English Grammar: An OutlineThis elementary textbook provides a succinct step-by-step account of all the most important and central English construction and categories. Rodney Huddleston's earlier work,An Introduction to the Grammar of English, was praised by reviewers for its clarity, and that is a particular strength of this new textbook as well. The book draws on descriptive and theoretical advances made in modern linguistics, but any significant departures from traditional grammar are pointed out. An important feature of the book is that it explains the major grammatical categories at both a language-particular level (specifically for English) and a general level, so that it could be used as a concise reference work for English by students taking courses in language typology. |
Contents
Preliminaries | 1 |
The parts of speech a preliminary outline | 22 |
Verbs | 37 |
The structure of kernel clauses | 49 |
Tense aspect and modality | 69 |
Nouns and noun phrases | 84 |
Adjectives determinatives and numerals | 108 |
Adverbs and prepositions | 120 |
Common terms and phrases
adjectivalisation adjectives AdjP adjunct adverbs AdvP analysed anaphoric applies bad mistake base form basic belong boss catenative characteristically clausal clause structure clause type constituent structure construction contain content clause context contrast coordination counterpart declarative definition derived determiner direct object distinguish dummy pronoun element ellipsis English example exclamative expression extraposition finite gradable grammaticalisation grammatically distinct illocutionary illocutionary force illustrated imperative infinitival inflectional forms interpretation involves jussive kernel clauses kind language-particular level languages letter lexeme lexical Lexical morphology main clauses meaning modal operators modifier morphological negation negative non-finite non-kernel normally NP structure occur passive passivisation past participle past tense peripheral dependent phrase plural position predicative preposition present tense present-participial pronoun properties prosodic prototypical reference relation relative clause restricted semantic sentence singular stem subclass subordinate clause suffix superordinate clause syntactic tense form term thematic tion tive utterance whereas words