"Grammar" for me, and I think for zjmezhd, is not something that is formally taught to native speakers. My 6-year-old niece can produce completely normal sentences, and she is not being taught grammar in school. She has an incredibly good unconscious knowledge of the grammar of English. She knows that subjects precede verbs, that verbs are marked for past tense and present tense third person singular, she understands the
complicated ways of forming English questions.
Here are some other examples:
Why is 2 ok
1 I gave a present to him.
2 I gave him a present.
but 4 is not?
3 I explained the problem to him.
4 *I explained him the problem.
Why is the position of adverbs in a sentence relatively free, but we can't put the adverb between the verb and the object?
5 I explained the problem to him clearly.
6 I clearly explained the problem to him.
7 I explained the problem clearly to him.
8 *I explained clearly the problem to him.
In these sentences
9 When I get home, he will be cooking dinner.
10 *When I will get home, he will be cooking dinner.
both clauses describe events in the future, but the verb in the when clause cannot take
will. Why?
But "grammar" to many people means something completely different. It means all the prescriptions that separate the in-group from the out-group: object-position "you and I", stranded prepositions, "who/whom", "which/that", etc, things that form a very small part of the grammar that native speakers carry in their heads. It's often claimed that lack of education in this grammar will lead to confusion or linguistic anarchy. But these things that have nothing to do with
comprehensibility and everything to do with
social divisions.
