What is grammar? - статья на английском языке

<...> In the widest sense of the term, grammar is that complex set of relations. According to a recent definition, grammar is 'a device that specifies the infinite set of well-formed sentences and assigns to each of them one or more structural descriptions'. That is to say it tells us just what are all the possible sentences of a language and provides a description of them. This is no small task, but one that is well worthy of human study. <...>
There are three characteristics of language that are important for the understanding of the nature of grammar: it is complex, productive and arbitrary.
That language is highly complex is shown by the fact that up to now it has not proved possible to translate mechanically from one language to another, with really satisfactory results. Some stories, as, for instance, the one of the computer that translated 'out of sight, out of mind' as 'invisible idiot', are no doubt apocryphal, but it is true that the best programmed computer still cannot consistently translate from, say, Russian into English. The fault lies not in the computer but in the failure to provide it with sufficiently accurate instructions, because we are still unable to handle this vastly complex system. It has been suggested, moreover, that from what we know about language and the human brain speech ought to be impossible. For it has been calculated that if the brain used any of the known methods of computing language, it would take several minutes to produce or to understand a single short sentence! Part of the task of the grammarian is, then, to unravel the complexities of languages, and, as far as possible, simplify them. Yet total description of a language is an impossibility at present and even in the foreseeable future.
Secondly, language is productive. We can produce myriads of sentences that we have never heard or uttered before. Many of the sentences in this book have been produced for the first time, yet they are intelligible to the reader. More strikingly, if I produce a sentence with completely new words, e. g. Lishes rop pibs and assure the reader that this is a real English sentence he will be able to produce a whole set of other sentences or sentence fragments based upon it, e. g. Pibs are Topped by lishes, a lish ropping pibs, etc. It is clear that we have some kind of sentence-producing mechanism — that sentences are produced anew each time and not merely imitated. One task of grammatical theory is to explain this quite remarkable fact. As we shall see, many grammatical theories have failed in this, but one solution is considered in the final chapter.
Thirdly, language is arbitrary. There is no one-to-one relation between sound and meaning. This accounts for the fact that languages differ, and they differ most of all in their grammatical structure. But how far are these differences only superficial, in the shape of the words and their overt patterns? Some scholars would maintain that 'deep down' there are strong similarities — even 'universal' characteristics, disguised by the superficial features of sound (and perhaps of meaning). It is not at all clear how we can find the answer to this problem. When we discuss grammar, however, we do assume that many characteristics of language are shared. For this reason we talk of 'nouns', of 'verbs', of 'gender' or of 'number' and other such grammatical categories.
(From "Grammar" by Frank Palmer)