ENGLISH GRAMMAR THE BASICS English Grammar: The Basics offers a clear, non-jargonistic introduc- tion to English grammar and its place in society. Rather than taking a prescriptive approach, this book helps the reader become aware of the social implications of choices they make to use standard or non- standard (regional/dialect) forms. Readers will consider: what grammar is and how it fits into the structure of language; how grammar functions in the school curriculum, the press, broadcasting and social media, as well as how these outlets reflect and reinforce our attitudes towards grammar; differences between speech and writing, as well as between formality and informality; major different approaches to theorising and describing gram- mar from important grammarians, including Noam Chomsky and Michael Halliday. Featuring a glossary of key terms and practical tips and insights from the author’s 50+ years of language teaching experience around the world, this book is for anyone who has ever found themselves questioning the ‘rules’ of the English language.
Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham, and Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguis- tics, University of Limerick. He has (co-)authored and edited 54 books and is co-founder (with Ronald Carter) of the CANCODE spoken English corpus. He has lectured in 46 countries and has been involved in language teaching and applied linguistics for 55 years. T h e Ba s i c s The Basics is a highly successful series of accessible guidebooks which provide an overview of the fundamental principles of a subject area in a jargon-free and undaunting format.
Intended for students approaching a subject for the first time, the books both introduce the essentials of a subject and provide an ideal springboard for further study. With over 50 titles spanning subjects from artificial intelligence (AI) to women’s studies, The Basics are an ideal starting point for students seeking to understand a subject area. Each text comes with recommendations for further study and gra- dually introduces the complexities and nuances within a subject. SMITH ENGLISH GRAMMAR MICHAEL MCCARTHY For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.com/ The-Basics/book-series/B ENGLISH GRAMMAR T H E BA S I C S M i c h a e l M c Ca r t h y First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Michael McCarthy The right of Michael McCarthy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McCarthy, Michael, 1947- author.
Title: English grammar : the basics / Michael McCarthy. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020054550 (print) | LCCN 2020054551 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367633660 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367633653 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367633677 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: English language--Grammar.
| English language--Social aspects. Classification: LCC PE1106 .2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.gov/2020054550 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.gov/2020054551 ISBN: 978-0-367-63366-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-63365-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-63367-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books For Jeanne CONTENTS List of figures xiv List of tables xvi Acknowledgements xviii Introduction to the reader xix 1 Everyone knows what grammar is … don’t they? 1 A word for all seasons 1 What grammar is (and what it isn’t) 2 A rough definition 2 Traffic lights and sunrises 4 The rules of the road 4 Universal rules 7 Where do the conventions come from? 7 Prescriptions for the best medicine 7 Grammatical standard-bearers 10 Gathering more evidence 12 I heard it on the radio 12 At the click of a mouse 12 Corpus evidence 13 Describing English 15 viii CONTENTS Grammar and grammars 15 Varieties of English 16 Dialects 17 Other types of variation 17 This book: What it offers and what it doesn’t 18 The many-headed hydra 18 The basics 19 What else is in the chapters? 20 2 From words to sentences 22 Taking words apart 22 What’s in a word? 22 Morphemes 23 Different types of morphemes 24 Morphemes and words: Building the system 25 How do words fit into grammar? 25 Words and phrases 25 Phrases and clauses 27 What is a clause? 27 Who does what? Participants and processes 28 Clauses: Different shapes, different meanings 29 Grammar and meaning 29 What sort of mood are you in? 30 Affirmative and negative 32 Clauses: Who’s doing what, where, when and how? 32 Subjects and objects 32 Complements 33 A peaceful agreement: Concord 33 Adverbials: Mobility rules! 35 Are you running a business? Or just running? 35 Let’s hear your voice: Active and passive 36 ‘In-between’ passives 37 Clauses joining forces: Building sentences 38 What is a sentence? 38 Joining up 1: Three little words 40 Joining up 2: Subordinate clauses 40 Conditions 41 CONTENTS ix Non-finite clauses 42 Taking care of the relatives 42 Relative clauses: Common difficulties 45 Who knows what? Who said what? Reported clauses 46 Chains or Russian dolls? 46 A place for everything: Word-order 47 Into focus 47 Sometimes at the beginning? Or at the end maybe? 48 This section you must read 49 Scaling the heights 49 Is there life beyond the sentence? 50 Bigger links mean bigger chains 50 Linking expressions 50 Taking an axe to the sentence: Clefts 52 3 The grammar toolbox 55 A toolbox full of words 55 What are nouns for? 55 Naming the world 55 How much coffee makes a coffee? 55 What else can nouns do? 58 Building with nouns 59 Verbs: Being, doing, happening 60 Who does what and to whom? 60 Main verbs, auxiliaries and modals 60 Auxiliary ‘be’: Marking aspect 61 Auxiliary ‘have’: Marking aspect 62 Auxiliary ‘be’: Marking voice 63 Aspect and voice: Using the tools together 64 Auxiliary ‘do’: Yes or no? 64 Auxiliary ‘do’ for emphasis 65 Substitute ‘do’ 66 Modal verbs: What’s true, what’s right 66 That could be true … to a degree 66 ‘You must come to dinner sometime!’ 67 x CONTENTS We use small verbs as tag verbs, don’t we … or do we? 68 Might I ask you a question? 69 How long is a piece of string? 69 Colouring in the world: Adjectives and adverbs 70 What’s it like and how did it go? 70 Adjectives: Telling it like it is 70 Adverbs: How did it go? 71 Adverbs as adverbials 72 Conclusion 73 4 The grammar toolbox continued 75 The other word classes 75 Small words get everywhere 75 Pronouns 77 Getting personal 77 Me and my sister: Subject and object pronouns 78 Reflexive pronouns: Grammatical selfies 79 Each other and one another 80 Is anyone out there? 80 What it’s all about: Clefts 81 Someone or other did it 81 The ones which matter: Relative pronouns 82 Interrogative pronouns: What are they for? 84 Demonstrative pronouns: This is important, that’s not 84 Determiners 86 Articles: Where’s the cat? 87 Interrogative determiners 89 Possessive determiners 89 Conjunctions: Getting it together 91 Coordinating 91 Subordinating 92 Correlative 92 Prepositions 93 What are they for? 93 CONTENTS xi Prepositions: Should we leave them stranded? 94 No, nay, never … 95 What about all those other small words? 96 Conclusion 97 5 Theories and thinkers 99 Putting their thinking caps on 99 It stands to reason: Logic and rules 100 Structuralism 102 Noam Chomsky and his grammar 105 Colourless green ideas 105 Transformations 107 From the depths to the surface 109 Bearing everything in mind: Cognitive grammar 110 The mind and the world 110 Symbols and concepts 111 Constructions 113 Use it and never lose it 114 Out of the mind: Neo-Firthians 115 Grammar and context 115 Michael Halliday 117 Functions and systems 117 Grammar in society 119 Conclusion: Theory and theories 120 6 Word of mouth: Grammar in action 123 In a manner of speaking 123 Speaking and writing: A grammar for every occasion 126 You thinking what I’m thinking? 126 This book, you never know what it’s going to say next … 128 Heads or tails? 128 Pronouns, they work hard, they do 129 Mark my words 130 xii CONTENTS Taking chunks out of the language 133 We’re beginning to see a pattern here 134 ‘I see him yesterday’: Dialect grammars 136 English grammar around the world 139 Listen up and check this out! 142 Conclusion 143 7 Grammar policy, grammar politics and grammar police 145 Moral panic 145 The lost generation 147 Grammar in the lockdown 147 What did traditional grammar look like? 149 Policing the grammar: Terminology 150 (Dis-)United States 153 Australia: Whole language or bits and pieces? 154 The UK: From grammar to comprehensive 155 A balancing act 157 Grammar makes a comeback 157 From balance to moral panic 160 Mr Gove and Mr Gwynne 163 Conclusion 165 8 Grammar in the public eye 168 The grammatical landscape 168 Less or fewer? 168 Putting a (full) stop to punctuation 170 Punctuation and grammar 170 Full stops 171 The rise and fall of the semi-colon 172 Endangered species? The apostrophe 174 Sound–spelling grammatical confusions 176 Pronouns: Not so closed after all? 178 Adverbials: Why do people get affronted? 180 Telling it like it is 181 CONTENTS xiii The linguistic landscape: Being creative with grammar 185 Conclusion 186 Glossary of grammar terms 188 References 195 Index 201 FIGURES 1.1 Rules of the road 5 1.2 Laws of the universe: Sunrise 8 1.3 Extract of concordance for end 14 1.4 Upon in three registers 18 2.1 Whom in writing and speaking 44 2.3 Linking in speaking and writing 52 4.1 Change in the use of whom 83 4.1 Grammar and the chess board 103 5.2 Tree-diagram of sentence structure 107 5.3 The outer shell and the kernel 108 5.4 Imaging the sunflowers 112 5.6 Personal pronouns system: Human subjects 119 5.7 Mapping the unknown 121 6.1 ‘Sometimes I just sits’ 137 7.2 ‘He said his first fronted adverbial today’ 164 8.1 Semi-colons 173 LIST OF FIGURES xv 8.2 Apostrophe use in public signs 175 8.3 Personal pronoun one 180 TABLES 1.1 Three approaches to grammar 9 2.1 Types of phrases 27 2.2 Indicative mood: Declarative and interrogative clauses 30 2.3 Intransitive, transitive and di-transitive 36 2.4 Clauses or sentences? 39 2.5 Relative clauses with nouns as subject and object 43 2.6 Cohesion: Linking expressions between sentences 51 3.1 Nouns and meanings 56 3.2 Nouns as things and nouns as stuff 56 3.4 Simple and continuous aspect 61 3.5 Present perfect and relevance to ‘now’ 63 3.7 Perfect aspect: Continuous form 64 3.8 Aspects and voice combined 64 3.10 Adverbs acting as adverbials 72 4.1 Top 20 most frequent words (BNC) 75 4.3 Interrogative pronouns 85 LIST OF TABLES xvii 4.5 Examples of subordinating conjunctions 92 4.6 Examples of correlative conjunctions 93 6.1 Auxiliary and modal patterns 135 6.2 Concordance lines for be + after + ing (LCIE) 140 8.1 Emailing, texting and punctuation 172 8.2 Word-forms often confused in writing 176 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Rebecca Howling for supplying the Russian nested dolls (p. David Mitchell for supplying the African chess set (p. Jake Tebbit for permission to reproduce the illustrations on pp.
INTRODUCTION TO THE READER This book gives you the basics of grammar.