A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language

Although this book is very expansive, I still bought it and are happy to own it because this book is absolutely excellent!

"A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" is one of the most complete grammar of English. One can find a deep description of the English language, which is difficult to find in other books. It's really worth buying.

It was expensive, but cheaper than I could have bought it a name brand bookstore. It arrived in great shape.

I must admit, though, that the mess is actually that of modern linguistics, from what I can tell. I knew I had made a grave mistake when I spotted the authors' incorrect definition of a clause, two-thirds of which actually defines a phrase. I cannot understand the avoidance of traditional nomenclature. Is "nominal -ing participle" really preferable to "gerund"? And good luck finding "object of the preposition" or "substantivized adjective"--just you wait until you get a load of what they call those! The faulty definition of "clause," in particular, reflects frequently inadequate and downright bizarre ways of analyzing the authors' supposed "clauses." Steer clear of this one. And if the Cambridge grammar is supposed to make this one seem old-fashioned, I suggest you just go ahead and burn that one.

SO I NEED SOME HELP FROM YOU GUYS: I want a comprehensive English grammar that uses TRADITIONAL, VERY OLD, DOWNRIGHT ANCIENT nomenclature and modes of analysis, rather than any of that despicable "modern linguistics." And keep in mind that my background is in CLASSICS--that fact should help. So, what are your suggestions?

Since I use this book as a reference, I have not actually read it from cover to cover; but I have so read its companion, "A Student's Grammar of the English Language." In my review of the latter I attest to the excellence of both books and discuss their one serious flaw. The relevant portion of that review follows.

Both of these books, despite their excellence, are in one respect seriously flawed. Although this flaw does not prevent their being useful, it must be considered carefully. Because they fail to draw certain important distinctions, their attitude of disdain for prescriptive grammar extends beyond expediency and consequently undermines the key purposes that grammars serve in education and civilized communication.

The dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive grammar arises in two distinct fields of discourse. The first surrounds whether grammarians should merely study and systematically describe grammar, or whether they should prescribe it. Which should we regard as the grammarian's proper job, to discover and report the principles according to which a language is in fact used, or to formulate and specify rules that prescribe how a language ought to be used? In this field the argument for descriptive grammar seems the clear winner. The proper usage of a language is obviously fixed by a strong de facto standard. What purpose would grammarians serve by asserting that millions of educated and confident speakers are wrong, that an enormous body of respected literature is ungrammatical, and that we should all stop immediately and memorize new rules?

Accordingly, the goal of these books is not to dictate the rules of English grammar but merely to document its factual principles; however, this goal is not as clear cut as it may seem on the surface. Each English speaker obviously uses the language in a distinct manner, and some speakers are more noteworthy than others. For example, It would be absurd to suggest that grammarians ought to survey usage among young children and other beginners. Hence, it is assumed that any proper descriptive grammar must be based on the usage prevailing among competent speakers, and there is room for differing opinions as to what, in this regard, constitutes competence.

The second field of discourse in which we find the descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy surrounds whether persons learning a language ought to regard its express grammatical principles as more authoritative than usage habits acquired unconsciously. For example, is it permissible to teach children that their parents sometimes speak ungrammatically? Should students be taught that it is incorrect to use the subjective-case pronoun "who" in an object, despite the widespread incidence of such usage? Should it be stipulated that the comparative "than" is not a preposition, even if many educated speakers use it as one? Although these books do not directly answer this question, they consistently imply an emphatic "no." They regularly criticize traditionally proper usage as "stiff," and they always enclose the phrase "bad grammar" in quotation marks. This answer may seem harmless to some readers, but it is tantamount to a stand against language education.

In civilized cultures, the competent speakers of a language are educated. They do not merely absorb the language passively; they go to school and formally study it. There they learn the basic rules of grammar, address its common pitfalls, and overcome bad habits; there they are exposed to countless examples of correct usage; there, if they are educated properly, they learn that language should be deliberately used to convey precise meanings and communicate fine nuances.

Now, obviously there is no official English language authority that dictates exactly what rules must be taught. Instead, the most highly educated and exceptionally talented speakers and writers are studied as models. So-called prescriptive traditions are formulated simply by distinguishing which usage habits are accidental versus deliberate and then denouncing--as ungrammatical--patent mistakes. Since each student should aspire to the greatest achievable proficiency in the language, what ought to serve as the standard is the careful and considered usage of the educated. We do not study grammar to learn to speak like the average illiterate.

It is true that certain prescriptive traditions in English have been recanted by experts. For example, there were the unmitigated proscription of the split infinitive and the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Such mistakes have, so to speak, given prescriptive grammar a bad name. However, the fact that a few misguided rules have been disseminated does not entail that all rules are bad.

Remember that the true principles underlying the grammar of any natural language are objective. Although they have not been directly engineered, their evolution has consistently been guided by the human need to think and communicate effectively and by the nature of the human conceptual faculty. Hence it is clearly false that any possible grammar is as good as any other. Grammar is not merely arbitrary social convention. This fact makes it possible for experts to distinguish the rational usage conventions from the irrational. For example, the prepositional use of "than" probably arose simply because some speakers failed to recognize that an isolated substantive following it is the subject of an elided clause. It is obviously desirable to prevent a language's grammar from evolving arbitrarily, based on the errors of uneducated speakers. This is the purpose of so-called prescriptive traditions.

Moreover, the authors' assertion that outside of a formal context many modes of prescribed grammatical usage sound "stiff" is merely a subjective value judgment--one that is probably only shared by a minority of English speakers. Although ostentatious speech is generally disdained, most people admire a person for whom using proper grammar is a genuine habit.

In any case, an accurate and complete descriptive grammar--such as that provided by these books--is an indispensible part of the theoretical understructure of the language arts. By a process of (if I may use the term) reverse engineering, grammarians fully identify the established grammar currently used by educated speakers and writers, and this grammar serves as a basis for the language principles inculcated in school. Considering that English education is so significant a consumer of these books, it is ironic that they implicitly deny that people should be expected to consciously learn the express rules of English grammar.

Nonetheless, if these books are used carefully, they can serve as a particularly excellent prescriptive description (if you will) of proper English grammar. It is simply necessary to ignore the prevalent tone of contempt for the notion of grammatical correctness and to note that when these books say that a certain construction is not regarded as acceptable by "some speakers," they often mean educated speakers; that when they indicate that a given construction is used "formally," they often mean that it is commonly considered grammatically correct; and that when they mention that a certain manner of usage is favored by "prescriptive tradition," they are speaking of English teachers.