Andre Martinet and Grammar

The positions taken by Andre Martinet regarding grammar are clarified in light of the extreme polysemy & long tradition of the term. Certainly Martinet's article "Les grammairiens tuent la langue" ([Grammarians are Killing Language] 1963) embodies his stout rejection of prescriptive approaches to language; in 1977 he undertook the project that culminated in his Grammaire fonctionelle du francais ([Functional Grammar of French] 1979), dedicated to the use of functionalist theory "in the best interests of the users" of French. With the relevance of communication as the starting-point, the functional model seeks to discover the grammatical classes of a particular language, ie, those to which its meaningful units belong in view of specific restrictions on their combination; the grammar & dictionary present the elements of utterances in a language & their manner of combination that makes it possible to communicate. It is argued that, given the extent of variation in actual use of a language, a grammar should attempt to recommend the most appropriate forms in different communicative situations based on prior observation of speakers' usage. J. Hitchcock