grammar一词，来源于古希腊语的grammatike，意思是字母的艺术。 既然是字母的艺术，也就是书面语的规则了。

grammar (n.) Look up grammar at Dictionary.com
   early 14c., gramarye (late 12c. in surnames), from Old French gramaire "learning," especially Latin and philology, "grammar, (magic) incantation, spells, mumbo-jumbo," "irregular semi-popular adoption" [OED] of Latin grammatica, from Greek grammatike tekhne "art of letters," with a sense of both philology and literature in the broadest sense, fem. adjective from gramma "letter," from stem of graphein "to draw or write" (see -graphy). An Old English word for it was stæfcræft (see staff (n.)).

   Form grammar is from late 14c. Restriction to "rules of language" is a post-classical development, but as this type of study was until 16c. limited to Latin, Middle English gramarye also came to mean "learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes" (early 14c.), which included astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of "occult knowledge" (late 15c.), which evolved in Scottish into glamor (q.v.).

   A grammar school (late 14c.) originally was "a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught" [Johnson, who also has grammaticaster "a mean verbal pedant"]. In U.S. (1842) the term was put to use in the graded system for "a school between primary and secondary where English grammar is taught."

查了日文词典，www.docoja.com，日文对grammar翻译为“文法”。也显示出书面语规则的意味。

文法

文法の: bunpouno: grammatical
文法上: bunpoujou <<< 上
文法書: bunpousho: grammar book <<< 書
文法学者: bunpougakusha: grammarian <<< 学者
英文法: eibunpou: English grammar <<< 英
仏文法: hutsubunpou: French grammar <<< 仏
独文法: dokubunpou: German grammar <<< 独

中国呢，1898年，《马氏文通》用的是文通。后也有葛朗玛之类的音译，但都不成气候。本人推测还是受到日文影响，旁证是，1924年，黎錦熙出版了《新著國語文法》，描写汉语口语语法。1930年代之后又改为语法，如王力、高明凯关于汉语语法的著作。

syntax 现在翻译为“句法”，实际上也是源于古希腊文的syntaxis，意思是把词安排有序。

c.1600, from French syntaxe (16c.) and directly from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek syntaxis "a putting together or in order, arrangement, a grammatical construction," from stem of syntassein "put in order," from syn- "together" (see syn-) + tassein "arrange" (see tactics).

语法的核心是句法，也包括了词法、语义和语用等层面。