Freeborn Dennis. A Course Book in English Grammar: Standard English and the Dialects

2nd Edition. — Macmillan, 1995. — xxv, 338 pages. — (Studies in English Language). — ISBN: 978-1-349-24079-1.The study of language in written texts and transcripts of speech is greatly helped by a student's ability to identify and describe those prominent features of the grammar which make one variety of English different from another. A Course Book in English Grammar looks at many of the problems encountered by students and encourages them to find their own answers and to assess hypotheses about grammatical description. There are activities at each step, using authentic written and spoken data. Using 'real' texts avoids the faking of evidence to be found in some traditional grammar books, and interesting problems of analysis that arise in such texts are a source of useful discussion. The book has been thoroughly revised and expanded for this second edition, which contains additional chapters and material. A new opening chapter discusses the concept of 'grammatically correct English' and the differences between descriptive, prescriptive and proscriptive approaches to the writing of grammar books. The book is a systematic description of Standard English, and examples of contemporary spoken dialectal grammar are introduced and analysed to illustrate the differences between standard and nonstandard usage. A Course Book in English Grammar will prove invaluable to all students of English LanguageStandard English and the English Language
The meanings of grammar and English
Shibboleths
Rules of grammar
Teaching spoken Standard English
Encoding Experience in Language
Some properties of language
Words
Morphemes and syllables
Sentences and phrases
Meaning
Phrases as constituents of sentences
Processes, participants and circumstances
Clauses
The rank scale
How clauses make sense
How meaning and grammar are related
Form and function
Word orderLexical Words and Meaning
Word-classes
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
AdverbsFunction Words
Prepositions
Pronouns
Conjunctions
Other function wordsVocabulary
Core vocabulary
The sources of the core vocabulary of English
The sources of non-core vocabulary
Informal vocabulary - dialectal, colloquial and slang
Appendix - Data from the three texts
Six Kinds of Phrase
Revision - sentence, clause and phrase in the rank scale
NPs and PrepPs in text
NPs and PrepPs in text
NPs and PrepPs in text
Verb phrases (VPs) in text
Text 2VPs
VPs in text
Adjective phrases (AdjPs)
Adverbs and adverb phrases (AdvPs)
Noun and Prepositional Phrases
Revision - six kinds of phrase
NPs and PrepPs in news headlines
NPs and PrepPs as constituents of clauses
NPs and PrepPs in textsVerb Phrases
Present and past tense
Auxiliary verbs - be
Auxiliary verbs - have
Auxiliary verbs - do
Auxiliary verbs - modals
Semi-auxiliary and catenative verbs
Predicators in phase in VP structure
Aspect
Word order in VPs
Voice
Nonfmite VPs
Clauses
Recapitulation
Transitivity
Mood
Kernel clauses
Subject and complements in kernel clauses
Kernel clauses in a simple text
Labelling constituent function
The original text
More clause structure constituents
Summary of kernel clause patterns
Analysis of a text
Complexity in Clause Constituents
Complex and derived clauses
Complexity within phrasesComplex Clauses
Subordinate nonfmite clauses
Subordinate fmite clauses
Derived Clauses
Direct and indirect speech
Change of order of the constituents, SPCA
Complex and derived clauses in a text
Making information prominentPostscript - ways of diagramming a structural analysis
Sentences
Sentence or complex clause?
Simple sentences
Compound sentences - coordination
Complex and compound-complex sentences
Compound, complex and compound-complex sentences in texts
The Grammar of Texts and Speech
The sentence in written English
The clause-complex in spoken English
Grammar and style in texts