Therefore, underlying many of the different theories about grammar are assumptions and perceptions about the nature of language. .

             2.Various meanings of the term grammar .

             There are many different interpretations of the word grammar. For many it is the correctness of speech and writing that forms the cardinal attribute of a grammar. From another point of view grammar refers to the inflections or the word endings common in many languages. Another view is that the central characteristic of grammar is that it is the way that ideas are structured and organized into words. In essence however, the term grammar is most commonly seen as a term that "describes how we choose and arrange our words." .

             (Kies, D. 2005) A common perspective of the meaning of grammar is succinctly stated as follows. "Grammar is about how units of language are sequenced". (Kies, D. 2005) Grammas is therefore a means of expressing various meaning and organizing ideas conceptually.

             However there are very different and sometimes seemingly diametrically opposed views of what grammar is and how it functions. As was mentioned in the introduction to this paper, it is often the case that these different perceptions and theories have their foundations in different beliefs and views of reality and the nature of language itself. .

             The various modern theoretical views of what constitutes grammar can be seen to begin with the reaction against structuralism. The structuralist tradition which includes the important work of Bloomfield (1933), focused on the classification of the various elements of a particular language. ( Bourke J M.) .

             "The structuralist grammarian simply collects samples of the target language and classifies them in much the same way as a biologist classifies butterflies." (Bourke J M.).

             Furthermore, the structuralist views grammar as essentially a means of ". bringing order to the set of external facts that make up the language.