notional (adj.)

A characteristic of much TRADITIONAL grammatical analysis, which assumed that there existed EXTRALINGUISTIC categories in terms of which the UNITS of GRAMMAR could be defined. Well-known notional definitions are of the NOUN as the name of a ‘person, place or thing’, of the VERB as a ‘doing word’, of a SENTENCE as a ‘complete thought’, and so on. A grammar which makes regular use of such definitions is a notional grammar. LINGUISTICS is critical of the notional approach in so far as the ‘notions’ involved are incapable of systematic and consistent exposition, and replaces it with an emphasis on FORMAL criteria.