This book shows how grammar helps people communicate and looks at the ways grammar and meaning interrelate. The author starts from the notion that a speaker codes a meaning into grammatical forms which the listener is then able to recover: each word, he shows, has its own meaning and each bit of grammar its own function, their combinations creating and limiting the possibilities for different words. He uncovers a rationale for the varying grammatical properties of different words and in the process explains many facts about English - such as why we can say I wish to go, I wish that he would go, and I want to go but not I want that he would go. The first part of the book reviews the main points of English syntax and discusses English verbs in terms of their semantic types including those of Motion, Giving, Speaking, Liking, and Trying. In the second part Professor Dixon looks at eight grammatical topics, including complement clauses, transitivity and causatives, passives, and the promotion of a non-subject to subject, as in Dictionaries sell well. This is the updated and revised edition of A New Approach to English Grammar on Semantic Principles. It includes new chapters on tense and aspect, nominalizations and possession, and adverbs and negation, and contains a new discussion of comparative forms of adjectives. It also explains recent changes in English grammar, including how they has replaced the tabooed he as a pronoun referring to either gender, as in When a student reads this book, they will learn a lot about English grammar in a most enjoyable manner.
Grammar - A Friendly Approach (Open up Study skills)
This is a grammar book with a difference. It brings grammar to life by giving examples of grammatical problems in the contexts where they arise by including a soap opera. As the characters’ grammar improves, so will yours. It blends a story about three students – Barbara, Kim and Abel - with advice on specific areas of grammar. The characters’ story builds throughout the book, but each chapter can be read separately if readers want to focus on specific grammatical issues. There are exercises to encourage the reader to relate the issues to their own practice and experiences, as well as an extensive glossary which defines the terms that are used throughout the book. Grammar: A Friendly Approach is based around issues at university but students from schools and colleges will also love this irreverent look at the rules of grammar: Their teachers and tutors will also see rapid and noticeable improvements in students’ written work.
In this highly acclaimed revision, grammatical descriptions and teaching suggestions are organized into sections dealing with Form, Meaning, and Use. THE GRAMMAR BOOK helps teachers and future teachers grasp the linguistic system and details of English grammar, providing more information on how structures are used at the discourse level.
John Sinclair is one of the most influential figures in world linguistics, an innovator who revolutionized the study of spoken discourse and pioneered corpus-based research. In this definitive collection, papers reflecting his most important work of the past decade have been collated and organized into meaningful sections, providing a clear statement of Sinclair's thinking and research. * Foundations outlines the major theoretical principles on which subsequent chapters are constructed; * The organization of text traces the development of Sinclair's insights into the relationship between text structure and dialogue; * Lexis and grammar presents core papers on the description of vocabulary, its relationship with grammar and the role of corpus analysis in describing lexical patterns. Featuring introductions and summaries of key arguments, Trust the Text is an essential addition to any linguist's bookshelf.
