Description

This is a comprehensive grammar of English in dictionary form which offers a descriptive approach to English grammar, based on the principles of systemic-functional grammar, cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. It is a resource which will engage the attention of university students and English teachers, examiners, syllabus designers and material writers, a guide to the grammar and usage of English useful to the readers who are aware of the advantage of having a knowledge of grammar, of the capacity of analysing the meaning of language and of the ability of expressing thoughts clearly. It shapes an integrated vision of English and grammar by seeing lexis, structures and functions as being closely related. This makes the book a halfway house between a grammar which does not ignore the meanings of words and patterns, and a dictionary which gives grammatical information. The language samples that exemplify the grammatical descriptions are instances of standard usage taken from corpora, illustrative of present-day English. In spite of its size, it is a friendly book which supports the user by several systems of access, including the alphabetical arrangement or entries, their similar structure, subtitles and cross-referencing.