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EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ADVANCED
Series Editor: Heinz Giegerich
Books in this series provide readers with a detailed description and explanation
Key Features
This is a practical yet flexible reference that you can return to again and again, whether it
AND JIM MILLER
KEITH BROWN
be for learning, research or teaching.
A Critical Account
Keith Brown is Associate Lecturer in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of
Cambridge.
Jim Miller is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow in Linguistics and English Language,
of English Syntax
The University of Edinburgh.
Editorial Board
Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington)
Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam)
Rochelle Lieber (University of New Hampshire)
Bettelou Los (University of Edinburgh)
Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh)
Donka Minkova (UCLA)
Edgar Schneider (University of Regensburg)
Katie Wales (University of Leeds)
Anthony Warner (University of York)
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
The right of Keith Brown and Jim Miller to be identified as the authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the
Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Introduction1
Organisation and content 1
Why study the grammar of English? 2
What counts as the grammar of English? 4
The data 7
Grammaticality9
Grammaticality and acceptability 9
Grammaticality and intuition 10
Grammaticality and power 13
Grammaticality: descriptive and prescriptive grammar 15
Grammaticality and language change 16
Adjectives and adjective phrases 19
Adjectives and adjective phrases: introduction 19
Adjectives and adjective phrases: adjectives and denotation 21
Adjectives and adjective phrases: adjectives and gradability 22
Adjectives and adjective phrases: adjectives as heads of noun
phrases23
Adjectives and adjective phrases: adjectives as a word class 26
Adjectives and adjective phrases: adjective positions in noun
phrases28
Adjectives and adjective phrases: reduplication 30
Adverbs and adverb phrases 32
Adverbs and adverb phrases: introduction 32
Adverbs and adverb phrases: adverbs and adjectives 34
Adverbs and adverb phrases: structure of adverb phrases 36
Adverbial clauses 38
Adverbial clauses: introduction 38
Adverbial clauses: time, condition, reason, concession 39
Adverbial clauses: less common types 40
Clefts107
Clauses: clefts 107
Complement clauses 112
Complement clauses: complementisers 112
Complement clauses: embedded interrogatives 114
Complement clauses: mood and modality 119
Complement clauses: gerunds, infinitives and meaning 121
Complement clauses: noun complement clauses 122
Constructions125
Constructions: overview 125
Non-finite clauses 128
Non-finite clauses: introduction 128
Non-finite clauses: infinitives 130
Non-finite clauses: free participles 131
Non-finite clauses: gerunds (Type 1) 133
Non-finite clauses: gerunds (Type 2) 134
Non-finite clauses: reduced adverbials 136
Non-finite clauses: reduced relatives 137
Non-finite clauses: verb stem 137
Non-finite clauses: with + NP 138
Non-finite clauses: eight types or four? 139
Nouns and noun phrases 141
Nouns and noun phrases: introduction 141
Nouns and noun phrases: common and proper 151
Nouns and noun phrases: count and mass 153
Countability: individuals and substances 153
Partitives155
Number and agreement 155
Nouns and noun phrases: determinatives 158
Nouns and noun phrases: pronouns 164
Prepositions and prepositional phrases 170
Prepositions and prepositional phrases: introduction 170
Prepositions and prepositional phrases: prepositions
and particles 171
Prepositions and prepositional phrases: prepositions,
transitive and intransitive 173
Prepositions and prepositional phrases: prepositional phrases,
their distribution 174
Complements of verbs 175
to the extent that all grammatical morphemes carry meaning and that
for most users of grammar, including non-native learners of any lan-
guage, the most satisfying explanation of some grammatical point is a
semantic one that applies to a good range of examples. This perspective
is nowadays associated with the theory known as Cognitive Linguistics
but the principle that grammatical differences signal differences in
meaning long predates that theory.
A third idea is that it is essential to have insightful, reliable descrip-
tive grammar as well as formal models. The term ‘descriptive’ is used
pejoratively by some analysts, but the fact is that no description is
possible without a theoretical framework and formal models go astray
without solid descriptive support. The audience for good descriptive
grammars and grammar is enormous; the market and range of applica-
tions for descriptive grammar is far bigger than the specialist market
for formal models. And descriptive grammar does not stand still, just as
formal models do not stand still. Good descriptive grammars draw on
the vast amount of work that has been done inside and outside formal
models over the past sixty years or so and a descriptive grammar pro-
duced in 2015 is not at all the same as a descriptive grammar produced
in 1950.
A fourth idea is that it is vitally important to collect reliable data. One
approach to data gathering is based on intuition: in its most basic form
this method involves presenting examples to a number of native speak-
ers of the language being analysed. The method can be beefed up by the
use of statistical techniques, by recording the speed of response if exam-
ples are presented on computer, by getting informants to fill in gaps in
sentences or to complete sentences. The second approach to data gath-
ering is based on observations of usage. This can be done by analysing,
say, essays by students on a particular topic, transcriptions of conversa-
tions or radio discussions and talks or the novels of a particular author.
Nowadays, of course, the automatic searching of large digital corpuses
yields information that was previously unavailable. In practice many
linguists use both approaches. The important thing is not to rely solely
on one’s own intuition. For instance, many generative accounts contain
statements to the effect that indirect questions must have the structure
of She asked where we were going.† That is, the indirect question where we
were going begins with the wh interrogative pronoun where but otherwise
has the structure of a declarative clause – subject we + a uxiliary verb
were + main verb going. Such statements are observationally inadequate.
Many examples such as She asked where were we going (with the structure
of a direct question) are regularly found in both writing and speech. (=>
Complement clauses: embedded interrogatives.)
THE DATA
This is a relatively short and concise account of English syntax. At
the centre of each topic is standard written British English, but there
are also many examples from spoken English and some examples
from non-standard English. The spoken examples illustrate construc-
tions that are not normally included in grammars of English but are
used frequently and have to be taken seriously by anyone interested
in the full range of English syntactic structures and usages. In par-
ticular, there are some examples from New Zealand and Australian
English.
The examples of written standard British English come from two
sources. Some are invented by KB and JM but most have been collected
by KB and JM over many years and come from digital corpuses, news-
papers, novels, academic texts and student examination scripts. The
examples of spoken English come from KB and JM’s digital corpus of
conversations collected for a project on the syntax of Scottish English,
from a digital corpus of task-related dialogues, from data collected on the
hoof from radio and television programmes (many examples were col-
lected in the days before large corpuses of texts could be easily accessed)
and from newspaper interviews. A very convenient journalistic practice
over the past twenty years is to record interviews and to quote verbatim
from them. Some examples of New Zealand English were collected by
JM during a four-year stay in New Zealand but most come from the
Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. The examples of
Australian English come from articles in Burridge and Kortmann (2008)
and from the Macquarie Corpus of Australian English.
An asterisk marks an unaccecptable sentence. A question mark pre-
ceding an example indicates that the example, while not downright
unacceptable, is in some way peculiar. A dagger symbol (†) indicates
that there is a relevant note in Notes at the end of the book.
The relative clause is introduced by the conjunction that and the body
of the relative clause is simply a main clause with the main verb open and
all the modifiers of that verb: the subject you, the direct object one drawer
and a time prepositional phrase at a time. (=> Clause structure:
dependency relations.) When KB and JM were writing a dictionary
of linguistics, they wanted to use the relative clause in (1) as an example
of unintegrated syntax. (=> Clause structure: integrated and
unintegrated syntax.) One referee commented that the example
was ungrammatical. Since a dictionary is not the place to set out an
argument about grammaticality and constructions that are typical and
frequent in speech, the example was dropped.
Many constructions begin life in spoken language, make their way
into writing but are not immediately accepted by educated users of
written English. Consider the sentence It is unreasonable what she suggests.
The referent of what she suggests is the unreasonable entity. Some ana-
lysts regard what she suggests as the subject of is unreasonable, and relate
the example to What she suggests is unreasonable. The what clause is treated
as being moved (‘extraposed’) to the end of the sentence. Another
analysis takes it as the subject of is unreasonable and treats the subject as
pointing forward to the what clause. The construction occurs regularly
in speech, planned or unplanned, and in formal written texts such as
letters to newspapers, which offered the example It’s unfair what they’re
doing to the union. However, one major grammar of English dismisses the
construction as incorrect.†
Another construction that is dismissed as ungrammatical (by propo-
nents of the latest Chomskyan models of grammar among others) is the
indirect question in (2) and (3).†
2 You have to ask why is it necessary to raise this very delicate and difficult
subject in the fraught and febrile context of a general campaign.
New Zealand Herald, 17 February 2005
3 The biggest uncertainty hanging over the economy is how red will things
get.
[Referring to map showing areas of house-price decreases in red]
The Economist, 10–16 May 2008, p. 97 ‘American housing. Map of misery’
Dear things! I thought of having some of our plants stood along there in
front of Abbot Thomas, with some tall vases among them . . .’
Dorothy Sayers (1934), The Nine Tailors. London: Hodder and Stoughton,
p. 59
might have led the writer to the construction. Expect in its basic meaning
and in many contexts is not a volitional verb: I expect they will arrive
about six, We expect her to take at least the silver medal. Where the speaker
is in a position of authority, expect can be used to signal a very indirect
command: I expect you to be here at 9 sharp (employer to new employee).
In (2) expect can be interpreted as part of an indirect command but,
nonetheless, it does not normally combine with a clause containing a
subjunctive verb. The moral of the tale is that pinning down exactly
what is grammatical and what is not can be very tricky, and even
highly-educated writers can go astray.
in the UK in the late 1960s. JM resisted the pattern at first but now, in
2016, uses it without thinking in speech and writing. Its acceptance owes
much to the parallel with examples such as Sadly, the custom died out and
Regrettably, the grant has come to an end. (JM’s late father-in-law resisted to
the end.)
Another area affected by change is the set of verbs denoting the
action of covering a surface with something or some things. There is
an established alternation for verbs such as spread, smear, spray: The child
smeared chocolate over her face and The child smeared her face with chocolate, I
spread jam on the bread and I spread the bread with jam, They sprayed weedkiller
on the path and They sprayed the path with weedkiller. Some verbs denote
substances covering surfaces, while other verbs denote the surface that
is covered: cover applies to the surface – cover a wall with green paint but
not the substance that is spread – *cover green paint on a wall. Some of
these specialised verbs now occur in both constructions. KB and JM’s
usage is represented in The trees scattered leaves on the lawn (cf. Leaves were
scattered on the lawn and There was a scattering of leaves on the lawn). But the
following sentence occurred in a written text and suggests the construc-
tion scatter the lawn with leaves.
1 My fields are scattered deep with chestnut leaves.
Fidelma Cook, ‘French leave’. The Herald, 17 October 2009, The Herald
Magazine, p. 4
A general verb denoting the action affecting substances moved on to a
surface is apply. KB and JM’s usage is apply paint to a door but not apply a
door with paint. But note the following example, which suggests the con-
struction apply soil with herbicides and pesticides.
2 What they [= worms] dislike is wet, acidic soil which has been regularly
applied with herbicides and pesticides.
Dave Allan, ‘Binning mentality’. The Herald, 17 October 2009, The Herald
Magazine, p. 37
Combinations such as grant someone with funds and lavish the researchers
with grants are to be seen regularly. KB and JM’s usage is still grant funds
to someone and lavish grants on the researchers.
Often listed as mistakes are combinations such as return back, reverse
back, project out and reduce down. They are considered barbaric by those
who are aware of Latin etymologies, but such aware people are a small
minority in the UK these days and the above combinations are very fre-
quent. Speakers have changed their usage and the combinations allowed
by the code have changed too.
A recent radio discussion of why children should read stories