Likewise with grammar. I'd imagine many of the complexities related in said books are due to attempting to list distributed evolved usages rather than what legitimately constitutes formal grammar. But I'd also like to know if I'm wrong.

Kindly define that. As a student of linguistics, I observed some very broad approaches to researching formal grammars of natural languages. Grammar of natural human languages includes much more than just the features of word accidence you would learn about in a course in Latin or Greek.

I would have just downvoted for disagreement, but you wrote, "But I'd also like to know if I'm wrong," and I can only cheer that willingness to learn. Chinese grammar is expressed largely through different means (word order and function words) from those through which Indo-European grammar is expressed (inflection of word endings), but end result is still that the language has many fussy, arbitrary distinctions constrained by historical accident (or possibly by information theory) that allow for miscommunication among speakers of Chinese who are not all native speakers.

I'll have to think for awhile if I want to come up with a formal definition for formal grammar. If you still care, email me in a couple of days.