Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language

Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language

<p>An engaging and fresh take on the rules and politics of English grammar, written in lively prose. It goes a step further than most books on grammar by providing an overview of the field, with a discussion of historical and current debates about grammar, and how we define, discuss, and approach it.</p> <ul> <li>Presents a novel, inquiry-based approach to understanding speakers' unconscious knowledge of English grammar</li> <li>Makes lucid connections, when relevant, with current linguistic theory</li> <li>Integrates language change and variation into the study of grammar</li> <li>Examines historical sources of socially evaluative perceptions of grammar, as 'good' or 'bad', and notions of language authority</li> <li>Provides syntactic explanations for many modern punctuation rules</li> <li>Explores some of the current controversies about grammar teaching in school and the role of Standard English in testing and assessment</li> </ul>