Reddit Reddit reviews The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

We found 18 Reddit comments about The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
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18 Reddit comments about The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language:

u/seepeeyou · 20 pointsr/linguistics

Actually, most "professional academic linguists" don't create language learning tools at all. Theoretical linguists are busy analyzing data and coming up with theories about language. Experimental linguists are busy designing and running experiments to test these theories in the lab. Field linguists are off collecting more data to invigorate this cycle (and to document languages). And so on and so forth.

So (most) language learning books are not written by linguists in the standard, academic sense. In other words, "linguist" means something more specific than just language learning/teaching enthusiast, even though some (maybe many) linguists do enjoy learning and teaching languages.

What some professional linguists do, which may be of interest to you, is publish comprehensive descriptive grammars. They're not necessarily meant for learning a language; they're more for reference (for language learners and linguists alike). One book that comes to mind is the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston and Pullum (both linguists). Only problem is that, most likely, any descriptive grammar will actually be written in that very language, so for a beginner, it's unrealistic as a learning tool.

tl;dr Basically, as far as I can tell, the people best trained for creating language learning tools (linguists) actually don't because they're busy with (or interested in) other stuff, so the tools that are created are often created by people with insufficient training (and who probably do it mostly for the money), hence the poor quality. So it's not linguists who are dropping the ball!

u/a645657 · 9 pointsr/pics

Better tell the linguists:

>The use of they with a singular antecedent goes back to Middle English, and in spite of criticism since the earliest prescriptive grammars it has continued to be very common in informal style... The prescriptive objection to examples like [25v] and [29] is that they is a plural pronoun, and that such examples therefore violate the rule of agreement between antecedent and pronoun. The view taken here is that they, like you, can be either plural or singular. Plural is of course the primary sense, but the use we are concerned with here involves a secondary, extended sense, just as purportedly sex-neutral he involves a secondary, extended sense of he. The extension to a singular sense has not been reflected in subject-verb agreement, just as the historical extension of you from plural to singular (replacing thou) did not have any effect on the form of the verb. With they we therefore have a conflict between the number it has as an agreement target (plural or singular) and the number it has a source for subject-verb agreement (plural only): the former is more semantically oriented.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pp. 493-494

See also: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27

u/millionsofcats · 5 pointsr/linguistics

You're making a lot of faulty assumptions about what I have (or would have) learned in school, and I don't think it's helping at all.

Also, I don't need someone to explain to me the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. I'm trying to get describe your class and the difficulties you're having, so I can make a helpful recommendation.

> is there a grammarian who has his own definition of what a determiner is

Certainly, those working on l syntax can have different interpretations of the syntactic categories in a language, c.f. whether pronouns are a type of determiner. It can also depend on the perspective; a pedogogical grammar might call words like my "possessive adjectives" rather than "possessive determiners". How you're expected to identify determiners might vary by class - e.g. whether you're supposed to know certain tests, or memorize a list. Whether you're expected to be able to identify determiners in languages other than English also matters.

You asked for textbooks on "descriptive grammar" and all I've been trying to do is to get more specific out of you so I can decide if you want something like The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language or something like the syntax chapter of Language Files. If your response is to assume that I'm asking you questions because I'm confused about fundamental concepts in linguistics, then I can't really help you.

u/Porges · 4 pointsr/programming

> [Strunk and White is] a horrid little compendium of unmotivated prejudices (don't use ongoing), arbitrary stipulations (don't begin a sentence with however), and fatuous advice ("Be clear"), ridiculously out of date in its positions on appropriate choices among grammatical variants, deeply suspect in its style advice and grotesquely wrong in most of the grammatical advice it gives.

Geoffrey Pullum (one of the authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, so he sort-of knows his stuff)

u/fintelkai · 4 pointsr/linguistics

Quirk et al is good but Huddleston & Pullum is better: https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-Language/dp/0521431468

u/jefrye · 4 pointsr/grammar

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is essentially the gold standard here, but it is pretty overwhelming.

Instead, the same authors have a much smaller and more manageable guide, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, which I highly recommend. It's geared toward beginners and covers pretty much everything your average English speaker needs to know.

u/l33t_sas · 3 pointsr/grammar

Introducing English Grammar by Borjars and Burridge is a great overview of English grammar for someone without much background in linguistics.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston and Pullum is VERY comprehensive, but also significantly more difficult.

Also, check out this introduction to English linguistics

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/grammar
u/limetom · 3 pointsr/linguistics

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is pretty good, but expensive.

u/bri-an · 2 pointsr/linguistics

I learned traditional grammar when I learned Latin and Ancient Greek. As others
have said, learning a foreign language (especially a dead one) is a great way
to bulk up on grammatical knowledge in general... at least as long as the
foreign language is sufficiently similar to English. (For example, I'm not sure
if learning Mandarin would help your knowledge of English as much as learning,
say, German or Latin would, but maybe.)

That being said, if you want to learn standard, traditional, but up-to-date,
descriptive English grammar, I suggest Huddleston and Pullum's A Student's
Introduction to English
Grammar
.
It's written by two highly respected and prolific linguists/grammarians. It's
based on their much more comprehensive tome The Cambridge Grammar of the
English
Language
.

u/EdwardCoffin · 1 pointr/grammar

>> For questions of usage, one must consult a prescriptive grammar.

> Er, say what?

Here are some definitions and comparisons of prescriptive and descriptive grammars:
google english grammar prescriptive vs descriptive.

From Chapter 1. Preliminaries of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language that you have been citing:

> The aim of this book
>
> Description versus prescription
>
> Our aim is to describe and not prescribe: we outline and illustrate the principles that govern the construction of words and sentences in the present-day language without recommending or condemning particular usage choices. Although this book may be (and we certainly hope it will be) of use in helping the user decide how to phrase things, it is not designed as a style guide or a usage manual. (emphasis mine) [page 2]
>
> Standard versus non-standard
>
> That is not to say that controversy cannot arise out of points of grammar or usage. There is much dispute, and that is precisely the subject matter for prescriptive usage manuals. (emphasis mine) [page 4]

The authors of the book you have been citing from themselves would seem to think you are misusing their book ("without recommending or condemning particular usage choices"), and would direct you to a prescriptive guide ("precisely the subject matter for prescriptive usage manuals"). The sections I quoted from are visible using Look Inside on Amazon, and as pointed out below, in the online preview of chapter 1

Edit: Added references to the Cambridge Guide Grammar.

Edit2: Corrected the name of the book in question, elaborated on the two quotations, and linked to the online preview.

u/sacundim · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

It's completely neutral.

In human languages, a sentence typically is made of a verb and its arguments. Very roughly, a sentence describes an event or situation; the verb specifies what kind of event or situation it is, and the arguments are the phrases that describe what the participants were in the situation. So for example, in Joe kicked the door, kicked is the verb, Joe and the door are arguments.

Different participants play a different role in the situation that a sentence describes. In our example, Joe is the "kicker" and the door is the "kicked"; in grammatical theory we say that Joe is agent ("doer") and the door is the patient (the thing that receives the effect of an action).

And in addition to that, there's the concepts of the subject and object of the sentence. In school you may have been taught that the subject is the "doer" of the sentence, but that is in fact incorrect. The subject is a phrase in the sentence that enjoys a number of special properties; in English, some of these properties are that the subject appears before the verb, and that subject pronouns must occur in a special form (I/he/she/we instead of me/him/her/us).

Now, in English, there is a complicated set of rules that determines which of the participants of a sentence is the subject. But to simplify, one of the rules is this: unless the sentence is a passive, the agent is always the subject. So basically the passive is this: a special way of constructing a sentence that allows you to use a participant as the subject when you wouldn't be able to do so in a "normal" sentence.

What good is the passive? Well, something that is very common in languages is that people construct sentences according to something called "topic-comment": sentences typically start by mentioning some thing that has already been discussed in the conversation, and then say something new about that thing—something that hasn't been mentioned earlier about that thing.

In English, the subject of a sentence tends to plays the role of "topic"—a thing that's already been mentioned earlier, and the sentence is saying something new about it. This is the use of the passive in English—to "break" the rule that the agent is always the subject. So for example:

u/gin_and_clonic · 1 pointr/self

> Compared to some other languages, English is already virtually devoid of grammar.

Completely and laughably wrong. Read this. Or for a quicker read, try this. Hell, just read some posts from LanguageLog.

> It's not the occasional typo I mind per se, but the cultural propagation of progressively devolved grammar, gradually reducing the language to a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner-city slang and various grunts.

Your hysteria is based on superstition and moronic suppositions. Non-standard and non-prestige varieties of language have existed for the entirety of recorded history alongside standard varieties. Sometimes they even make the leap to being standard languages. Ever heard of the Romance languages?

Do some research before you post next time!

u/psygnisfive · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The point about me being a theoretician was that I research the theoretical side of the field, as opposed to engaging in French-Academy-style prescriptivism, and thus the fact that I'm a linguist should not bare on whether or not my grammar is atrocious, as I don't profess to have good grammar.

Moving on to your issues:

The sentence you quote is not a run on sentence. Yes, it's somewhat long, but half of that is in a parenthetical and therefore doesn't qualify as part of the sentence proper, and thus-thus doesn't add to its run-on-iness. The length outside of the parenthetical is not all that long, all things consider. Let's compare my horrendously long sentence to a number of sentences found in written English literature:

Mine:
>Yes, English orthography is a bitch, this is undeniable, tho it's not as crazy as people think, given the awesome capacity of the human brain to learn things.

This NYT article
>President Obama and House Democratic leaders on Saturday closed in on the votes needed to pass landmark health care legislation, with the outcome hinging on their efforts to placate a handful of lawmakers who wanted the bill to include tighter limits on insurance coverage for abortions.

The second sentence of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield:
>To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o`clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

You:
>I understand that you aren't interested in following every rule of English, but I expected one who specializes in "the study of human speech" to be familiar with not only the precepts of English but also their necessities.

All three of these examples are longer than mine, and the last one is especially humorous. This point aside, run-on sentences are not ungrammatical, they're stylistically "bad" --- yet another thing that English teachers love to harp on about.

To continue:

>This run-on sentence is also an example of how a misplaced "do" can add confusion to an already unnecessarily complex thought.

Well I'm sorry my thought is too complex for you; I'll try to dumb it down in the future.

>it's just not in good taste to misspell "grammar" in an argument revolving linguistics.

OH NO A TYPO IN A COMMENT THREAD!

>Also, don't try to tell me that these are "silly [non-issues]." You claim to be a fucking linguist, so these kinds of things should be important to you. I understand that you aren't interested in following every rule of English, but I expected one who specializes in "the study of human speech" to be familiar with not only the precepts of English but also their necessities.

The problem with this sort of arrogance is that I am all too familiar with the precepts of English, as well as the fact that noone has any clue what "every rule of English" actually constitutes. The most complete descriptive grammar of English, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is a whomping 1860 pages and is incomplete due to the vastness of English. And this doesn't even begin to cover the enormous wealth of dialectal variations, nevermind detailed facts about finer points such as those mentioned above. But forget all that, because what it really comes down to is whether or not, as a linguist, I should care about things like run-on sentences, and the answer is definitively no. You see, firstly, as a linguist, I study what people actually say, not what they "should" say, and therefore if people use run-on sentences well tough like for me. Secondly, run-on sentences are a phenomena that only exist thanks to orthography and, more importantly, punctuation --- in spoken language these sentences, when uttered, invariably have appropriate prosodic contours that distinguish the subclauses. Given that punctuation is so much fashion (consider the central and eastern european use of the comma to set of relative clauses, compared to its use in the English-speaking world), it's no more the job of the linguist to care about it (punctuation, that is) than it is the biologists job to care about what makes a skirt hang nicely off the hips. Thirdly, addressing the "necessities", you and everyone else understood what I said, and so the communicative necessities were met. The necessities that weren't met were those laughable stylistic ones placed on language use by prescriptivists such as yourself. It's easy to write out a list of rules that you proclaim to be "proper English"; any halfwit with a pencil can do that, and many of you have.

And, for what it's worth, studying speech is far and away the minority of actual theoretical linguistics, except in some abstract sense. The big goal of theoretical linguistics, especially in my particular areas of interest, syntax and semantics, is to discover the space of possible human languages and how to best describe their constraints, often in terms of computational complexity on the (refined) Chomsky hierarchy. Speech is merely the necessary raw data, but we no more care about speech than a physicist cares about bubble chamber traces.

u/Opostrophe · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Practical English Usage by Michael Swan is the most widely used grammar reference that I have seen.

On the "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White- this is not a grammar book, it is a style guide. That is to say, the intent of this book is to inform people who possess little to no training in document writing with standards in the hope that they will write better.

It should be noted that while William Strunk Jr. was a professor of English, E.B. White was not. White was an author of fiction most remembered for Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.

Strunk first compiled a style guide for his own students at Cornell in 1918 (presumably in an attempt to head off grammatical errors and poor stylistic choices before they occurred, thereby saving him some headaches with constant error correction- a wise decision).

E.B. White happened to be a former student of Strunk, and after remembering the "little book" of his teacher, was tasked with revising it by his publisher 40 years later. He did, also adding a lot of material which was not in the original 40-odd pages.

E.B. White was not a grammarian, and some of the advice in "the Elements of Style" are just plain wrong (split infinitives, not using "which" to introduce a restrictive relative clause, beginning a sentence with "however"). As a guide to writing style for high-schoolers and some university students, this book is ok. As a definitive grammar book it falls decidedly short and actually does some harm (this book is the reason that many people refuse to say "than me" or "it was given to John and me").

This all discussed in more detail in an article called 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice by Geoffrey K. Pullum, a British-American linguist and Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

Pullman is also co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, which I haven't used personally but am sure is a good choice.

u/annodomini · 1 pointr/linguistics

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Tons of detailed information on how English actually works, much of which will surprise you if you've only been exposed to standard prescriptive "grammar."

u/Karlnohat · 1 pointr/grammar

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
by Rodney Huddleston (Author), Geoffrey K. Pullum (Author)


.

[Aside: In "Anne tied a rope around [herself/her]", both options are equally grammatical when they both refer back to "Anne".]

u/KitsuneRisu · 1 pointr/quityourbullshit

This isn't a personal jab, so don't take this the wrong way but I'd love to see these guides.

My source personally is the Cambridge book of grammar, one of the two main authorities on the actual... rule book of grammar. Yes - grammar has an official manual.

I know that language is constantly changing and I would love to see your sources so that I can update myself if necessary.