Table Of ContentKersti Börjars
Kate Burridge
Introducing
English
Grammar
second edition
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Hodder Education, an Hachette UK Company,
338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
© 2010 Kersti Börjars and Kate Burridge
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Contents
Preface to the second edition vii
Preface to the first edition ix
1 Introduction: the glamour of grammar
1.1 Purpose and nature of grammatical description 1
1.2 Standard English and variation 2
1.3 English rules, OK? 5
1.4 Why study English grammar? 7
1.5 English language in the workplace 12
1.6 The branches of linguistics 14
Exercises 15
2 The structure of sentences
2.1 Introduction 18
2.2 The structure of words 18
2.3 How do we know sentences have structure? 23
2.4 Constituency tests 24
2.5 Three additional tests 33
2.6 Nested constituents 34
2.7 Representing structure 38
2.8 Points to remember 40
Exercises 41
3 The words of English
3.1 Introduction 43
3.2 The meaning of lexical categories 43
3.3 Structural criteria 44
3.4 Major categories 47
3.5 The minor categories 67
3.6 Phrasal categories and their structure 70
3.7 Points to remember 76
Exercises 77
4 Functions within the clause
4.1 Introduction 79
4.2 The predicate 80
4.3 The subject 81
4.4 The object 88
4.5 The predicative complement 92
4.6 The adverbial 95
4.7 Trees 100
iii
4.8 Points to remember 103
Exercises 104
Introducing English Grammar
5 Different sentence types
5.1 Introduction 107
5.2 Declaratives 108
5.3 Interrogatives 108
5.4 Imperatives 115
5.5 Exclamatives 119
5.6 Echoes 120
5.7 Trees 122
5.8 Points to remember 125
Exercises 125
6 The verb phrase
6.1 The constituency of verb strings 128
6.2 Time and tense 131
6.3 Lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs 133
6.4 Auxiliary verbs 137
6.5 Lexical have, be and do 149
6.6 Classes of lexical verbs 150
6.7 Trees 158
6.8 Points to remember 165
Exercises 165
7 The noun phrase
7.1 How to spot a noun phrase 167
7.2 Who’s the boss? 168
7.3 Determiners 169
7.4 Pre-modifiers 173
7.5 Pre-determiners 176
7.6 Post-modifiers 177
7.7 Complements 178
7.8 Trees 179
7.9 Points to remember 187
Exercises 187
8 Clauses within clauses
8.1 Clauses 189
8.2 Finite sub-clauses 192
8.3 Non-finite clauses 202
8.4 Subjectless clauses 210
8.5 Trees 211
8.6 Points to remember 218
Exercises 219
9 Beyond the sentence
9.1 Introduction 221
9.2 Information packaging 221
9.3 Discourse strategies 228
9.4 Points to remember 236
Exercises 237
10 Grammar at work
10.1 Introduction 241
10.2 Speech versus writing 242
10.3 E-Speak – somewhere between speech and writing 249
10.4 Occupational varieties 251
iv 10.5 Points to remember 264
Exercises 265
Contents
11 English worldwide
11.1 Introduction 267
11.2 New Englishes: Indian English 269
11.3 Other Englishes 273
11.4 Variation in the Native Englishes 281
11.5 Vernacular universals 282
11.6 The future of Standard English 284
11.7 Points to remember 286
Exercises 286
Further reading 289
Glossary 294
Index 307
v
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Preface to the second edition
Both of us have used this book in teaching at our respective universities
and we have benefited from our students’ views on how the book could
be improved. Colleagues who have used the book with students have also
made many helpful suggestions for changes. We are particularly grateful to
Professor Jean-Jacques Weber, University of Luxembourg, for his valuable
comments. The feedback we have received from all these different sources
have helped to shape the new edition. In addition to adding snippets of
new information here and there and changing the text in places where
explanations were not clear, we have thoroughly revised the exercises and
further reading. Solutions to and discussion of the exercises, as well as
additional exercises and readings, can be found at www.hodderplus.co.uk/
linguistics. We have also added a global perspective with the provision of
a new chapter that explores some of the strikingly different grammatical
features of newer varieties around the English-speaking world.
We are very grateful to our editor, Bianca Knights. Without her gentle
chivvying we would not have got round to producing a second edition
– well, for a little while at least! We are also grateful to our desk editor,
Deborah Edwards Noble. It has been a pleasure working with her and the
rest of the Hodder team.
vii
In memory of
Joan Burridge and Elof Börjars
Preface to the first edition
This book is meant as an introduction to the sentence structure of English.
As such, it can be used by many different kinds of students: those who
are going to teach English grammar at some level (and given the kind of
knowledge that is required to teach even at primary schools under new
government directions in many English-speaking countries, it contains the
kind of things that teachers of English need to know); those who want to
teach or even learn a foreign language; those who will carry on to do dif-
ferent kinds of language analysis for the purpose of speech therapy; those
who will use it for literary studies; but also those who will carry on to do
more formal grammar.
Of course, one thing we need to do in this book is impart to students a
body of terminology that they need in order to discuss language conven-
iently. Taking all this in is sometimes hard work, but it is unavoidable.
However, another very important aim is to make the reader realize that the
kinds of things we study in English grammar are all around us all the time.
This holds not just for English-speaking countries; most countries now
have access to a lot of English through music, television and other mass
media. So, even though there are many good grammars of English around,
you don’t actually need a grammar book to study English grammar. You
just need to listen and look around you. We cannot emphasize this too
much. English grammar is happening all around you, language change is
going on in front of your very eyes. In order to emphasize this point, we
have decided to use real-life examples taken, for example, from a magazine
called The Big Issue. This is an initiative set up in 1991 aimed at giving
homeless or vulnerably housed people a chance to make a living and grad-
ually move towards more permanent housing. Most of our examples come
from the English North and the Australian editions, but we also have some
from The Big Issue in Scotland. We believe that this is a cause that deserves
as much public exposure as it can get, even though we realize that our
grammar book is not likely to reach the masses (one can dream, though).
Still, we have to admit that our reasons for using The Big Issue for language
examples are not philanthropic, but linguistic. Invented sentences like the
ones so often used in textbooks are just sterile fragments of that wonder-
fully rich language they are supposed to be identifying. By contrast, the
language in The Big Issue is close to the language that is actually spoken by
the majority of people. It is less influenced by rules about ‘proper English’. ix
We hope that by using these examples we can make readers realize that
