In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases and words in a natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules and this field includes phonology, morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics and pragmatics. Fluent speakers of a language variety or lect have a set of internalized rules which constitutes its grammar. The vast majority of the information in the grammar is - at least in the case of one's native language - acquired not by conscious study or instruction but by hearing other speakers. Much of this work is done during early childhood; learning a language later in life usually involves more explicit instruction. Thus, grammar is the cognitive information underlying language use. The term grammar can also describe the rules which govern the linguistic behavior of a group of speakers. For example, the term English grammar may refer to the whole of English grammar; that is, to the grammars of all the speakers of the language, in which case the term encompasses a great deal of variation. Alternatively, it may refer only to what is common to the grammars of all or most English speakers (such as subject-verb-object word order in simple declarative sentences). It may also refer to the rules of one relatively well-defined form of English (such as standard English for a region). A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be referred to as a grammar. A reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a reference grammar or simply a grammar (see History of English grammars). A fully explicit grammar which exhaustively describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech variety is called a descriptive grammar. This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription, an attempt to actively discourage or suppress some grammatical constructions, while codifying and promoting others, either in an absolute sense or about a standard variety. For example, some prescriptivists maintain that sentences in English should not end with prepositions, a prohibition that has been traced to John Dryden (13 April 1668 - January 1688) whose unexplained objection to the practice perhaps led other English speakers to avoid the construction and discourage its use. Yet preposition stranding has a long history in Germanic languages like English, where it is so widespread as to be a standard usage. Outside linguistics, the term grammar is often used in a rather different sense. It may be used more broadly to include conventions of spelling and punctuation, which linguists would not typically consider as part of grammar but rather as part of orthography, the conventions used for writing a language. It may also be used more narrowly to refer to a set of prescriptive norms only, excluding those aspects of a language's grammar which are not subject to variation or debate on their normative acceptability. Jeremy Butterfield claimed that, for non-linguists, Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to.
La gramática es el estudio de las reglas y principios que gobiernan el uso de las lenguas y la organización de las palabras dentro de unas oraciones y otro tipo de constituyentes sintácticos. También se denomina así al conjunto de reglas y principios que gobiernan el uso de una lengua concreta determinada; así, cada lengua tiene su propia gramática. La gramática es parte del estudio general del lenguaje denominado lingí¼ística. Clásicamente, el estudio de la lengua se divide en cuatro niveles: \n* Nivel fonético-fonológico. \n* Nivel sintáctico-morfológico. \n* Nivel léxico-semántico. \n* Nivel pragmático. A veces se restringe el uso del término gramática a las reglas y principios que definen el segundo de estos niveles. Sin embargo, la separación de los niveles no es totalmente nítida porque ciertas reglas gramaticales se realizan en el nivel fonético-fonológico e igualmente existen parámetros o criterios semánticos que sirven para decidir cuándo una determinada construcción es gramatical.