The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar

Bas Aarts · Jill Bowie · Gergana Popova

Nov 2019 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. Following an introduction from the editors, the volume's expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, beginning with issues in grammar writing and methodology. Chapters in part II then examine the various theoretical approaches to grammar, such as cognitive, constructional, and generative approaches, followed by the chapters in part III, which comprehensively cover the different subdomains of grammar, including compounds, phrase structure, clause types, tense and aspect, and information structure. Part IV offers coverage of the relationship between grammar and other fields - lexis, phonology, meaning, and discourse - while the concluding part of the book investigates grammatical change over time, regional variation, and genre and literary variation. The handbook's wide-ranging coverage will appeal to researchers and students of English language and linguistics from undergraduate level upwards.

About the author

Bas Aarts is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Survey of English Usage at University College London. His previous books with OUP include Fuzzy Grammar: A Reader (OUP, 2004), Syntactic Gradience (2007), Oxford Modern English Grammar (2011), The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (2nd edition 2014) and How to Teach Grammar (2019). He is a founding editor of the journal English Language and Linguistics. Jill Bowie is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Survey of English Usage, University College London, where she previously worked on the AHRC-funded projects 'The changing verb phrase in present-day British English' and 'Teaching English grammar in schools'. Her research interests include recent change in English and the grammar of spoken discourse. She has co-authored papers with Survey colleagues on clause fragments and on changes in the English verb phrase Gergana Popova is Lecturer in Linguistics at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her interests are in theoretical linguistics, specifically morphology and its interfaces, and lexical semantics. She is the co-editor, with Bas Aarts, David Denison, and Evelien Keizer, of Fuzzy Grammar: A Reader (OUP, 2004), author of articles and book chapters, and co-author, with Andrew Spencer, of the forthcoming OUP monograph Periphrasis.