The only fun, friendly, and surefire defense against the grammar snobs Having already made a name for herself with Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, now in its fifth printing, June Casagrande returns with Mortal Syntax, taking on the 101 most frequently attacked usage choices. Dedicating one short chapter to each, Casagrande brings her subject to life, teaching English usage through lively and amusing personal anecdotes. Mortal Syntax includes such chapters as: ? "I wish I was taller" ? "I am continuously watching Simpsons reruns" ? "Was it Horton that heard the Who?" Casagrande's clear and concise lessons-with entertaining titles and themes-make a potentially prickly subject go down like a spoonful of sugar.

The only fun, friendly, and surefire defense against the grammar snobs Having already made a name for herself with Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, now in its fifth printing, June Casagrande returns with Mortal Syntax, taking on the 101 most frequently attacked usage choices. Dedicating one short chapter to each, Casagrande brings her subject to life, teaching English usage through lively and amusing personal anecdotes. Mortal Syntax includes such chapters as: ? "I wish I was taller" ? "I am continuously watching Simpsons reruns" ? "Was it Horton that heard the Who?" Casagrande's clear and concise lessons-with entertaining titles and themes-make a potentially prickly subject go down like a spoonful of sugar.

This second edition of Ian Roberts's highly successful textbook on diachronic syntax has been fully revised and updated throughout to take account of the multiple developments in the field in the last decade. The book provides a detailed account of how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word order change, grammaticalization, and reanalysis - can be explored in terms of current minimalist theory and Universal Grammar. This new edition offers expanded coverage of a range of topics, including null subjects, the Final-over-Final Condition, the diachrony of wh-movement, the Tolerance Principle, and creoles and creolization, and explores further advances in the theory of parametric variation. Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading, and the book concludes with a comprehensive glossary of key terms. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, the volume will remain an ideal textbook for students of historical linguistics and a valuable reference for researchers and students in related areas such as syntax, comparative linguistics, language contact, and language acquisition.

Language columnist June Casagrande presents a fun and breezy guide to everything a grown-up interested in grammar needs to know. When it comes to grammar, it seems like everyone—even die-hard word nerds—feel they "missed something" in school. The Joy of Syntax picks up where sixth grade left off, providing a fresh foundation in English syntax served up by someone with an impressive record of making this otherwise inaccessible subject a true joy. With simple, pithy information on everything from basic parts of speech and sentence structure to usage and grammar pitfalls, this guide provides everything you need to approach grammar with confidence.

This book provides a state-of-the-art introduction to categorial grammar, a type of formal grammar which analyses expressions as functions or according to a function-argument relationship. The book's focus is on linguistic, computational, and psycholinguistic aspects of logical categorial grammar, i.e. enriched Lambek Calculus. Glyn Morrill opens with the history and notation of Lambek Calculus and its application to syntax, semantics, and processing. Successive chapters extend the grammar to a number of significant syntactic and semantic properties of natural language. The final part applies Morrill's account to several current issues in processing and parsing, considered from both a psychological and a computational perspective. The book offers a rigorous and thoughtful study of one of the main lines of research in the formal and mathematical theory of grammar, and will be suitable for students of linguistics and cognitive science from advanced undergraduate level upwards.

English Grammar: Learning at Lightning Speed By: Okon Attah, Ph.D. English Grammar: Learning at Lightning Speed is part of a collective effort to water the flower of grammar and maintain its wholesomeness. This book is neither the ultimate nor the penultimate work on English grammar; it is intended to serve as a prolegomenon to further studies. Verbosity has been reduced here; there is focus on what is germane to understanding English grammar, so the reader can learn at lightning speed.