Preface

Goals of the Book

When you think of studying English grammar, what comes to your mind? Mad Libs? Learning parts of speech and punctuation? Diagramming sentences? Does the study of grammar interest you, or do you find it tedious and boring? Why do you study grammar? Because you have to? Because you want to?

There are as many different reasons to study grammar as there are ways to study it. We know, for example, that we need to study the grammar of another language in order to learn to speak or sign it. But what about the grammar of a language you already speak? Is there any reason to study that? You’re probably familiar with the idea that we study English grammar to learn how to speak and write it “correctly.” But can we learn anything else from studying the grammar of a language? In fact, the study of this dynamic system can be quite revealing and useful and provides insights into how language, your own and others’, whether spoken or signed, actually works.

As you progress through this book, you will discover the grammatical rules of English that users already know, though they may not be aware of them. We approach the study of language and grammar through inquiry; you will discover, by analyzing your own and others’ linguistic systems, the grammatical categories and principles of language. You will also find that the idea that some version of grammar is more “correct” than another has no basis in linguistic fact and that all language varieties are equally valid grammatical systems worthy of study. The approach we take here therefore encourages you to challenge and question social perceptions of language (as “good” or “bad,” “lazy” or “sloppy”), perceptions that are often based on stereotypes about speakers, rather than on any deficiency in the language they use.

This book is not designed to teach you how to become a better writer, nor is it designed to teach you how to speak English “correctly.” The goal of this book is to provide you with tools to analyze the language you use every day, in a variety of registers, genres, and styles, discovering the categories and concepts that underlie users’ unconscious knowledge of language. With an understanding of how language actually works, and a concise vocabulary to talk about it, you will be equipped to make more informed decisions and choices about grammar and usage and to tease out linguistic fact from linguistic fiction. You will be able to navigate the study of grammar in all its diverse incarnations.

Changes and Revisions to the Second Edition

In this second edition, we have made significant changes to the way in which we approach language “data,” the language examples used to illustrate grammatical terms and concepts. Rather than marginalizing variation in English to boxed sections in the text, we integrate examples of this variation throughout and show how this variation informs the description of English as an ever‐changing linguistic system. We label the varieties of English we draw from (and acknowledge that there are many others not represented here) in an effort to recognize the communities who use them and to decenter the so‐called “mainstream” varieties of English that are typically taken as the norm in discussions of grammatical structure. For this same reason, we focus on spoken rather than written English. That said, we acknowledge that we are two senior, white, tenured university professors, writing a college textbook in an edited written English that reproduces many of the norms we strive to decenter. We realize our approach here is only a first step in making the study of English, and the way we write and teach about it, more inclusive.

Other changes to the second edition include a References section at the end of the book (rather than citing references chapter by chapter). Almost all the exercises at the end of each chapter are revised, and each chapter includes new and updated text excerpts by a diverse set of authors in each practice section. We have also significantly revised the boxed material in each chapter to address related topics of interest. Boxes no longer focus exclusively on language variation and change, as examples of both make up the examples discussed throughout the text. As in the first edition, each chapter includes a summary with important terms in bold. Throughout, we introduce basic phrase structure rules and tree diagrams to provide accessible graphic representations of language structure.

Chapter Organization and Other Changes

Grammatical categories and concepts cannot be taught in isolation – nouns without adjectives or verbs without clauses – and each chapter (despite their simple titles) introduces concepts that we build on in subsequent chapters. We therefore recommend that chapters be studied in order. We provide chapter overviews below, where we also highlight changes and revisions in this second edition.

Note: We approach the grammar of English descriptively here, with an eye toward not just description but explanation. We therefore strike a balance between basic syntactic structure and syntactic theory, introducing the reader not just to the structure of English but also to why English has the structure it does. Some of the theoretical concepts we introduce (in accessible and useful ways) include movement, ellipsis, proform substitution, and null (unpronounced) heads and phrases, among others. We believe this is one of the strengths of this book, as it underscores the approach to grammatical analysis through inquiry rather than memorization, and it provides accessible insights into the study of language beyond basic sentence analysis. Readers are then prepared to pursue further study of grammar more deeply if they wish to.

Chapter 1: This chapter provides an overview of the primarily descriptive approach to grammar we take in this book, using tools of scientific inquiry to learn about how language works. We also discuss prescriptivism (rules of grammar prescribed by language authorities) and Standard Language Ideology in some depth, including the origins of these perspectives on language and their relevance to the study of grammar today. Rather than taking a binary approach to description versus prescription, we show that we learn from both, about grammatical structure, language change and variation, and the origins of the language attitudes that still shape how we judge and value language(s) and users of those languages today.

Chapters 2–5: These chapters investigate the basic semantics, morphology, and syntax of English noun phrases and verb phrases and include discussion of examples from a range of varieties of English to illustrate grammatical concepts, including (but not limited to) variation in inflectional morphology. Both Chapters 4 and 5 on verbs and verb phrases, respectively, are substantially revised to highlight variation in English verb morphology and in the tense and aspect system, including verb strings with null auxiliaries, and variation in subject–verb agreement.

Chapter 6: This chapter is significantly revised and streamlined to focus more on the structure of the independent clause rather than on theoretical aspects of the English verb string (as in the first edition). We focus on grammatical functions of subjects, complements (in this chapter, direct objects), and predicates and on basic evidence for the Tense position (subject–auxiliary inversion, tag question formation and negation). The chapter provides students with the tools to diagram independent clauses, including those with the complex verb strings discussed in Chapter 5, and prepares students to move on to complementation, subordination, and coordination in subsequent chapters.

Chapters 7–9: These chapters are each updated with new examples and exercises and introduce students to the basic semantics, morphology, and syntax of adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases (and particles) and how these phrases function as modifiers and complements. These chapters introduce a range of different complements, including subjective complements, objects of prepositions, and indirect objects. We also show how the theoretical concept of syntactic movement (Passive, Indirect Object Movement, Particle Shift) can be used as a tool to distinguish among different complements.

Chapter 10: This chapter is significantly revised to focus first on coordination and then on subordination, acquainting students with the structure of more complex clauses. The section on different types of subordinate clause complements, complementizers, and PRO subjects of infinitival clauses is revised to be more accessible.

Chapter 11: This chapter is the most significantly revised of all the chapters in the book, and it now connects more seamlessly with Chapter 10. From the discussion of subordinate clause complements in Chapter 10, we move on in this chapter to explore subordinate clause modifiers, namely restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. From there, we investigate a range of other nonrestrictive modifiers, what we call “movable modifiers.”

Chapter 12: This completely new chapter provides an overview of the book, pulling together concepts, terms, and tools introduced in earlier chapters. We briefly review syntactic categories and...