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- The Oxford
- nglish
Grammar
SIDNEY GREENBAUM
In memoriam
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
- OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Sidney Greenbaum 1996
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- FOR AVRAHAM AND MASHA
- Preface
This book is addressed primarily to native speakers of English and others who
use English as their first language. It is a comprehensive account of present-day
English that is chiefly focused on the standard varieties of American and British
English, but it also refers frequently to non-standard varieties and it draws on
the history of the language to illuminate and explain features of English of
today. It offers a description of the language and is not intended to prescribe or
proscribe.
This work is unique in its coverage for native speakers of the language. It is
written to be accessible to non-specialists, but students of the English language
and related subjects will also find it of interest and value. It serves as a reference
work and can also be used as a textbook. Each chapter is prefaced by a list of
contents and a summary of the chapter. You may wish to read through a whole
chapter or to consult particular sections. The Glossary at the end of the book
will provide you with succinct explanations of terms that are frequently used in
the book.
In writing this book, I have drawn on my many years of experience in
teaching, research, and writing. I have taught English language in a range of
institutions and to different age-groups: at primary schools, at a secondary
(grammar) school, at a college of further education, and at universities. My
university teaching has encompassed a British university, universities in the
United States, and a university in a country where English is a foreign language.
I have been in English language research for over thirty years, and have directed
a research unit (the Survey of English Usage) for the last twelve years. My books
have ranged over various types of writing: monographs, reference works
(including co-authorship of the standard reference grammar of English),
textbooks, and books addressed to the general public.
Numerous citations appear in this book. Many of them come from American
and British newspapers, magazines, and books. Most are taken from two
sources: ICE-GB (the British million-word component of the International
Corpus of English, drawing on language used in the period 1990-3) and the
Wall Street Journal (about three million words from this American newspaper
for 1989, provided in a CD-ROM by the Association for Computational
Linguistics Data Collection Initiative).
ICE-GB was tagged and parsed with the assistance of programs devised by
the TOSCA Research Group (University of Nijmegen) under the direction of
Professor Ian Aarts. ICE-GB was compiled and computerized, with extensive
mark-up, by researchers at the Survey of English Usage, who also undertook
substantial manual work on the outputs of the TOSCA programs as well as
manual pre-editing for parsing. The following Survey researchers were involved
in the creation of ICE-GB or in the subsequent grammatical processing: Judith
Broadbent, Justin Buckley, Yanka Gavin, Marie Gibney, Ine Mortelmans, Gerald
Nelson, Ni Yibin, Andrew Rosta, Oonagh Sayce, Laura Tollfree, Ian Warner,
- PREFACE
Vlad Zegarac. I am especially grateful to Gerald Nelson for overseeing the
compilation of ICE-GB and the grammatical processing. He is also responsible
for drawing up the annotated list of sources for ICE-GB texts in the Appendix.
The work on ICE-GB was supported in the main by grants from the Economic
and Social Research Council (grant R000 23 2077), the Leverhulme Trust, and
the Michael Marks Charitable Trust. Financial support was also received from
the Sir Sigmund Sternberg Foundation and Pearson Pic.
I am indebted to Akiva Quinn and Nick Porter, colleagues at the Survey, for
ICECUP, a software concordance and search package, which I used extensively
for searching ICE-GB for words and grammatical tags. I am also much indebted
to Alex Chengyu Fang, another colleague at the Survey, for the application of
two programs that he created: AUTASYS was used for tagging the Wall Street
Journal Corpus, and so gave me access to grammatical information from an
American corpus, and TQuery was invaluable for searching for structures in the
parsed corpus.
Thanks are due to a number of colleagues for their comments on one or more
draft chapters: Judith Broadbent, Justin Buckley, Alex Chengyu Fang, Gerald
Nelson, Ni Yibin, Andrew Rosta, Jan Svartvik, Vlad Zegarac. I am also grateful
to Marie Gibney for typing the drafts.
- Contents
List of Tables and Figures x
Pronunciation Table xi
Abbreviations and Symbols xiii
Explanations of Corpora Citations xiv
1 The English Language 1
2 The Scope and Nature of Grammar 21
3 An Outline of Grammar 39
4 Word Classes 88
5 The Grammar of Phrases 203
6 Sentences and Clauses 305
7 Text 363
8 Words and their Meanings 394
9 The Formation of Words 435
10 Sounds and Tunes 477
11 Punctuation 503
12 Spelling 556
Notes 577
Appendix: Sources of Citations in ICE-GB 601
Glossary 615
Index 637
- List of Tables
Table 4.18.1 Classes of irregular verbs 127
Table 4.34.1 Primary pronouns 166
Table 4.34.2 Archaic second person forms 168
Table 4.44.1 Primary indefinite pronouns and determiners 193
Table 8.3.1 Brown, LOB, and ICE-GB rankings of the fifty most frequent words
in present-day English 403
Table 9.37.1 Lexically conditioned allomorphs in verbs 472
Table 10.3.1 English consonants 482
List of Figures
Figure 2.5.1 Tree diagram 30
Figure 5.2.1 Structure of a noun phrase 209
Figure 5.2.2 Premodifiers and NP heads 210
Figure 5.2.3 Postmodifiers and NP head: Sentence [3] 210
Figure 5.2.4 Postmodifiers and NP head: Sentence [4] 211
Figure 5.39.1 Structure of an adjective phrase 288
Figure 5.43.1 Structure of an adverb phrase 295
Figure 5.47.1 Structure of a prepositional phrase 300
Figure 6.2.1 Co-ordination of two main clauses: Sentence [1] 312
Figure 6.2.2 Co-ordination of three main clauses: Sentence [2] 312
Figure 6.4.1 Subordinate clause within a main clause: Sentence [5] 316
Figure 6.4.2 Co-ordination of final subordinate clauses: Sentence [6] 316
Figure 6.4.3 Co-ordination of initial subordinate clauses: Sentence [7] 316
Figure 6.4.4 Subordination within subordination: Sentence [8] 317
Figure 6.4.5 Co-ordination within co-ordination: Sentence [9] 317
Figure 6.4.6 Initial subordinate clause linked to two main clauses:
Sentence [10] 317
Figure 6.4.7 Final subordinate clause linked to two main clauses:
Sentence [13] 318
Figure 6.4.8 Parenthetic and-clause containing co-ordination of subordinate
clauses: Sentence [14] 318
Figure 6.4.9 Embedded relative clause: Sentence [16] 319
Figure 6.4.10 Embedded co-ordinated clauses functioning as noun phrase
complements: Sentence [17] 319
Figure 6.4.11 Four to-infinitive clauses in asyndetic co-ordination:
Sentence [18] 320
Figure 9.2.1 Structure of a complex word 440
Figure 10.6.1 Vowel chart 486
- Pronunciation Table
Consonants
voiceless
P pen s Sit
t top J she
k cat tj chip
f few h he
e thin
voiced
b but m man
d dog n n
g get ring
V van 1 leg
5 this r red
z zoo w we
3 vision j yes
d3 Jar
Vowels
a cat 3 ago
a: arm (RP) arm (GA) AI my
£ bed ao how
a: (RP) her ei (RP) e: (GA) day
3(GA) her so (RP) o: (GA) no
i sit s: hair (RP) hair (GA)
i: see is (RP) i (GA) near (RP) near (GA)
D(RP)Q:(GA) hot 31 boy
o: saw ua (RP) o (GA) poor (RP) poor (GA)
A run AI3 (RP) Al (GA) tire (RP) tire (GA)
u put aus (RP) au (GA) sour (RP) sour (GA)
u: too
The pronunciation symbols follow those used in The New Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary and in the latest edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
RP (Received Pronunciation) is an accent that is typical of educated speakers
of British English, though by no means all educated speakers use it. GA (General
American) is an abstraction from what is typical of English pronunciation in the
United States in contrast to RP. Most of the differences for vowels between RP
and GA are due to the [r] being separately pronounced in GA after a vowel. For
- PRONUNCIATION TABLE
more detailed discussion of the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, see
10.3-8.
Syllabic consonants (consonants that constitute a syllable by themselves) are
marked by a subscript vertical line: 1, n.
Primary stress is marked by (') before the syllable, and secondary stress by (,)
before the syllable: 'capitalize. See 10.10-12.
The ends of tone units are marked by vertical lines, and the nuclear syllable is in
capitals:
UnFORtunately| I've caught a COLD|
The direction of the tone is shown by an arrow before the nuclear syllable.
See 10.15 f.
- Abbreviations and Symbols
A adverbial
GA General American
ICE-GB British corpus of ICE (International Corpus of English)
M main clause
NP noun phrase
O object
P predicative
PP prepositional phrase
RP Received Pronunciation
S subject
sub subordinate clause
V verb
() comment or explanation after citation; optional letter(s) or word(s)
[] comment or explanation within citation; phonetic transcription
// phonemic transcription (cf. 9.36)
{} morphemic transcription (cf. 9.38); alternatives, e.g.:
a piece of 1 f bread
a bit of / \ information
- Explanations of
Corpora Citations
All citations preserve the original wording. If anything is omitted (to avoid
irrelevant distractions), the omission is indicated by [...].
A few citations come from the American component of ICE (International
Corpus of English). They are cited by references beginning ICE-USA-SIA and
are direct (face-to-face) conversations.
Citations from the Wall Street Journal are for issues published in 1989.
References consist of three sets of digits, for example 890929-0070-49. The first
set indicates the date by year, month, and day; the second set is the identity
number for the item; the third set identifies the sentence.
Citations for ICE-GB, the British component of ICE, are for language used
during the years 1990-3. Pauses are indicated by , a short pause (the
equivalent of a single syllable uttered at the speaker's tempo), and by , a long
pause (the equivalent of two or more syllables uttered at the speaker's tempo).
Citation references for ICE-GB begin either'S' (spoken texts) or 'W (written
texts). The major divisions within these two categories are:
SI dialogue
S1A private conversations
SIB/ public dialogues
S2 monologue
S2A unscripted monologues
S2B scripted monologues
Wl non-printed writing
W1A student essays
W1B letters
W2 printed writing
W2A informational (learned)
W2B informational (popular)
W2C informational (reportage)
W2D instructional
W2E persuasive (press editorials)
W2F creative (novels/stories)
There are 500 texts (samples) in ICE-GB, each text containing about 2,000
words, for a total of about one million words. The spoken texts number 300.
Fifty of the spoken texts are scripted (written down and read aloud); the scripted
texts are transcribed from the spoken recordings. Many of the texts are
composite; that is, they are composed of several subtexts (shorter samples),
such as a text comprising a number of personal letters.
- EXPLANATIONS OF CORPORA CITATIONS
Citation references for ICE-GB consist of three sets, for example
SlB-046-63. The first set is the major category, in this instance a public dialogue
(SIB); the second set is for the identity number of the text, which in this instance
is a broadcast interview (in the subcategory S1B-041 to S1B-050), the third set is
for the number of the text unit. The basic unit for reference in each text is the text
unit. In written texts, the text unit corresponds to the orthographic sentence. In
spoken texts, it is the approximate equivalent of the orthographic sentence,
though there may be more than one equivalent in writing and sometimes a
spoken text unit is grammatically incomplete.
A list of the sources of all texts, including any subtexts, in ICE-GB appears in
the Appendix at the end of the book.
- Chapter 1
The English Language
Summary
English throughout the world (1.1-6)
1.1 English internationally 3 1.4 The spread of English in second-
1.2 The spread of English in the British language countries 8
Isles 4 1.5 English pidgins and Creoles 11
1.3 The spread of English In other first- 1.6 English as an international
language countries 6 language 12
The standard language (1.7-10)
1.7 Standard English 14 1.9 Correct English 16
1.8 Variation In standard English 15 1.10 Good English 17
- Chapter 1 Summary
English is used in most countries of the world as a first language, a second
language (for communication between inhabitants), or a foreign language. It
is essentially a Germanic language introduced by invading tribes from the
European continent into what later became known as England. It spread from
there throughout the British Isles and subsequently to the United States and
other territories colonized by the British, almost all of which are now
independent countries. Since the end of the Second World War English has
been the foremost language for international communication.
The standard varieties of American and British English have influenced those
of other countries where English is a first language and they have generally
been the models taught to foreign learners. In the past they have also been the
models for English as a second language, but in recent decades some second-
language countries have begun to develop their own standard varieties.
Standard English is remarkably homogeneous across national boundaries,
particularly in the written language. It admits less variation than non-standard
varieties. Its repertoire offers choices according to type of activity engaged in
through language, medium of communication, and degree of formality.
Correct English is conformity to the norms of standard English. Good English
is good use of the resources of the language: language used effectively and
ethically. Sensitivity to the feelings of others requires avoidance of offensive
and discriminatory language.
- English throughout the
World
1.1
English The geographical spread of English is unique among the languages of the
internationally world, not only in our time but throughout history. English is the majority
first language in twenty-three countries. It is an official language or a joint
official language in about fifty other countries, where it is used in addition to
the indigenous first languages for a variety of public and personal functions. It
is also used as a second language, though without official status, in countries
such as Bangladesh and Malaysia. Countries where English is a first or second
language are located in all five continents. The total population of these
countries amounts to around 2.5 billion, about 49 per cent of the world's
population. Where English is a first or second language, it is used internally for
communication between nationals of the same country. In addition, English
is used extensively as a foreign language for international communication by
people who do not ordinarily employ it when speaking or writing to their
compatriots.1
The number of first-language speakers of English has been estimated at
well over 300 million, of whom over 216 million live in the United States. The
United Kingdom has about 53 million, Canada over 17 million, and Australia
about 14 million. Countries where English is a majority first language may
have large percentages of bilingual speakers and speakers for whom English is
a second language. For example, Canada has a large minority of unilingual
French speakers (nearly 17 per cent) as well as an almost equal percentage of
speakers who are bilingual in French and English.
Most countries with second-language speakers of English are former
British colonies, such as India and Nigeria. English has been retained as an
official language in the majority of these countries after independence because
none of the indigenous languages was accepted by all citizens as the sole
national language. As an official second language, English is used in a variety
of public functions: in government, in the law courts, in broadcasting, in the
press, and in education. In many African and Asian countries it serves as the
means of interpersonal communication between speakers of different
indigenous languages. Because of both its national and its international reach,
English is often used for literature, sometimes in forms that draw heavily on
local colloquial forms of English. Writers and politicians in some African and
Asian countries are ambivalent about the role of English: English may be
viewed as an imperialist language, imposed by colonial oppressors and
impeding the role of indigenous languages, or as the language of liberation
and nationalism in countries divided by tribal loyalties.
The problem in calculating the numbers of second-language speakers is
- THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
how to decide who counts as a speaker of the language. Should we include in
our totals those who have a rudimentary knowledge of vocabulary and
grammar but can make themselves understood only in certain types of
exchanges—for example, giving street directions or offering goods for sale? If
so, we might recognize as second-language speakers perhaps most of the 2.5
billion that live in countries where English is used as a second language. On
the other hand, conservative estimates, requiring much greater competence in
the language, tend to put the number at about 300 million.
A similar problem arises in calculating the numbers of users of English as a
foreign language. Estimates have ranged wildly—from 100 million to 600
million. English is extensively studied as a foreign language. It is a compulsory
subject or the preferred optional language in most countries where it is not a
first or second language. It has been estimated that over 150 million children
are studying English as a foreign language in primary or secondary schools.
Many millions of foreigners listen to BBC broadcasts in English, and many
millions follow the BBC English lessons on radio and television. 'Follow Me',
the BBC English by_Television 60-programme course for beginners, produced
in 1979 with a consortium of European television stations, has been shown in
over 80 countries. It attracted vast audiences in countries throughout the
world in the 1980s, and in China alone it had an estimated audience of over 50
million. Over half a million visitors, mostly from the European continent,
currently visit the United Kingdom each year to study English as a foreign
language. A poll conducted in December 1992 showed that English is the most
popular language in the European Union (then called the European
Community) among young people (aged 15 to 24), and while 34 per cent of
that age group spoke English in 1987 the figure in 1990 had risen to 42 per
cent. A European Commission report for 1991-2 showed that 83 per cent of
secondary school students in the European Union were learning English as a
second language, compared with just 32 per cent learning French, the nearest
competitor.
1.2
The spread of From the middle of the fifth century and for the next hundred years, waves of
English in the invading tribes from the European continent—Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and
Frisians—brought their Germanic dialects to Britain, settling in the country
British Isles and driving the Celtic-speaking Britons westward to Wales and Cornwall.
Isolated from other Germanic speakers, the settlers came to acknowledge their
dialects as belonging to a separate common language that they called English.2
Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, from
which have descended—among others—Latin and its Romance derivatives,
Greek, Celtic, and Sanskrit. The Germanic dialects of the settlers belonged to
West Germanic, the parent language also of modern German, Dutch, Flemish,
- ENGLISH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
and Frisian. From the middle of the ninth century England suffered large
incursions by Danish Vikings, intent on settling as well as plundering. Their
Scandinavian language belonged to North Germanic. The Danes came close to
capturing the whole country, but were defeated overwhelmingly by the
English under the leadership of King Alfred the Great. The Treaty of Wedmore
signedin the same year (878) confined the Danes to the east of a line roughly
from London to Chester, an area known as the Danelaw. There were further
Danish invasions in the late ninth century, and finally from 1014 to 1042 the
whole of England was ruled by Danish kings. The Scandinavian language
introduced a considerable number of common loanwords into English and
contributed to present dialectal differences in the north and east of the
country. Much of the population in those areas must have been bilingual and
it has been suggested that bilingualism may have hastened the reduction of
inflections in English since the stems of words were often similar in the two
Germanic languages.
In 1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and
became its king. The Norman conquest established a French-speaking ruling
class. French was the language of the royal court, the nobility, the church
leaders, parliament, the law courts, and the schools. Most of the population
continued to speak English, but bilingualism became common. Bilingualism
resulted in an enormous influx of French words into English. From the late
fourteenth century English displaced French for most purposes, and during
the next century a standard English language emerged to meet the needs of the
central bureaucracy, the printers, and the educators. Latin, however, was the
language of learning throughout the Middle Ages—as in the rest of Europe—
and remained so in England as late as the seventeenth century.
English arrived early in Scotland. By the seventh century the northern
English kingdom of Bernicia had extended its territory—and its dialect—into
what is now Southern Scotland. This dialect is the source of Scots, an ancient
dialect of English that may be viewed as parallel with Modern English in their
common derivation from Old English. By the middle of the sixteenth century
Scots was becoming influenced by English in word forms and spellings, a
process encouraged by the use of English Bibles in Scotland in the absence of
a Scots Bible. When James VI of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in 1603
to become James I of England, combining the thrones of the two kingdoms,
there was a quickening of the pace of adoption of English in Scotland for
writing and by the gentry for speech. The final blow to Scots as the standard
dialect of Scotland was the Act of Union in 1707, when the two kingdoms were
formally united. Despite attempts at reviving Scots, it remains restricted
mainly to literary uses and to some rural speech. It has, however, influenced
Scottish English, the standard variety of English in Scotland. About 80,000
people speak Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language that is confined to the West
Highlands and the Western Isles of Scotland, but nearly all of them are
bilingual in Gaelic and English.
Wales was England's first colony. It was ruled from England as a
[ principality from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and was
- THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
incorporated into England by the Acts of Union of 1535 and 1543, which
promoted the use of English for official purposes. The standard variety of
English in Wales is thought to be identical with that in England. There are,
however, distinctive Welsh English accents. According to a 1991 census, over
half a million inhabitants of Wales above the age of 3 (19 per cent) speak
Welsh, a Celtic language, most of whom are bilingual in Welsh and English.
As a result of current education policies, the number of Welsh speakers among
the young is now increasing.
English was permanently introduced into Ireland when the Normans
invaded the country during the twelfth century and settled French and English
speakers in the eastern coastal region, though many of their descendants
adopted Irish (or Irish Gaelic), the Celtic language of the native inhabitants.
In the sixteenth century the Tudor monarchs began a policy of bringing to
Ireland large numbers of English settlers, and later also Scottish settlers, to
displace the Irish from their land. By 1800 English was the language of half the
population. The famines of 1846-8 led to mass emigration from Ireland, most
of those who emigrated being Irish speakers, the poorer part of the
population. During the nineteenth century English was promoted in the
Catholic education system in opposition to the use of Irish by Protestant
proselytizing societies. Despite attempts since independence to revive the use
of Irish in the Republic of Ireland, there are few Irish monolinguals and
perhaps only 2 per cent of the population use Irish regularly.
The United Kingdom, but particularly England, has a high proportion of
speakers of immigrant languages. A 1981 survey, covering all pupils in
primary and secondary schools under the control of the Inner London
Education Authority, found that nearly 45,000 pupils (about 14 per cent)
spoke a language at home other than English or in addition to English. The
five most frequently reported languages, in order of frequency, were Bengali,
Turkish, Greek, Spanish, and Gujerati.3 British-born descendants of
Caribbean immigrants, mostly from Jamaica, may speak a variety of English
(related to Jamaican Creole) that has been termed British Black English.4
1.3
The spread of Beginning in the early seventeenth century, the English language was
English in other transported beyond the British Isles by traders, soldiers, and settlers. During
the next two centuries Britain acquired territories throughout the world. In
first-language some of these territories, British settlers were sufficiently numerous to
countries dominate the country linguistically as well as in other respects, so that the
indigenous population came to adopt English as their first or second language.
More importantly for the future of English, the numbers of the early settlers
were swelled enormously by waves of immigration and even when the
newcomers brought another language their descendants generally spoke
- ENGLISH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 7
English as their first language. All the major countries outside the British Isles
where English is the dominant language have succeeded in assimilating
linguistically their immigrants from non-English-speaking countries: the
United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The first permanent English settlements were established in the New
World, beginning with the founding of Jamestown in 1607. The colonial
period came to an end when the American colonies rejected British rule in the
War of Independence (1776-83). Both before and after their independence,
the Americans acquired territories that were occupied by speakers of other
languages—Amerindian languages, Dutch, French, and Spanish. These have
influenced American English, together with the languages of immigrants in
lateoperiods—notably German and Yiddish. It is estimated that over 27
million United States residents speak a language other than English at home,
about half of whom use Spanish. Every year over half a million new
immigrants enter the United States, most of them from non-English-speaking
countries and most of them Spanish speakers.
Political independence of the United States led to cultural—including
linguistic—independence, and hence to the growth of a separate standard
American English that no longer looked to Britain for its norms. Though
regional differences in pronunciation are conspicuous, American English is
more homogeneous than British English in vocabulary and grammar, because
of its shorter history and because of past migrations across the American
continent and present easy mobility. As a result, dialect differences have not
had as great an opportunity to become established and there has been much
mixing of regional dialects. Black English, originally restricted regionally as
well as ethnically, is used by most black speakers in a range of standard and
non-standard varieties.5
Canada became a British possession in 1763, wrested from the French.
After the American War of Independence, large numbers of loyalists settled in
Canada, followed during the next century by waves of immigrants from the
United States and the British Isles. Canada has a large minority of unilingual
French speakers (nearly 17 per cent), concentrated in the province of Quebec,
as well as an almost equal percentage of bilingual speakers in French and
English, which are the joint official languages of Canada. Virtually all
Canadians speak English or French, apart from some rural indigenous or
immigrant communities.
In 1770 Captain James Cook claimed the eastern coast of Australia for
Britain. Soon afterwards, penal colonies were established to which convicts
were transported from Britain. Until after the Second World War,
immigration from Asian countries was restricted and most immigrants were
English-speaking. Many of the Aborigines (the indigenous population before
British colonization), who number fewer than 200,000, speak only English.
The first British settlement in New Zealand was in 1792. New Zealand
became part of New South Wales and then after 1840 a British colony in its
own right. Most settlers have been English-speaking. The indigenous Maori
language, spoken by about 300,000, has official status in the courts.
nguon tai.lieu . vn
