Besides, if grammatical truths are universal and necessary — i.e., if there really is a science of grammar — then they cannot be altered by the fact that there are no chimeras.
Kātyāyana says: "While the relationship between words and meanings is established on the basis of the usage of specific words to denote specific meanings in the community of speakers, the science of grammar only makes a regulation concerning the religious merit produced by the linguistic usage, as is commonly done in worldly matters and in Vedic rituals" (first Vārttika on the Aṣṭādhyāyī).
It sums up in 4,000 sutras the science of phonetics and grammar that had evolved in the Vedic religion.
Thus, the Vedic religion evolved a science of phonetics and, later, of grammar, which was summed up in the 5th or 6th century bc by the grammarian Pāṇini in Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight Chapters"), a book that was to become basic to Sanskrit education.
For Rosenstock-Huessy, the Alexandrian grammar table, which was originally developed in the 4th century BC as part of larger pedagogical architectonic of the sciences and which is still the standard manner of grammar instruction, has been one of the great hidden obstacles to understanding real or speech thinking.
Al-Fārābī's influence is particularly obvious in the enumeration of the seven parts of grammar, the eight parts of natural science (covering the spectrum of Aristotle's libri naturales), and the seven parts of mathematics: arithmetic, music, geometry, optics, astrology, astronomy, the science of weights, the science of technical devices (ingenia) (see the tables in Bouyges 1923, 65 69).
(According to this criterion, the order among the sciences of language is: grammar, logic, and rhetoric).
Focusing on the terms of 'sign' and 'signification', speculative grammar, as a science of general cognitive-linguistic structures, prescinds from all the different national languages — and even from vocal language as such.
Criticizing the previous static views of grammar (descriptive grammar, prescriptive grammar, pedagogical grammar), Larsen-Freeman (2003) emphasized the importance of grammaring, an approach in which teaching grammar is less "knowledge-centered" (p.24).
One need not subscribe to the idea of grammar as a reflection of "values" to enjoy Everett's perspective on the future of linguistic science.
These treatises take the place of grammar, logic and rhetoric, that in Middle Ages constituted the "trivium" (in Latin: "the three ways") sciences and were the basis of a "liberal arts" education.
