THE

GRAMMAR
BOOK
Form, Meaning, and Use
for English Language Teachers

Sample pages

THIRD EDITION
Diane Larsen-Freeman
Marianne Celce-Murcia

NGL.Cengage.com/thegrammarbook
About the Authors

Dear Colleagues.

Forty years ago we were assigned to teach a course at UCLA on English grammar for ESL teachers. We
soon discovered that no textbook existed, so we set about preparing handouts for our classes. Those
handouts became elaborated and refined in subsequent iterations of the course and later formed the
nucleus of the first edition of The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course.
Now, some thirty years later, we have been given the opportunity to write a third edition. Much has
transpired over these three decades, not the least of which has been the development of new ways
of conceiving grammar such as is featured in cognitive, usage-based, and corpus linguistics. Our own
research (and that of our students) on grammar and discourse has contributed new insights, as well as
has work in second language acquisition/development and on cross-linguistic differences.
Friends often ask us if English grammar has changed so much that we need to write a new book. The
answer is that English grammar does evolve, but more importantly, our way of describing it does, too,
and most importantly, our ideas about helping students to understand and use it are always being
enriched. This third edition represents our best thinking on all three fronts: updates from newer theories
in linguistics and allied disciplines, more accessible descriptions in order to guide teachers in addressing
the learning challenges of their students, and experience-based suggestions for teaching grammar, or
what we prefer to call grammaring—helping English learners to use grammar accurately, meaningfully,
and appropriately.
You may have also noticed that we have adopted a new subtitle: Form, Meaning, and Use for English
Language Teachers. By putting Form, Meaning, and Use in the first part of the subtitle, we make the
point right up front that grammar does not consist of a set of static rules, but is rather a system for
making meaning in context-appropriate ways. The motivation for the second half of our new subtitle
is to address English teachers more inclusively, acknowledging that in our interconnected world, it is
increasingly difficult to distinguish among ESL, EFL, ELL, and English-as-an-international-language
teachers.
We have learned that readers of previous editions have turned to The Grammar Book for guidance, long
after their formal teacher preparation has been completed. This accounts for why this book is abundant
with information. Certainly, we do not expect the book to be “covered” in a single course. Thus, we have
given our readers the tools and the practice in using them to continue to learn on their own. Grammar
is a fascinating subject, and we want our readers to experience some of the fascination for themselves. If
they do, and if their students learn to share their enthusiasm, we are confident that our readers will meet
with success in grammaring.

With every good wish,

Diane Larsen-Freeman and Marianne Celce-Murcia

1
 Contents of The Grammar Book
Dedication ......................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. vii
To the Instructor .................................... ........................................................... viii
Preface .............................................................................................................. ix
About the Authors............................................................................................... xi

Chapters
1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1
2 Grammatical Terminology .............................................................................. 17
3 Lexicogrammar ............................................................................................ 33
4 Copular Verbs and Subject-Verb Agreement ...................................................... 57
5 Word Order and the Phrase Structure Rules for the Subject of a Sentence ................ 77
6 More Phrase Structure Rules: The Predicate of a Sentence ..................................... 89
7 The Tense-Aspect System ................... .......................................................... 105
8 Modal Auxiliaries and Related Phrasal Forms .................................................... 137
9 The Tense-Aspect-Modality System in Discourse ............................................... 161
10 Negation ......................................... .......................................................... 183
11 Yes/No Questions .............................. .......................................................... 209
12 Imperatives ............................................................................................... 231
13 Wh-Questions ............................................................................................ 245
14 Tag, Alternative, Exclamatory, and Rhetorical Questions ..................................... 267
15 Articles ..................................................................................................... 281
16 Reference and Possession ............................................................................. 305
17 Partitives, Collectives, and Quantifiers ... .......................................................... 331
18 The Passive Voice .............................. .......................................................... 351
19 Sentences with Indirect Objects .......... .......................................................... 373
20 Adjectives ....................................... .......................................................... 393
21 Prepositions............................................................................................... 415
22 Phrasal Verbs ................................... .......................................................... 441
23 Nonreferential Subjects: Ambient It and Existential There ................................... 463
24 Conjunction..................................... .......................................................... 481
25 Adverbials ....................................... .......................................................... 509
26 Logical Connectors ........................... .......................................................... 541
27 Conditionals .................................... .......................................................... 575
28 Introduction to Relative Clauses .................................................................... 605
29 More on Relative Clauses: Nonrestrictive and Relative Adverb Clauses .................. 631
30 Focus and Emphasis .................................................................................... 655
31 Complementation............................. .......................................................... 679
32 Other Aspects of Complementation ..... .......................................................... 707
33 Reported Speech and Writing ............. .......................................................... 731
34 Degree—Comparatives and Equatives .. .......................................................... 767
35 Degree—Complements and Superlatives ........................................................ 793
36 Conclusion ...................................... .......................................................... 815
Suggested Answers to Chapter Exercises ..... .......................................................... 819

Indexes
Index of Names ...................................... .......................................................... 883
Index of Languages and Language Groups .. .......................................................... 891
Index of Words, Phrases, and Affixes ..................................................................... 893
Index of Topics ....................................... .......................................................... 903
2
 “This excellent new edition belongs in the professional library
of every ESL/EFL teacher whose students can recite the ‘rules’ of
English grammar but lack the ability to use what they’ve studied.”
— Elaine Tarone, University of Minnesota

The Grammar Book, Third Edition

The Grammar Book, Third Edition, introduces teachers and future teachers to English
grammatical constructions. This highly acclaimed text, used both as a course book and as a
grammar reference guide, is suitable for all teachers of English. What sets it apart from other
grammar books is its unique pedagogical focus: it describes not only how each grammatical
construction is formed, but also its meaning and its use. Grammar is seen to be a resource for
making meaning in textually and socially appropriate ways.

Features of the third edition:

n Updated explanations of the form, meaning, and use of grammatical constructions,

which draw on new research findings, especially from cognitive linguistics (for
meaning) and corpus linguistics (for use)

n Contrastive information that alerts teachers to possible cross-linguistic influence

and helps teachers to identify the learning challenges of their students

n Increased accessibility of the grammatical descriptions to guide teachers to

address their students’ learning challenges

n New applications in the form of teaching suggestions, exercises, and further readings

Both hard and softcover options available:

Hardcover (928pp) 978-11113-51861
Softcover (928pp) 978-13051-01791

3
 11
C h a p t e r

Yes/No
Questions Clear charts and examples
are used throughout and
make it easy to understand
each grammar point.

Introduction
In this chapter, we begin our treatment of questions in English. English speakers have a
profusion of question types available. Here are some of them.

Question Type Example

1. Yes/no question (sometimes called a
polar question)
2. Statement-form question (statement
syntax accompanied by rising
intonation)
3. Negative yes/no question
4. Focused question (with a stressed
element)
5. Wh-question (which typically uses a
wh-question word—e.g., who, what,
where—to seek specific information)
6. Negative wh-question
7. Question tag, negative tag
8. Question tag, affirmative tag
9. alternative question (also called
a choice question; it has a special
intonation contour)
10. rhetorical “question”
11. exclamatory “question”
12. Indirect question
Is dinner ready yet?
You come from texas?
Shouldn’t we send a card?
Was it Nicóle who won the Oscar?
What movie is playing downtown?
Why doesn’t he stop barking?
traffic is heavy at this time of day, isn’t it?
You didn’t go, did you?
Would you rather live in the city or the
country?
haven’t we had enough conflict?
are you kidding!
I wonder if we should start.

Of course, it is questionable to call all of these questions in the interrogative mood sense
of asking someone something. Certainly, there are questions that don’t seek information,
and there are statements that do (de Ruiter, 2012). To prove this point and to deal with this
assortment of question types, we will spread our coverage over three chapters. The first four
types will be dealt with in this chapter; types 5 and 6 will be covered in Chapter 13; types
7–11 will be handled in Chapter 14; and type 12 will not be discussed much until Chapter 33,
when we take up other forms of indirect or reported speech. We begin with question type 1.
209
4
 Many of the world’s languages form yes/no questions simply by adding rising intonation
to declarative statements. English speakers do this, too (see type 2), but the unmarked form of
an English yes/no question, like (1), requires rising intonation and a different word order from
a statement—one that inverts the subject and the operator. Only a few languages other than
English use a word order different from that of statements in making questions—German,
for example; on the whole, most languages do not do so. Instead, as Ultan (1978) reports in
a typological study of 79 languages from various language families, most languages simply
use a distinctive intonation pattern for questions. The second most popular option among
the languages Ultan studied was the addition of a special interrogative particle to either the
beginning or end of the question or attached directly to a word that is being queried. Here is
a Chinese example from Zhu and Wu (2011, p. 634):
ta shangxue 1 ma
He go school 1 question particle
‘Does/did he go to school?’
At an early stage in the history of English, questions were made with the use of rising
intonation alone. Only much later did inversion come about in question formation. The
earliest form of this inversion was with the subject and the main verb:
Know you the way to Ipswich?
It took much longer for the rule requiring subject and operator inversion to become standard.
Todeva (1991) has pointed out the parallelism between the evolution of the English
language and the acquisition of English as either a first or second language: learners of English
are known to first use rising intonation; only after several more stages do they master inversion.
The following is a somewhat modified developmental pattern for untutored learners that we have
adapted from Pienemann, Johnston, and Brindley (1988) (as reported in Ortega, 2009, p. 35):

Stage Example
I: Fragments 1 rising intonation a hat?
II: Statements 1 rising intonation You are tired?
III: place question marker in front of Is your daughter work here?
statement
IV: Be inversion are you listening me?
V: Do support Do you like ice cream?
VI: Other question types Don’t you see?
I wonder why they left.

Of course, as with all second language (L2) data, these stages are not discrete, and within
each there is certainly individual variation. Also, from early on, learners make considerable
use of formulaic questions, such as “How are you?” Nonetheless, it can generally be said
that inversion is the initial learning challenge for learners, and its mastery takes a while. The
challenge is no doubt made more difficult by the fact that English speakers frequently do not
use inverted questions in conversations; hence, the exemplars to which ESL/EFL learners are
exposed are inconsistent with regard to inversion. We return to this point later in this chapter.
As different as English question formation is from Chinese, Zhu and Wu (2011) observe
that it is not necessarily the structural differences that cause learners difficulty. What is
problematic is the assumption that learners already know how questions function. For instance,
an apparently straightforward teacher question—Any questions?—can be multifunctional
(Waring, 2012). Even more dubious is the assumption that learners know how to respond

210 The Grammar Book

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 to questions. Replying is not as straightforward as it may seem. This is a problem, given
that it is well known that early interactions between learners and speakers of English are
replete with questions directed to the learners for the purpose of comprehension checks and
clarification requests, and these questions are adjusted to enhance learners’ comprehension,
which sometimes results in ungrammatical input (Long, 1981).
In this chapter, we begin by examining the inversion rule in English under the heading
of form. Other comments about form are directed to the intonation pattern of yes/no questions
and to the structure of short answers. In order to help teachers guide students on how to
respond to questions, we also comment on the meaning of yes/no questions and their variations.
In the section on use, we make some observations about short answers to yes/no questions. We
also discuss contraction in negative questions and the use of elliptical questions, questions
that take less than full form. We conclude this chapter by pointing out other functions that
yes/no questions can fulfill, not only in informal language use, but also in academic language.

The Form of Yes/No Questions

Yes/no questions are often defined as questions for which either “Yes” or “No” is the expected
answer:1
Yes (I am).
Are you going to the party?
No (I’m not).
Inverting the subject and operator gives rise to the characteristic syntactic form of
yes/no questions in English

SUBJECT-OPERATOR INVERSION
With an Auxiliary Verb
Consider the following questions:
1. Will they be in Reno on Friday?
2. Was she able to finish in time?
3. Has Maricor gone home?
4. Are you doing anything tomorrow?
Tree diagrams illustrate
Here is the tree for the first sentence: the underlying structures
S of sentences.
sm S

Q SUBJ PRED

NP AUX VP ADVL

pro M cop PrepP PrepP

they will be prep NP prep NP

in N on N

Reno Friday

Chapter 11: Yes/No Questions 211

6
 Then, according to Todaka, at the level of discourse, what determines the choice of
prepositions, when it can’t be explained by semantic features or collocations, is whether or
not the object’s individual members are identifiable from the discourse context. When they
aren’t, among is more likely to be used:
among all Western Hemisphere languages (the individual languages are not identifiable
from the context)
When the object’s members are identifiable, between is used:
. . . And lastly, with hypnotherapist and client, there rarely is an affective bond
established, whereas in faith healing there almost always is a terrific bond that forms
immediately between people.
The object, people, is [−explicit]. However, between is used because it is clear from the
context that the people to whom the speaker is referring are the faith healer and the people
consulting the healer. As such, the individuals referred to in the object are identifiable,
while not necessarily explicit.

Conclusion
It may be more obvious now that you’ve read this chapter why prepositions cause such
difficulty for ESL/EFL students. Even relatively advanced-level students continue to omit
the preposition, as in
*I served the army until June 2004.
(in)
or use the wrong preposition, as in
*It is predicted that the degree to social adaptation will determine . . .
(of)
or use a superfluous preposition, as in
*I studied in biology for three years.
(Ø (or majored in?))
Nonetheless, as we have tried to show in this chapter, there is discernible systematicity
in how the core meaning of certain prepositions is extended beyond representing spatial
relationships. Calling attention to it where it exists will doubtless lighten the learning burden.
Perhaps learning the various meanings and meaning extensions of prepositions is the
greatest challenge. However, a pedagogical strategy that enables students to pay attention to
their co-occurrence, collocational, and discourse behavior will no doubt facilitate learners’
acquisition of these difficult lexicogrammatical forms.
Teaching Suggestions provide practical
ideas for teaching the form, meaning,
Teaching Suggestions and use of the grammar constructions.
1. Form. Distinguishing between obligatory and optional deletion of prepositions can be a
challenge for beginning and intermediate level learners. To practice this skill, ask students
to determine which sentences are acceptable from a list such as this:
On Saturday we went shopping.
*On yesterday we went swimming.
tomorrow we will go hiking.
*On every day we have done something interesting.

432 The Grammar Book

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 2. Meaning. To help students learn spatial meanings and make basic distinctions between
prepositions, a chart with iconic images (like the figures presented in the “Meaning”
section of this chapter) can be used in class. Such a chart can assist learners in making
connections between the choice of preposition and the dimensions of the landmark.
As Yule (1998) suggests, students can be asked if reference points (landmarks) should
be considered as points, surfaces, or areas (p. 163). For example, what is the best
conceptualization for beach and water in these sentences?
We were at the beach. // We were on the beach.
We saw some boats in the water. // We saw some boats on the water.
3. Meaning. Clay modeling can also be used to emphasize spatial relationships. Serrano-
Lopez and Poehner (2008) asked learners of Spanish to make models that reflected
underlying spatial concepts for Spanish prepositions. They can then be guided to create
models for English prepositions. In creating their own three-dimensional representations,
students are able to explore relationships between trajectors and landmarks in a very
hands-on way.
4. Meaning. Various techniques exist for training students to see the core meaning of
a preposition within different uses of that preposition. Tyler and Evans (2004) make
suggestions for how to present extended senses for over. For the sense of A-B-C trajectory,
they recommend using a flip book (or a video clip that can be segmented into individual
frames) with images of a cat jumping over a wall. After showing all the images of the cat
moving from one side of the wall (point A) to the other side of the wall (point C), ask
students how the cat moved to point C. Then focus on the pages (or frames) where the cat
is suspended over the obstacle of the wall (point B). Note that these images correspond to
the core meaning of over, and that to use the preposition for this extended sense, the cat
must land on the other side of the wall.
Yule (1998) encourages learners to examine prepositions used in time expressions
(e.g., at 10 o’clock, on September 3rd, in January) and to think about the landmarks
within the prepositional phrases. How should the landmarks be perceived? Should
they be conceptualized as a specific point in time (10 o’clock), a restricted unit of time
(September 3rd), or an extended period of time (January)? This activity can be continued
by asking learners to sketch the landmarks in a way that represents the core spatial
meanings of the prepositions. Thus, 10 o’clock might be drawn as a dot—reflecting the
landmark of at as a point of orientation, September 3rd as a flat square—reflecting
the landmark of on as a two-dimensional surface, and January as a box—reflecting the
landmark of in as a three-dimensional container. Such sketches should help learners make
connections between spatial and more abstract meanings of prepositions.
5. Meaning. Lindstromberg (1996) outlines a systematic approach to teaching the
prototypical meanings of the prepositions,9 and how to treat their more abstract meanings
derived by metaphorical extensions. He illustrates his approach with the preposition on.
We don’t have the space to report every step of the approach, but here is a synopsis.
Lindstromberg first uses classic approaches, such as the use of Total Physical Response
and schemata, to make the protypical place and goal meaning of a preposition clear; for
example:

Chapter 21: Prepositions 433

8
 put ititon
Put onthe
thetable.
table.
Later, also using pictures, he introduces more metaphorical extensions:
on 5 about or concerning: An article on holidays in France
●●●●

the burden metaphor: The engine died on us.

●●●●

the basis metaphor: The argument is based on copious data.

●●●●

the vehicle metaphor: It’s hard to get through the day on one sandwich.
●●●●

Finally, along the way, Lindstromberg contrasts prepositions with overlapping meanings,
such as on top of versus on. As Lindstromberg himself notes, the use of schemata to represent
prepositional meaning long predates prototype theory. However, what may be innovative is to
use a schemata series to show how the prototype meaning holds throughout its metaphorical
extensions.
6. Meaning. Another widely used technique for giving students practice in using prepositions
to express spatial relationships is to ask students to draw pictures or manipulate bits of
paper to create designs. Give each student five pieces of paper in the shapes of a triangle,
square, circle, star, and rectangle. Then ask students to pair up. Ask Student A to arrange
the shapes in any pattern he or she likes. Student B does not watch.Then Student B has
to try to construct the same pattern that Student A has created following A’ s directions.
The students are seated back to back. When the five pieces of paper have been placed, the
students should compare A’ s original to B’s copy. Then it is B’s turn to create and describe
a new pattern for A.

434 The Grammar Book

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 7. Meaning. Given the numerous meanings or senses that one preposition can convey,
learners regularly encounter unexpected uses of prepositions. Such experiences can be
discussed and explored in the classroom. Ask students to look through texts outside of
class and to collect one or two uses of a preposition that they find strange or unexpected.
Back in class, have students share their examples and challenge them to make connections
to core meanings. Doing so often allows students to consider metaphor and metaphoric
extensions in language. If you have your own classroom, you may wish to keep a
“preposition chart,” to which you or the students can add examples from time to time.
8. Use. Because of restricted collocation patterns, learners often have difficulty choosing the
right preposition. Dictionaries that include information on collocations can be a useful
tool for choosing prepositions appropriately. Online concordancers, like the one found at
Tom Cobb’s Compleat Lexical Tutor (http://www.lextutor.ca/), are another helpful tool.
Encourage students to do their own concordances and to try to identify patterns. For
example, if a student is trying to decide between using central to and central for, he or she
could perform concordances for each and find that the former is the preferred collocation.
In another example, a student could compare arrive at with arrive in. A concordance should
reveal that the former tends to be used with buildings and events (e.g., arrive at a hotel, at a
party ) and more abstract entities (e.g., arrive at the answer, arrive at a good decision), while the
latter appears more often with cities, states, and countries (e.g., arrive in New York, arrive in
Guatemala).
9. Use. For reviewing prepositions, find a short biographical statement of someone of
interest to your students. Delete all the prepositions, which will primarily refer to time and
place. Have your students work in pairs or small groups to fill in the missing prepositions.

Exercises
Test your understanding of what has been presented.
1. Provide an original sentence illustrating each of the following terms. Underline the
pertinent word(s) or word parts in your example:
a. complex preposition
b. deletable preposition
Exercises allows readers
(i.) optional
to apply what they have
(ii.) obligatory
learned, and focuses on
c. literal spatial meaning of in
two areas: comprehension
d. metaphorical extension of in
and application.
e. collocation with preposition
f. preposition-noun-preposition construction
g. co-occurring verb and preposition
h. co-occurring adjective and preposition

2. Identify the trajectors and landmarks for the following prepositional phrases:
a. I saw the computer on the desk.
b. This is a time for healing.

Chapter 21: Prepositions 435

10
 c. Lessons in managing one’s anger are helpful.
d. In our house is a large piano.
e. The game began with the referee’s whistle.

Test your ability to apply what you know.

3. If your students produce the following sentences, what norms of Standard English
have they not followed?
a. *We discussed about our plans.
b. *Stuart lives on 160 Western Avenue.
c. *Because of the teacher gave us a lot of homework, I can’t go.
d. *After my evening class, I went to home.
e. I live in Washington, D.C. *I like living in here.

4. A student asks you what of means in the following sentence. What would your answer
be?
It's just the tip of the iceberg.
5. There are several pairs of prepositions that ESL/EFL students often confuse:
Source meanings of from and out of:
Paper is made from wood. (source not visibly obvious)
This table is made (out) of wood. (source visibly obvious)
Temporal meaning of in and within:
Come back in 30 minutes. (30 minutes from now)
Come back within 30 minutes. (between now and 30 minutes from now)
Since/For to express spans of time:
I have lived here since 1960. (refers to beginning of span)
I have lived here for decades. (refers to duration of span)
Choose one of these and create an exercise that would help students to detect the
difference and be able to use them correctly.

6. Describe spatial meanings and nonspatial meaning extensions for prepositions not
treated in detail in the chapter (such as under).

7. How is the following sentence ambiguous?

I’ll tell you the story in five minutes or less.
8. A great number of idioms include prepositions. Think of a few such idioms (e.g., at a
moment’s notice, on the dot, in a hurry, by the way, etc.) and see if you can make any
connections between the meanings of the idioms and the core spatial meanings of
prepositions.

436 The Grammar Book

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 language processing (Vol. 3, pp. 151–175).The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton de Gruyter.
Taylor, J. (2002). Cognitive grammar. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
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through they keep
University
content and
2.of the MA:
functions
California,
Boston, they
Berkeley,
Heinle, serve.
CA.
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Later K.
Aijmer & B.
in Altenberg
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The story over:
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Polysemy, (pp.
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and the London,
structure of England:
the lexicon. Longman.
Frodesen, J., & Eyring, J. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use 4 (4th ed.). Boston, MA:NY:
published New York,
Garland.
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Learning.
Herskovits,
Lakoff,
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J. Johnson,
K. Language
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(1980). spatial cognition.
connection: we An Chicago,
live by.
Structure interdisciplinary
through IL: The
content 1.study of theMA:
University
Boston, prepositions
ofHeinle,
Chicagoin English.
Press.
Cengage
Cambridge,
Learning. England: Cambridge University Press.
Lam, Y. (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to teaching the Spanish prepositions por and para. Language
Rauh, G.R.(Ed.).
Awareness,
Reppen, (1991).
18(1),
(with Approaches
2–18.
Gordon, GrammarTübingen,
to prepositions.
D.). (2012). and beyondGermany:
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Talmy, L. (1983).
Langacker, R. W. How language
(1987). structures
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Endnotes
Taylor, J. (1988).
Langacker, R. W.Contrasting
(2008). The prepositional categories:
relevance of cognitive Englishfor
grammar andlanguage
Italian. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn
pedagogy. (Ed.),&
In S. De Knop Topics
T.
in cognitive
De Rycker linguistics (pp. 299–326).
(Eds.), Cognitive approaches Amsterdam, Netherlands:
to pedagogical grammar: AJohnVolume Benjamins.
in Honour of René Dirven
For(pp. 7–35).
helpful Berlin, on
resources Germany: Mouton
collocations, see:de Gruyter.
1. O’Dowd (1994), noting that we can’t use out alone as a source preposition—that is, to mean “from”
Lindstromberg,
(*I took it outS.
Simpson-Vlach, R.,
the(1996).
& Prepositions:
Ellis, N. C. (2010).
box)—argues that theMeaning
An andout
Academic
sequence method.
Formulas ELT Journal,
List
of is actually a(AFL). 50(3),
particle 225–236.
Applied
followedLinguistics, 31(4),
by a preposition.
487–512.
Lindstromberg, S. (2010). English prepositions explained (Rev. ed.). Amsterdam,
We will be discussing particles in the next chapter when we deal with phrasal verbs. Netherlands: John
Benjamins.
Sinclair, J. McH. (2004).we
2. In the next chapter, Trust thewith
deal text:constructions
Language, corpus, of verbLondon,
and discourse.
consisting England:
1 particle, such as Routledge.
write off, which
Matula,
appearS. (2007).
to be the Incorporating
same as verb a cognitive linguistic
1 preposition presentation of the
co-occurrences, butprepositions on, in,
which function and at in ESL
differently.
instruction: A quasi-experimental study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Georgetown University,
3. Some verbs can take an object Np before the preposition, e.g., accuse someone of, charge someone with,
Washington, DC.
438 prefer something to, protect someone from.The Grammar Book
Mueller, C. M. (2011). English learners’ knowledge of prepositions: Collocational knowledge or knowledge
4.based
theseondeterminers can be preceded
meaning? System, by a preposition in nondeictic use; for example, in on the last Sunday
39(4), 480–490.
of the month, last means “final,” not the Sunday before the moment of speech. For the same reason, that
O’Dowd, E. (1994).
isn’t included in Prepositions
our list sinceand
it isparticles
usuallyinused
English: A discourse-based,
anaphorically unifying
(e.g., I was account
ill on that (Doctoral
Sunday), not deictically.
dissertation). University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
5. Note that the concept of motion or direction is important since home may take the preposition at with a
51861_ch21_rev04.indd Rauh, G. (1993). On the grammar of lexical and non-lexical prepositions in English. In C. Zelinsky-
438 2/4/15 7:35 PM
stative verb:
Wibbelt (Ed.), The semantics of prepositions: From mental processing to natural language processing: Natural
Is Jackie
language (at) home?
processing (Vol. 3, pp. 99–149). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton de Gruyter.
also, here and there can take prepositions in other environments:
Yes. She is (in) there.
12 6. rauh (1993) notes that indeed it is the prepositions that assign roles themselves and not just that
Chapter 21: Prepositions 437
prepositions express roles assigned by verbs, as is often assumed.
13
 About the Authors
Diane Larsen-Freeman and Marianne Celce-Murcia have long been leaders in the field of second
language pedagogy.

Diane Larsen-Freeman is professor emerita of education, professor emerita

of linguistics, research scientist emerita, and the former director of the
English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She
is currently a visiting senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She
is also a distinguished senior faculty fellow at the SIT Graduate Institute
in Brattleboro, Vermont. In addition to her co-authorship of The Grammar
Book, Diane is the editor of Discourse Analysis in Second Language Research,
co-author (with Marti Anderson) of the third edition of Techniques and
Principles in Language Teaching, co-author (with Michael Long) of An
Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, author of Teaching
Language: From Grammar to Grammaring of the TeacherSource series,
co-author (with Lynne Cameron) of Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics,
co-editor (with Nick Ellis) of Language as a Complex Adaptive System, and
series director of Grammar Dimensions: Form, Meaning, and Use.

Marianne Celce-Murcia is professor emerita of applied linguistics and TESL

at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to co-authorship
of The Grammar Book, Marianne is co-editor (with Donna Brinton and
Marguerite Ann Snow) of the fourth edition of Teaching English as a Second
or Foreign Language. She is also co-series editor (with Maggie Sokolik) of
the five-volume, content-based Grammar Connection series. She is also
co-author of Techniques and Resources in Teaching Grammar (with Sharon
Hilles), Teaching Pronunciation (with Donna Brinton and Janet Goodwin),
and Discourse and Context in Language Teaching (with Elite Olshtain).
MAR/15

NGL.Cengage.com/thegrammarbook