Navigating English Grammar A Guide to Analyzing Real Language

An engaging and fresh take on the rules and politics of English grammar, written in lively prose. It goes a step further than most books on grammar by providing an overview of the field, with a discussion of historical and current debates about grammar, and how we define, discuss, and approach it.

• Presents a novel, inquiry-based approach to understanding speakers' unconscious knowledge of English grammar
• Makes lucid connections, when relevant, with current linguistic theory
• Integrates language change and variation into the study of grammar
• Examines historical sources of socially evaluative perceptions of grammar, as 'good' or 'bad', and notions of language authority
• Provides syntactic explanations for many modern punctuation rules
• Explores some of the current controversies about grammar teaching in school and the role of Standard English in testing and assessment

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xv

1 What is Grammar and How Do We Study It? 1

2 Nouns 23

3 Noun Phrases 41

4 Verbs 67

5 Verb Phrases 85

6 The Clause 113

7 Adjectives 147

8 Adverbs 171

9 Prepositions and Particles 187

10 Independent, Coordinate, and Subordinate Clauses 209

11 More on Complementation and Modification 243

Epilogue: Navigating Real Language 273

Index 275

Anne Lobeck is Professor of English and Linguistics at Western Washington University. She is author of Ellipsis: Functional Heads, Licensing and Identification (1995) and Discovering Grammar: An Introduction to English Sentence Structure (2000), and is coeditor and co-author (with Kristin Denham) of several books, including Linguistics at School: Language Awareness in Primary and Secondary Education (2010).

Kristin Denham is Professor of English and Linguistics at Western Washington University. She is coeditor (with Anne Lobeck) of two volumes, including Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistic Knowledge into K-12 Teaching (2005) and co-author (with Anne Lobeck) of Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction (2010).