Theoretical linguistics in the context of "Grammatical"

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions.

Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy.

Formal science is a branch of science studying disciplines concerned with abstract structures described by formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, information theory, game theory, systems theory, decision theory and theoretical linguistics. Whereas the natural sciences and social sciences seek to characterize physical systems and social systems, respectively, using theoretical and empirical methods, the formal sciences use language tools concerned with characterizing abstract structures described by formal systems and the deductions that can be made from them. The formal sciences aid the natural and social sciences by providing information about the structures used to describe the physical world, and what inferences may be made about them.

In grammar, a phrase—called an expression in some contexts—is a group of one or more words acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consist of a single word or a complete sentence. In theoretical linguistics, phrases are often analyzed as units of syntactic structure such as a constituent. There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", or "kick the bucket". It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc. In linguistics, these are known as phrasemes.

In theories of syntax, a phrase is any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the syntactic structure of a sentence. It does not have to have any special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete grammatical unit. For example, in the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white neck form a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories, which functions as the object of the sentence.

A formal grammar is a set of symbols and the production rules for rewriting some of them into every possible string of a formal language over an alphabet. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings — only their form.

In applied mathematics, formal language theory is the discipline that studies formal grammars and languages. Its applications are found in theoretical computer science, theoretical linguistics, formal semantics, mathematical logic, and other areas.

Traditional grammar (also known as classical grammar) is a framework for the description of the structure of a language or group of languages. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these models became popular during the Renaissance.

Traditional grammars may be contrasted with more modern theories of grammar in theoretical linguistics, which grew out of traditional descriptions. While traditional grammars seek to describe how particular languages are used, or to teach people to speak or read them, grammar frameworks in contemporary linguistics often seek to explain the nature of language knowledge and ability common to all languages. Traditional grammar is often prescriptive, and may be regarded as unscientific by those working in linguistics.