Название: A Student's Introduction to English Grammar Second Edition
Автор: Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Brett Reynolds
Издательство: Cambridge University Press
Год: 2022
Страниц: 418
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, azw3, epub
Размер: 23.1 MB

A new edition of a successful undergraduate textbook on contemporary international Standard English grammar, based on Huddleston and Pullum's earlier award-winning work, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. The analyses defended there are outlined here more briefly, in an engagingly accessible and informal style. Errors of the older tradition of English grammar are noted and corrected, and the excesses of prescriptive usage manuals are firmly rebutted in specially highlighted notes that explain what older authorities have called 'incorrect' and show why those authorities are mistaken. Intended for students in colleges or universities who have little or no background in grammar or linguistics, this teaching resource contains numerous exercises and online resources suitable for any course on the structure of English in either linguistics or English departments. A thoroughly modern undergraduate textbook, rewritten in an easy-to-read conversational style with a minimum of technical and theoretical terminology.

This book is about how sentences are constructed in English. Almost certainly, English is now the most important language in the world. This might not have been clear even just fifty years ago, but it cannot reasonably be denied today. English is used for government business in well over sixty countries and territories around the world. By international agreement it is the primary language for all air traffic control and maritime navigation. It’s the uncontroversial choice of official language for almost all international academic conferences, and increasingly the main language of higher education globally. The European Union is increasingly using it for conducting business even though the United Kingdom is no longer a member.

A book on English grammar can have either of two very different goals: the aim can be either to describe, which means trying to characterize the grammatical system, or to advise, which means trying to influence the way in which you use it. There must be a grammatical system of some kind: when speakers of the language compose sentences, they’re doing something that non-speakers can’t do. The aim of a description is to give an accurate account of the principles of sentence construction that guide them. Advising, on the other hand, is a matter of telling people how they ought to speak or write. That can be a respectable aim – helping them to improve their use of the language, on the assumption that their command of it might not be perfect and might need improvement.