grammatical units must be recognized. Morphemes are established and delimited in a language by comparing word forms with one another and noting the recurrent pieces that compose them, and every word is wholly analysable into one or more morphemes.
