Grammar v/s lexis

[Camm]

Hi! I'm new in this forum, sorry about my english but I'm an english learner from Chile... my quiestion is the following :

Is grammar more important than lexis? or maybe it is the opposite ?

Thanks

 

[Raymott]

Hi! I'm new in this forum, sorry about my english but I'm an english learner from Chile... my quiestion is the following :

Is grammar more important than lexis? or maybe it is the opposite ?

Thanks

Are you asking whether knowing the meaning of words is more or less important than knowing how to put them together?
What do you think?

 

[Camm]

I think that lexis is not just words. I think that lexis involves the words, and the words convinations, for example, collocations, expressions, idioms and the like. I've read a lot about lexis and grammar, but I'd like to know different opinions because based on the lexical approach language consist of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.

thanks

 

[Raymott]

I think that lexis is not just words. I think that lexis involves the words, and the words convinations, for example, collocations, expressions, idioms and the like. I've read a lot about lexis and grammar, but I'd like to know different opinions because based on the lexical approach language consist of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.

thanks

OK, well my opinion is that words and grammar probably evolved together, since early man would have had to differentiate between "man kill buffalo" and "buffalo kill man" in some way.
So, they're interdependent, and the question of which is more important is not useful.
But this has no bearing on the relative usefulness of teaching techniques that might assert the primacy of one over the other, since L2 teaching is to some extent artificial, and needn't mimic nature.

 

[Camm]

I'm trying to understand your answer.

thanks a lot!

 

[Tdol]

I think it's impossible to say that one is more important than the other. Take either element out and you will fail to achieve much communication.

 

[Raymott]

I'm trying to understand your answer.

thanks a lot!

The relative merits of a course based on grammaticalized lexis and one based on lexicalized grammar are not determined by the level of importance of lexis and grammar.

Even if you decide that lexis is more important than grammar, that doesn't mean that grammaticalized lexis is better than lexicalized grammar as a teaching method.