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RR 2003/20 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum with the collaboration of others Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2002 xvii + 1842 pp. ISBN 0 521 43146 8
L100; $150
Keywords English, Language
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310455939
At 1,842 pages, weighing 2.540 kilos, and with the rare dignity of a dedicated Web site of its very own: http://uk/cambridge/org/ linguistics/cgel this is an exceptionally imposing and impressive publication. It inaugurates a new epoch in the grammatical analysis of the English language, setting rigorous new standards and opening up new perspectives.
Geoffrey K. Pullum, Professor of Linguistics at University of California Santa Cruz, sets a context for this bold new grammar for the twenty-first century: "After decades in which grammar has not been very intensively taught in schools, English speakers wandered like frightened strangers in their own native language." Some of us are haunted by vague memories of the classical analyses of Greek and Latin. Others strive to adhere to rules prescribed by eighteenth-- century grammarians,...