A Brief Grammar of English

Introduction to William Bullokar’s A Brief Grammar of English

Marco Bagli

The idea that every language has a grammar, and that we may consequently distinguish between different grammars such as Italian, French, or Lao (Enfield 1966) is rather recent. Until the sixteenth century, the term grammar only referred to Latin grammars: the other vernacular languages that were developing throughout Europe were considered inherently not worthy of being formally described. These languages did not have a scholarly or intellectual reputation and were not explicitly taught in school curricula (OED, grammar, n. 1.a; Dons 2004: 4). William Bullokar authored the first grammar of English: A Brief Grammar of English (1586), and the aim of this introduction to this work is to highlight its points of continuity and rupture with the Latin tradition. As I hope it will be evident, Bullokar’s capacity and knowledge of theoretical descriptions is more sophisticated that it is usually believed. 

Before discussing the content of Bullokar’s work, I think it is important to think for a second on what is a grammar? This term ultimately comes from the Ancient Greek γραμματική, feminine of the adjective γραμματικός, “of or pertaining to letters of literature”; from the word γράμματα, plural form of γράμμα, “letter” The second half of the word comes from the word τέχνη, “art” (OED, grammar). The word grammar therefore, broadly speaking, may be glossed as the “art of letters”, and it testifies to the one of the most common definitions of grammar: a collection of rules to use a language properly. In contemporary linguistics, the notion of grammar is problematic and its definition and characterisation has changed considerably over time, but the different accounts share the idea that speakers of a language follow a set of norms and conventions to issue a sequence of sounds that conveys meaning. These norms concern the formation and structure of a word (i.e., morphology), the sequence of words in a sentence (i.e., syntax), and the minimal set of sounds that are deployed in the language (i.e., phonology). The OED defines grammar as “That department of the study of a language which deals with its inflectional forms or other means of indicating the relations of words in the sentence, and with the rules for employing these in accordance with established usage” (OED, grammar, n. 1.a). Every language has a grammar, and many linguists devote their work to its description. The result of this scientific endeavour is often called a grammar (book), and it is often referred to with an adjective indicating which language is being described. William Bullokar was among the first scholars to broaden the definition of grammar.

We do not know much about the life of William Bullokar. We know that he worked as a teacher in London around the year 1550, but the dates of his birth and death are still debated. Dons (2004: 7) reports 1520 and 1590, while Görlach (1991: 54) argues that he was born in 1530 and died in 1609. He was probably born in East Anglia, as we can infer from the phonetic transcriptions he provides in his grammars. He served as a soldier, as he clearly states in the introductory address to the reader:

I served also in garrison

with Captain Turner too,

to get knowledge in martial feats

the muster-books can show:

In all which times I studied then,

and since, as earnestly

the soldier’s art as grammar rule […].

William Bullokar’s grammar is mainly remembered for his notorious attempt at reforming and unifying the English spelling through a special set of symbols that constitute an early phonetic alphabet. This came in a time of great turmoil in England, when the new developing language was spoken by most people, but not formally codified yet (see Bagli forthcoming, Nevailanen 2013). Although his alphabet was not successful and did not last long, the attempt at developing a phonetic alphabet is noteworthy: it recognises the difficulties and proverbial inconsistencies in English spelling, which often represent a problem for students of English both as a Second and First language still today (Cook 1997, Umera-Okeke 2008). Bullokar recognises “divers divisions or parts of the voice”, for which he establishes “seven and thirty divers and distinct letters” (p. 54), often characterised by special diacritics to distinguish them from one another. The rationale is establishing a unique and direct relationship between a symbol and a sound, that is, creating a phonetic alphabet. Bullokar judged his grammar to be “very-profitable for the English nation that desireth to learn any strange language, and very aidful to the stranger to learn English perfectly and speedily”, through “true orthography and grammar” (A Pamphlet for Grammar). Thus, the establishing of a unique orthography would be beneficial for the recognition of English as a proper language, both in domestic and foreign schools.

The spelling reformation conceals another aspect in Bullokar’s agenda: demonstrating that “our language [:is] as sensible as theirs, and sooner conceived in sense to the ear by the reasons aforesaid, though (hitherto) utterly defaced of the credit due unto it, for lack of true orthography and grammar” (p. 55, emphasis mine). The desire to give English a better international status was one of the driving forces behind the production of Early Modern Grammars, and one of the reasons was the new international role that England acquired towards the end of Elizabeth’s I reign (Ragni 2023). The prototype of the perfect language was obviously Latin. The comparison between the two languages ran on two different levels. At a more explicit level, early modern authors of English grammars were eager to demonstrate that their language was nothing less than the language of classical literature. This is especially evident in Paul Greaves’ Grammatica Anglicana, the first contrastive grammar of English and Latin (Ragni 2023).

At a more implicit level, the grammatical models employed by Early Modern authors in the description of English were based on Latin grammars. Thus, authors such as Bullokar were faced with the difficult task of adapting a theoretical model with a long-standing tradition based on Latin to a new and fast-developing language. The immediate model for Bullokar’s grammar is William Lily’s Grammar of Latin, which was widely employed in English Grammar schools, and which described the rules of Latin for English students, although with no particular attention given to the language spoken by the learners. Lily’s grammar was so influential that it was referred to as the “Royal Grammar”, after King Edward’s VI decision to make this grammar “the authoritative reference work for secondary schools” (Dons 2004: 19), and it represents the model on which Bullokar’s grammar is based. Early Modern English grammars are generally considered to show very few signs of originality with respect to their Latin models. At a closer look however these scholars, and Bullokar surely among them, made a remarkable effort in transposing theoretical categories developed to describe Latin to a totally different language that at the time was already significantly different in morphology and syntax (Algeo 1986: 191).

Lily’s Grammar of Latin recognises eight parts of speech. This distinction was inherited from Latin grammarians such as Donatus and Priscian. Overall, both grammars show little originality, as they were based on earlier grammars of Greek tradition, especially Thrax’ grammar (Robins 1997: 67; Dons 2004: 19). The eight parts of speech identified by Bullokar, in keeping with the Latin tradition, are divided into “declined” (noun, pronoun and verb) and “undeclined” (participle, adverb, conjunction, preposition and interjection). If we compare the inventory of parts of speech with contemporary grammatical descriptions, this division lacks adjectives and determiners. Adjectives were categorised as nouns based on their rich morphological inflection in Latin, which followed closely that of the noun. Determiners instead were not present at all in Latin, which by virtue of its rich inflectional system could easily do without articles.

The relationship between Bullokar’s work and his Lily’s grammar is not always straightforward. Although the overall number of word classes in the two grammars is the same, and the definitions of the different parts of speech provided by Bullokar reflect formal and semantic observations that were provided by Lily’s grammar, A Brief Grammar of English shows traces of originality and formidable sophistication in his discussion and understanding of language. Unlike previous grammarians, Bullokar lists participles as undeclined parts of speech, even if this distinction is contradicted in the discussion: “adjectives and participles take their person, case, gender, and number of their substantives” (p. 21). Similarly, the description of adjectives as a declined class in English is part of Lily’s heritage: both nouns and adjectives were declined in Latin, and the two were considered the same part of speech. Bullokar retained the grouping into the same category but could not fail to mention that adjectives are not inflected in English. His way out of this theoretical puzzle is describing adjectives as “a word not-perfectly understanded except a noun-substantive be joined with it” (p. 3), which enables them to take the inflection of the name they refer to. 

Bullokar’s discussion of the case system in English represents another point of rupture from Lily’s tradition: “A noun-substantive may be declined, or at the least used in five cases: to wit, the nominative, the accusative, the gainative, the vocative, and the genitive-proprietary” (p. 4). He recognises however that one can hardly speak of case in English, considering the scarce inflection that this language retains (Algeo 1986: 192). He describes different uses: the nominative and the accusative are distinguished based on the type of question they answer. While the nominative answers the question “who? or what? made upon the verb or his sign” (p. 4), the accusative answers the question “whom? or what? made upon the verb, participle, preposition, or gerundial” (p. 4). Crucially, he recognises that “the same speech being used gainatively is called the gainative case, and being called or spoken unto is said to be the vocative case” (p. 4). The difference between the different cases is not encoded in the morphology of the word, rather it is a result of its syntactic use in the sentence. The case gainative corresponds to the dative, and he exemplifies this case with the following sentence: Robert gives a shirt to Richard, and Nicolas makes a coat for William, where Richard and William are the gainative case. Bullokar’s definition of the “gainative” is reminiscent of the label “beneficiary”, the “modern” semantic role assigned to the constituent William in the examples provided, i.e., “the semantic role of a participant, usually human or animate, who benefits from a state of affairs” (Revuelta 2013).

The treatment of nominative by Bullokar discloses another innovative and extremely modern element: the discussion of the nominative absolute, a case “being joined with a participle, and governing no verb, nor governed of a verb”, in sentences such as “they were ten days riding a hundred miles, we tarrying still at London, and not looking one foot without the walls” (p. 6). The nominative absolute in English is a case in which the noun is followed by a predicate that contains an indefinite verb: as Algeo (1986: 193) notes, “His [:Bullokar’s] treatment of the concept ‘nominative’ shows a good deal of sophistication about grammar and about English”.

Another major innovation discussed by Bullokar in his grammar is represented by his definition of the class of interjections. The “universal yet neglected part of speech” (Ameka 1992) of interjections has been widely investigated only recently in the history of linguistics. One of the major issues concerning this part of speech is their definition: alternatively, they have been labelled as discourse markers, pragmatic markers, and some linguists did not even consider them as proper words (Gehweiler 2010: 315; Dingemaanse 2023). There have been however remarkable contributions on their characterisation in a diachronic perspective, thanks to the availability of digitalised historical texts and the subsequent development of historical pragmatics (Kytö 2010). The class of interjections was introduced in Western grammars by Latin grammarians, who were faced with the task of adapting Ancient Greek grammars to Latin. The article was one of the eight parts of speech in Ancient Greek: when adapting this model to Latin, grammarians dropped the article and created interjections to keep the overall number at eight (Robins 1997: 66). The label interjection testifies to one of their most common and recognised features: inter iecto, “thrown between”, that is, they typically appear freely in a sentence and do not engage with the syntactic structure of the clause. Priscian, for instance, defines interjections as “pars orationis significans mentis affectum voce incondita”, “a part of speech signifying an emotion by means of an unformed word i.e., one not fixed by convention” (Ameka 1992: 102). Although recent investigations report on a wide range of pragmatic functions performed by interjections, the folk understanding of this part of speech reiterates the limited definition provided by Latin grammarians, i.e., that interjections are idiosyncratic expressions, “unformed words”, used to convey emotional meaning.

Bullokar defines interjections in two separate moments in his Grammar. According to the first, brief definition that he gives, “An interjection is easily known, for every word or clause of a sentence being suddenly spoken with a sudden passion of the mind under an unperfect voice (which is in effect unparsable) is called an interjection” (p. 18), thus following the Latin tradition. A few pages later, when dealing with this part of speech more at length, Bullokar adds a few fundamental sentences:

An interjection is a part of speech that betokeneth a sudden passion of the mind: the signification or meaning of which speech must be understanded by the gesture, countenance, or passion of the speaker, and some time with regard of the person spoken to, or of the thing spoken of (pp. 51-2).

Furthermore, he lists a total of seventeen different functions of interjections, such as sorrow, fear, wonder, shunning, and cursing, some of which were proposed by him for the first time. Besides the recognition of the different functions, the novelty element introduced by Bullokar in his definition of interjections lies in the recognition of context and paraverbal communication as primary sources of information for their interpretation. Among Early Modern grammarians, he is the only one to discuss this feature (Culpeper and Kytö 2010: 211) and anticipates contemporary linguistic characterisations. Ameka (1992: 108) distinguishes interjections from other illocutionary particles based on their “context-boundedness”, while Wilkins (1992) proposes a definition of interjections as deictics, noting that they “must be tied to the actual speech moment (i.e., the situation of utterance) before their complete interpretation (i.e., full referencing) can be made” (Wilkins 1992: 132). Once again, Bullokar’s insights and observations on the language show a surprising level of sophistication towards grammar writing in general, and towards English in particular.

The final aspect of Bullokar’s grammar that is worth mentioning when talking about his innovations is his spelling system. Despite being unsuccessful, the main reason that led Bullokar to devising a dedicated alphabet is still an issue in contemporary courses of English as a second language. Bullokar adopts a set of diacritics to discern between different sounds represented by the same letter. Thus, an accented vowel such as < á> signals the diphthong /eɪ/, as in <ták>, /teɪk/. A less discussed aspect of his spelling reformation is its interface with English morphology. Bullokar introduces a set of three diacritics (which he calls “grammar notes”, p. 15-16) to signal the structure of words: the derivative prick (.), the compositive strike (-), and the declinative strike (‘).

Bullokar argues that “every word is one of these six figures: to wit, a primitive, or a derivative: a single, or a compositive: a simple, or a declinative”[1] (p. 15). The distinctions described by Bullokar reflect the distinction in contemporary linguistic theories between simple and complex words. Simple words correspond to roots to which other morphological material may be attached. Depending on what type of material is attached to the root, we distinguish between derivation, composition, or inflection. The main difference between the three processes is that inflectional suffixes convey grammatical meaning (for instance, tense and number), while derivation and composition are used to enrich the lexicon of a language (Brinton 2010: 85-86). Derivation and composition are further distinguished based on the type of morphological material used: while derivation is “the addition of a word-forming affix” (Brinton 2010: 94), composition is the “combination of two or more free roots” (Brinton 2010: 103). Each of these processes may bring about changes in the root of the word. Bullokar illustrates each category with examples: a case of derivation is e.g., ſtón > ſtónị (stone > stony): in this case, the “derivative prick” is placed under the first letter of the suffix; a case of composition is man > man-kýnd (man > mankind), in which the compositive strike is placed between the two words; a case of inflection is t̜oo ſe’ > I ſ̜aw, in which the declinative strike is placed either under or over the first letter of the suffix.

Furthermore, he distinguishes between perfect derivatives, i.e., those words that take morphological material without a change in the root, and “derivatives or rather consanguinatives with such primitives”, i.e., those words whose root changes through derivation, such as France > French, broad > breadth. He also lists a case of grammatical inflection of the adjective among the examples of derivation (hard > hardẹr), thus suggesting a different theoretical consideration of the grammatical category of degree of adjectives.

In his discussion of composition, Bullokar lists some “syllables” (i.e., affixes), which are in fact considered cases of derivation in contemporary descriptions: “It is called a single, when it is not compounded with any syllable or syllables, as with un-, dis-, mis-, too-, les-, very-, even-, -soever, and such like”. Although the affixes listed are currently considered to instantiate cases of derivation, these affixes are different from the other discussed under the previous label. While affixes such as <-y> are used to derive an adjective from the noun (e.g., stone > stony), thus not fundamentally altering the meaning of the root, the affixes listed among compositives are mainly used to alter the meaning of the root. As Bullokar discusses later: “Un-, dis-, and mis- are set in composition before words, un- and dis- giving a signification contrary to the single word, that is, negatively, or contrary to the single, but mis- granting the signification of the single, but yet in other manner that is signified in the single, and otherwise than it ought to be” (p. 53). Lastly, in his discussion of inflection, Bullokar suggests two different positions for the declinative strike, depending on the part of speech of the root: nouns display their strike “over the first letter of the addition to his simple”, while in verbs the strike “is set under the first letter of the addition”.

Bullokar’s discussion of English morphological process is overall accurate and shows a sophisticated degree of understanding of linguistic phenomena that arises from observation of the language and intimate knowledge of its inner workings. Although the attribution of individual processes to the different grammatical categories has changed over time (e.g., the difference between derivation and composition, or the attribution of the category of degree to derivation instead of inflection), the development of theoretical categories and of specific diacritics to mark them testifies to Bullokar’s capacity of innovation and deep awareness of linguistic issues.

The task of writing a grammar of a language is never an easy-task, and a researcher who sets off to this enterprise may rely on a plethora of scientific contributions (see for instance Ameka, Dench, and Evans 2006). Bullokar of course had none of this: he was faced with the challenge of adapting the grammar of a prestigious, foreign language to the language he spoke. He attempted to modulate the theoretical categories at his disposal to the new language, with alternate success: although his discussions and definitions sometimes show some levels of inaccuracy, his understanding of the language show a surprising sophistication and deep appreciation of the inner workings of “our” English. Bullokar’s grammar testifies to the intelligence and erudition of a sixteenth century scholar who may have been a “muddle-headed spelling reformer” (Jespersen 1907: 19), but who certainly dedicated a lot of effort and work in figuring out English and the human faculty of language.  

References

Algeo, John. 1985. The Earliest English Grammars. In Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English for Johan Gerritsen, edited by Mary-Jo Arn, Hanneke Wirtjes, and Hans Jansen, pp. 191-207. Gronigen, Wolters: Noordhoff.

Ameka, Felix. 1992. Interjections: The Universal Yet Neglected Part of Speech. Journal of Pragmatics 18(2-3), pp. 101-118.

Ameka, Felix K., Alan Dench and Nicholas Evans. 2006. Catching Language. The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bagli, Marco. forthcoming. Heark, Hark ye, Harkee: a history of forms. Status Quaestionis 25.

Brinton, Laurel and Donna Brinton. 2010. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Cook, V. J. 1997. L2 Users and English Spelling, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(6), pp. 474-488. DOI: 10.1080/01434639708666335

Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues. Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dingemanse, Mark. 2023. Interjections, in E. van Lier (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Word Classes. Oxford: Oxford University Press; available in preprint: 10.31234/osf.io/ngcrs

Dons, Ute. 2004. Descriptive Adequacy of Early Modern English Grammars. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Enfield, Nick J. 2007. A grammar of Lao. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gehweiler, Elke. 2010. Interjections and expletives. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics, pp. 315-349. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Görlach, Manfred. 1991. Introduction to Early Modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jespersen, Otto. 1907. John Hart’s pronunciation of English (1569 and 1570). Heidelberg: Winter.

Kytö, Merja. 2010. “Data in Historical Pragmatics”. In A. H. Jucker and I. Taavitsainen (Eds.), Historical Pragmatics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 33-67.

Lennard, John. Punctuation: And – ‘Pragmatics’. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics, pp. 65-98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Nevailanen, Terttu. 2006. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Ragni, Cristiano. 2023. “[…] nostram solam ex tot linguis perfectam […]”. Paul Greaves’ Grammatica Anglicana (1594) between Latin influences and Patriotism. Status Quaestionis 24, pp. 255-272.

Revuelta, Antonio, “Beneficiary”, in: Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, General Editor: Georgios K. Giannakis. Consulted online on 19 July 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-448X_eagll_COM_00000045, First published online: 2013.

Robins, R. H. 1997 [1979]. A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman.

Umera-Oreka, Nneka. 2008. Spelling and Phonetic Inconsistencies in English: A Problem for Learners of English as a Foreign/Second Language. African Research Review, 2(1), pp. 64-83.

Wilkins, David, 1992. Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics 18(2-3). 119-158.

[1] Note also that the usage of punctuation has changed: Bullokar uses a colon where we would expect a semicolon. For a discussion on the history of punctuation, see Lennard (1995).

There are two extant copies of Bullokar’s Bref Grammar of English, both stored at the University of Oxford, in the Bodleian Library and in the Christ Church Library, respectively. The present edition is based on the print copy stored at the Bodleian Library. The two copies present no significant differences. Both are octavo editions. The title page (??) reports the title, the name of the author, the place where it was printed, the name of the printer, and the year of imprinting, as follows: “Imprinted at London by Edmund Bollifant. 1586”.

In both copies, the title page is followed by an introductory poem to the reader, which spans over the first eight unnumbered pages, signed A1r-A4v. Both copies comprise 68 numbered pages signed B1r-H4v, containing Bullokar’s Abbreviation of his Grammar (B1r-F3r), A brief re-capitulation or rehearsal of the former treatise (F3r-F4v), Brief notes in verse for parsing English (F4v-H1r), A short conference of English prepositions (H1r-v), and William Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (H2r-H4v). The text presents handwritten marginalia scattered throughout, which have not been transcribed.

The semi-diplomatic transciption is by Marco Bagli with the assistance of Edoardo Patrone ('studente tirocinante' in 2020-2021)