How is the structuralist view of grammar different from the traditional view?
Answers
What is the difference between transformational generative grammar and traditional grammar?
That’s a huge question! Let me try to answer it in a nutshell.
Traditional, (often called prescriptive), grammar is somebody’s opinion of how a language ought to be. It doesn’t rely on science, (in the case of language the science would be linguistics) to formulate rules. In the case of English, traditional grammarians often ‘prescribe’ the rules of Greek and Latin grammar to English. This is where we get the silly rules you’ve often seen debated on Quora, like ‘An English sentence should never end with a preposition’.
Transformational -generative grammar is a linguistic theory. It states that we analyse the relationship between elements of a sentence and then build internal rules based on observation. The man responsible for this theory is Noam Chomsky.
As I said, this is a nutshell answer to a very complex question. There are Linguistics courses in universities on generative grammar that are at least a year in length. Chomsky, himself has modified his own definition a few times.
I hope that helps.