Traditional grammar

The terms “article,” “adjective” and “noun” that we used to label the grammatical categories of the words in the phrase the lucky boys come from traditional grammar, Grammar 81 which has its origins in the description of languages such as Latin and Greek. Since there were well-established grammatical descriptions of these languages, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing categories from these descriptions and apply them in the analysis of “newer” languages such as English. After all, Latin and Greek were the languages of scholarship, religion, philosophy and “knowledge,” so the grammar of these languages was taken to be the model for other grammars. The best-known terms from that tradition are those used in describing the parts of speech.