A Students Grammar of the English Language

by Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk

Book Overview

This volume is a shortened version of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Although the structure of the parent volume has been preserved so that reference to it can easily be made, this... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0582059712
• ISBN13: 9780582059719
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Length: 490 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent but for One Serious Flaw

For educated adult English speakers who desire a fairly exhaustive understanding of English grammar, this book can--with one important caveat--serve as an excellent resource. Though it does presume that the reader knows the basics, it is otherwise detailed and complete. To produce this book, two of the authors of "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" have scaled that work down and adapted it to the requirements for a textbook as against those for a reference; however, they have retained the structure of the original, and consequently this book serves as an excellent companion to it. Before using the reference, one can read this book from cover to cover so that one may firmly grasp both the format in which the material is presented and the terms of this particular grammar. (It should be mentioned that this grammar uses many established terms in ways that are somewhat unconventional.) But both of these books, despite their excellence, are in one respect seriously flawed. Although this flaw does not prevent their being useful, it must be considered carefully. Because they fail to draw certain important distinctions, their attitude of disdain for prescriptive grammar extends beyond expediency and consequently undermines the key purposes that grammars serve in education and civilized communication. The dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive grammar arises in two distinct fields of discourse. The first surrounds whether grammarians should merely study and systematically describe grammar, or whether they should prescribe it. Which should we regard as the grammarian's proper job, to discover and report the principles according to which a language is in fact used, or to formulate and specify rules that prescribe how a language ought to be used? In this field the argument for descriptive grammar seems the clear winner. The proper usage of a language is obviously fixed by a strong de facto standard. What purpose would grammarians serve by asserting that millions of educated and confident speakers are wrong, that an enormous body of respected literature is ungrammatical, and that we should all stop immediately and memorize new rules? Accordingly, the goal of these books is not to dictate the rules of English grammar but merely to document its factual principles; however, this goal is not as clear cut as it may seem on the surface. Each English speaker obviously uses the language in a distinct manner, and some speakers are more noteworthy than others. For example, It would be absurd to suggest that grammarians ought to survey usage among young children and other beginners. Hence, it is assumed that any proper descriptive grammar must be based on the usage prevailing among competent speakers, and there is room for differing opinions as to what, in this regard, constitutes competence. The second field of discourse in which we find the descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy surrounds whether persons learning a language ought to regard its e

A brilliant guide for teachers and students of English

I bought this book when I started teaching English and wanted something more comprehensive and rigorous than the textbooks that I was using (e.g., John Warriner's English Composition & Grammar). I quickly discovered a host of brilliant insights and clearly defined concepts that I was eventually able to put to classroom use and that immediately gave me greater confidence. This is for the *serious* student or teacher. If you study this book, you will find answers to many areas of English that might otherwise baffle you. The authors are clear writers and generally provide appropriate examples with each explanation. For example, remember the textbook distinction between prepositions and adverbs, e.g., between "up" in "grow up" and in "climb up the rope"? As a boy, I always found this confusing. But when I read Greenbaum and Quirk, I realized that my confusion was natural -- the concept itself, as presented in my high school textbooks, was the problem. To clear it up, the authors clearly explain the concept of a "particle," which includes both phrasal verbs such as "find out" and prepositional verbs such as "dispose of." Once you read the section on complementation of verbs and adjectives, you will finally understand this distinction as well as many other points that you might have felt uneasy with. The authors take on the difficult subject of adverbs (a junk category of English if there ever was one -- but we're stuck with it) and break down each kind of adverb -- even the most obscure ones. For example, consider sentences such as "Oh well, we probably would have lost the game anyway" or "Why, I didn't even notice him leave the room." The authors explain that "oh well" and "why" belong to a class of adverbs called "initiators," and give lists of the other initiators. Nothing seems to escape their notice.I would particularly recommend this for ESL teachers who want to understand how English really works, and also for native English speakers who are studying or planning to study a difficult foreign or ancient language such as Russian or Latin. If you are learning English as a second language or foreign language and have already mastered at least the basics, it might also prove useful to you. Finally, anyone who is interested in the English language as a joyful study would likely find this a worthwhile purchase, one to set aside Mencken's The American Language, the OED, Fowler, and other classic works that offer inherent interest over and above their practical value as references. So why didn't I give it five stars? Simply because I think it should have even more examples than it does. As the book stands, students without a very good foundation in traditional grammar will probably find this a struggle, at least at first. I would therefore recommend using a good traditional grammar book, such as one of John Warriner's books (mentioned above) or any entry in the popular "English Grammar for Students of _____" series, and mastering at least seventy perc

A Student's Grammar of the English Language

I find this book is very helpful for learning English as a Second Language people.