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  • A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language published (20-5-1985)

    From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to All on Wed May 22 15:59:07 2024
    This goes back to the Survey of English Usage, begun by Randolph Quirk
    at UCL in 1959, an attempt to gather real data on both spoken and
    written contemporary English.
    First fruits: A Grammar of Contemporary English (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech
    and Svartvik, 1972).
    The 1985 work by the same authors, "far more comprensive in scope", and
    with an index compiled by our own David Crystal.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Comprehensive_Grammar_of_the_English_Language

    has a note on a critical review by R.Huddleston, and links to two later grammars with similar ambitions:

    Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber, Johansson, Leech,
    Conrad, Finegan, 1999)

    Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston, Pullum, 2002)

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Ross Clark on Wed May 22 20:20:39 2024
    On 2024-05-22, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

    The 1985 work by the same authors, "far more comprensive in scope", and
    with an index compiled by our own David Crystal.

    Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston, Pullum, 2002)

    If you want a reasonably complete grammar of English, there aren't
    that many choices, and I have both on my bookshelf. Quirk et al.
    largely follow the traditional grammatical classifications, while Huddleston/Pullum try to incorporate newer linguistic understanding
    or simply different approaches. Both works strive to describe how
    the English language _is_ rather than proposing how it should be,
    so I can recommended neither one to peevers.

    Interestingly both of those pricey books come in at around the same
    size, some 1,800 pages, so whenever somebody starts telling me that
    English grammar is simple, I have a pair of two-kilogram bricks to
    club them with.

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

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