Description:
<jats:p>For the author of this paper, two conceptions of grammar (and only two !) are compelling with each other at the end of the XXth century, which has witnessed the birth and the fall of several successive grammatical approaches (structural, systemic, transformational) : on one hand , the descriptive model, based on the observation of utterances, and on the other hand, the explanatory model, which looks for the raison-d'être of the surface elements in the abstract operations made by the speaker during the structuring of the utterahce. Only a metaoperational grammar, that is to say a grammar which considers the surface grammatical markers as the trace of these operations, is able to propose a coherent analysis of the working of grammatical morphemes such as DO, -ING, TO etc. For the metaoperational approach, understanding necessarily precedes any attempt at description. The pedagogical consequences of this point of view are briefly examined in the last part of the exposé.</jats:p>