| Sumario: | This article is concerned with what might be termed grammar writ large, an expansive understanding of grammar that reaches back to its origins in antiquity and, in the spirit of time-binding, provides a basis for enhanced understanding of our environment as we move into the future. Grammar originally refers to the study of language and literature, and its origins are linked to the introduction of alphabetic writing. Grammar eventually became part of the curriculum of the medieval university, one of three basic subjects known as the trivium, the other two being rhetoric and logic. Marshall McLuhan argued that western intellectual history can be understood as an ongoing conflict between grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and that it was grammar, not logic, that led to the development of modern science, and he viewed himself, as well as Alfred Korzybski, as grammarians. The printing revolution in early modern Europe played a major role in this development, and also in the introduction of the prescriptivist approach to grammar, which was followed by the descriptivist alternative and linguistic relativism, which is associated with general semantics and media ecology, and also relates to systems theory, all of which can be understood as sharing a grammarian orientation.
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