Structural grammar, cognitive grammar, generative grammar, universal grammar, functional grammar, systemic grammar, lexico-grammar...the list goes on. Why can't we have just one standard English grammar that everyone, particularly learners of "international" English, can reference in today's global village?
Because grammar is the rules that govern language structure and use. As long as there are several sub-fields of the language, learning grammar contributes to these sub-fields.
You need to differentiate between descriptive grammars and grammatical theory. A grammar can be concieved as a set of principles that govern how elements in a language are selected and combined to form meaningful units at a higher level. Everyone pretty much agree that such principles underlie human language. A descriptive grammar aims to describe aspects of such principles in terms of grammatical concepts that may be more or less langauge specific. However, the nature of these principles are to large extent unkown and there are different ideas and theories about this. For instance, are the principles based upon some genetically evolved cognitive ability that is particular for langauge, unique for humans and shared by all of us? Or are they based on general cognitive mechanisms such as working memory and categorization etc? Or are they just to be seen as social conventions within a speech community? And to what extent does cultural differences influence grammars? There are many different theories and ideas about this and therefore also many different grammatical theories, such as generative grammar, cognitive grammar / usage-based grammar, lexical-functional grammar and so forth.
Speakers of English worldwide are using the same English grammar otherwise they would be producing English with different rules. The point of having different approaches to the same English grammar is that different linguistic theorists are projecting their particular theoretical angle onto the grammar in order to be more insightful, explanatory, and pedagogical.
these terms are used to label the way grammarians view language.
If these gram mars as you say Shatha Naiyf Qaiwer ; Yuqi Zhou ; Thomas Hörberg Thomas Hörberg are perspectives or ways of how grammarians view grammar, then we are back to the same question: why are there different perspectives to the "standard" grammar of one and the same language, namely English?
Grammars are different ways of describing and/or theorising about language. The differences persist because there is no way to "prove" which one is correct. Also, "Structural grammar, cognitive grammar, generative grammar, universal grammar, functional grammar, systemic grammar, lexico-grammar... " are possible for all languages, not just English.
I see it the other way round; it is the language that theorizes the grammar (or grammars, if you like). Having multiple perspectives of grammar is somewhat perplexing for non-native learners or even users of English. Irrespective of the various dialectic and regional variations, Arabic has one standard grammar that is common to all native users of the "Fusha" Arabic. Here, while it is acceptable to encounter varieties in interpretations due to grammatically-sound multiple perceptions of sentence structure, one would not come across variations in the theorization of the rules of grammar.
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