(linguistics) In violation of one or more of the rules and conventions of a language as defined by the grammar, resulting in unacceptable or incorrect usage.
My Greek is not the tongue of Homer or Aeschylus but a sloppy ungrammatical sabir lacking Attic salt and tending to a saccharinity which sets my teeth on edge.
2018 February 17, Devan Cole, “LeBron James: ‘I am more than an athlete’”, in CNN[1]:
That comment seemed to anger Ingraham, who called James’ view a “barely intelligible, not to mention ungrammatical take on President Trump.”
2019 September 17, Kendall Trammell, “Merriam-Webster adds the nonbinary pronoun ‘they’ to its dictionary”, in CNN[2]:
While adopting the pronoun as a nonbinary description is vastly preferable for some, Merriam-Webster says, there has also been some debate that it is ungrammatical.
In formal linguistics, ungrammatical sentences are labelled using an asterisk (*):
*The subject of this sentence is.
This convention goes back at least as far as Leonard Bloomfield's Language (1933).
In the precise usage of linguistics, being ungrammatical does not mean violating prescription; rather, it means violating requirements of the language that are descriptivelyobligate. For example, the following sentences are not ungrammatical; they are merely proscribed by some outdated notions:
"If they ask who donated the money for the bicycles, tell them it was Santa Claus, not me."
"There are some types of shenanigans that the teacher simply won't put up with."
