A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language is a descriptive grammar of English written by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. It was first published by Longman in 1985.
Author | Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, & Jan Svartvik |
---|---|
Subject | Comprehensive descriptive grammar of the English language |
Publisher | Longman |
Publication date | 1985 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 1779 |
ISBN | 9780582517349 |
In 1991, it was called "The greatest of contemporary grammars, because it is the most thorough and detailed we have," and "It is a grammar that transcends national boundaries."[1]
The book relies on elicitation experiments as well as three corpora: a corpus from the Survey of English Usage, the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus (UK English), and the Brown Corpus (US English).[2]
Reviews
editIn 1988, Rodney Huddleston published a very critical review.[3] He wrote:
[T]here are some respects in which it is seriously flawed and disappointing. A number of quite basic categories and concepts do not seem to have been thought through with sufficient care; this results in a remarkable amount of unclarity and inconsistency in the analysis, and in the organization of the grammar.[3]
- Aarts, F. G. A. M. (April 1988). "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language: The great tradition continued". English Studies. 69 (2): 163–173. doi:10.1080/00138388808598565.163-173&rft.date=1988-04&rft_id=info:doi/10.1080/00138388808598565&rft.aulast=Aarts&rft.aufirst=F. G. A. M.&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" class="Z3988">
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ John Algeo, "American English Grammars in the Twentieth Century", in Gerhard Leitner (Ed.), English Traditional Grammars: An International Perspective (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991), pp. 113–138.
- ^ Rodney Huddleston (Jun 1988). "Reviewed Work: A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik". Language. 64 (2). Linguistic Society of America: 345–354. doi:10.2307/415437. JSTOR 415437.345-354&rft.date=1988-06&rft_id=info:doi/10.2307/415437&rft_id=https://www.jstor.org/stable/415437#id-name=JSTOR&rft.au=Rodney Huddleston&rft_id=https://archive.org/details/comprehensivegra00englrich&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" class="Z3988">
- ^ a b Huddleston, Rodney (1988). "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik". Language. 64: 345–354. doi:10.2307/415437. JSTOR 415437.345-354&rft.date=1988&rft_id=info:doi/10.2307/415437&rft_id=https://www.jstor.org/stable/415437#id-name=JSTOR&rft.aulast=Huddleston&rft.aufirst=Rodney&rft_id=http://archive.org/details/comprehensivegra00englrich&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" class="Z3988">