In linguistics, a grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rules, a subject that includes phonology, morphology, and syntax, together with phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are, broadly speaking, two different ways to study grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar.
Patanjali also called Gonardiya or Gonikaputra, was a Hindu author, mystic and philosopher. Estimates based on analysis of his works suggests that he may have lived between the 2nd century BCE and the 5th century CE. Patanjali is regarded as an avatar of Adi Sesha.
Prakrit is a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, excluding earlier inscriptions and Pali.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.
Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad and Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, elevated prose and oratory, and is also the liturgical language of Islam. Classical Arabic is, furthermore, the register of the Arabic language on which Modern Standard Arabic is based.
Etymology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to construct a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings that a morpheme, phoneme, word, or sign has carried across time.
Sibawayh, whose full name is Abu Bishr Amr ibn Uthman ibn Qanbar al-Basri, was a Persian leading grammarian of Basra and author of the earliest book on Arabic grammar. His famous unnamed work, referred to as Al-Kitāb, or "The Book", is a five-volume seminal discussion of the Arabic language.
Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam, is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods, perhaps linked to Hindu deities.
Vyākaraṇa refers to one of the six ancient Vedangas, ancillary science connected with the Vedas, which are scriptures in Hinduism. Vyākaraṇa is the study of grammar and linguistic analysis in Sanskrit language.
Abū Ḥayyān Athīr ad-Dīn al-Gharnāṭī, whose full name is Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf bin ‘Alī ibn Yūsuf ibn Hayyān, also called Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, was a celebrated commentator on the Quran and foremost Arabic grammarian of his era. His magnum opus Tafsir al-Bahr al-Muhit is the most important reference on Qur'anic expressions and the issues of grammar, vocabulary, etymology and the transcriber-copyists of the Qur'an. Quite exceptionally for a linguist of Arabic of his day was his strong interest in non-Arabic languages. He wrote several works of comparative linguistics for Arabic speakers, and gives extensive comparative grammatical analysis and explanation.
George Cardona is an American linguist, Indologist, Sanskritist, and scholar of Pāṇini. Described as "a luminary" in Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, and Pāṇinian linguistics since the early sixties, Cardona has been recognized as the leading Western scholar of the Indian grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa) and of the great Indian grammarian Pāṇini. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Cardona was credited by Mohammad Hamid Ansari, the vice president of India, for making the University of Pennsylvania a "center of Sanskrit learning in North America", along with Professors W. Norman Brown, Ludo Rocher, Ernest Bender, Wilhelm Halbfass, and several other Sanskritists.
Pāṇini was a logician, Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India, variously dated between the 7th and 4th century BCE.
The Aṣṭādhyāyī is a grammar that describes a form of an early Indo-Aryan language: Sanskrit.
Nagavarma II was a Kannada language scholar and grammarian in the court of the Western Chalukya Empire that ruled from Basavakalyan, in modern Karnataka state, India. He was the earliest among the three most notable and authoritative grammarians of Old-Kannada language. Nagavarma II's reputation stems from his notable contributions to various genres of Kannada literature including prosody, rhetoric, poetics, grammar and vocabulary. According to the scholar R. Narasimhacharya, Nagavarma II is unique in all of ancient Kannada literature, in this aspect. His writings are available and are considered standard authorities for the study of Kannada language and its growth.
Sphoṭa is an important concept in the Indian grammatical tradition of Vyakarana, relating to the problem of speech production, how the mind orders linguistic units into coherent discourse and meaning.
Bhartṛhari was an Indian philosopher and poet and is known for his contributions to the field of linguistics, grammar, and philosophy. He is believed to born in the 5th century in Ujjain, Malwa, India. He decided to live a monastic life and find higher meaning, however, he was unable to detach from worldly life. He lived as a yogi in Ujjain until his death.
Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Abd al-Rahman bin Muhammad bin Sa'id bin Harith bin Asim al-Lakhmi al-Qurtubi, better known as Ibn Maḍāʾ was an Andalusian Muslim polymath from Córdoba in Islamic Spain. Ibn Mada was notable for having challenged the traditional formation of Arabic grammar and of the common understanding of linguistic governance among Arab grammarians, performing an overhaul first suggested by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. He is considered the first linguist in history to address the subject of dependency in the grammatical sense in which it is understood today, and was instrumental during the Almohad reforms as chief judge of the Almohad Caliphate.
The Alexandrine grammarians were philologists and textual scholars who flourished in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, when that city was the center of Hellenistic culture. Despite the name, the work of the Alexandrine grammarians was never confined to grammar, and in fact did not include it, since grammar in the modern sense did not exist until the first century BCE. In Hellenistic and later times, grammarian refers primarily to scholars concerned with the restoration, proper reading, explanation and interpretation of the classical texts, including literary criticism. However unlike Atticism, their goal was not to reform the Greek in their day.
The first Grammarians of Baṣra lived during the seventh century in Al-Baṣrah. The town, which developed out of a military encampment, with buildings being constructed circa 638 AD, became the intellectual hub for grammarians, linguists, poets, philologists, genealogists, traditionists, zoologists, meteorologists, and above all exegetes of Qur’ānic tafsir and Ḥadīth, from across the Islamic world. These scholars of the Islamic Golden Age were pioneers of literary style and the sciences of Arabic grammar in the broadest sense. Their teachings and writings became the canon of the Arabic language. Shortly after the Basran school's foundation, a rival school was established at al-Kūfah circa 670, by philologists known as the Grammarians of Kūfah. Intense competition arose between the two schools, and public disputations and adjudications between scholars were often held at the behest of the caliphal courts. Later many scholars moved to the court at Baghdad, where a third school developed which blended many ideological and theological characteristics of the two. Many language scholars carried great influence and political power as court companions, tutors, etc., to the caliphs, and many were retained on substantial pensions.
