An Introduction To English Grammar

Sidney Greenbaum’s An Introduction to English Grammar was first published in 1991, and a second edition, which I edited, appeared in 2002. In preparing this third edition, I have rearranged the material to some extent, to give what I hope is a clearer order of presentation. Part I, The Grammar, now begins with an overview of the elements of sentence structure in terms of their forms and grammatical functions. The Grammar then moves from the smallest units of analysis (words and word classes) through progressively larger and more complex units: phrases, clauses and sentences. I have introduced Usage Notes at various points throughout the text, to highlight areas of usage which may be disputed and which often cause difficulties for writers. I have extended the chapter entitled English in Use (Chapter 7) to include a new section on the language used in internet chatrooms and message boards. As in the second edition, the exercises appear at the end of each chapter. I have increased the number of exercises, and have separated the advanced exercises from the rest. Citations have been updated, where necessary, and the Further Reading section has been completely revised. Many of the citations and extracts used in this book have been taken from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). ICE-GB is a one million-word collection of samples of contemporary British English, taken from both spoken and written sources. The corpus is available from the Survey of English Usage, University College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/). Many of the exercises were compiled by Professor Charles F. Meyer (University of Massachusetts-Boston). I am grateful to Ren Hongtao for his careful reading of the manuscript. Any remaining errors are my own