26/11/2021
Book Review
English Grammar:
An outline
By
Rodney Huddleston
Reviewed by:
Jehanzeb,
Associate Professor of English,
GPGC, Mardan
HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMY OF RESEARCH & TRAINING (HEART), HAYATABAD, PESHAWAR, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA
NOVEMBER, 2021
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Rodney Huddleston
Department of English.
University of Queensland
UK.
English Grammar
An outline.
Cambridge University press
ISBN 0521311527, 9780521311526
Length 212 pages.
Rodney Huddleston is a British linguist and grammarian, specialising in the study and description of the English language. He graduated from Cambridge University in modern and mediaeval languages. He earned a Ph.D degree in applied linguistics from the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Michael Halliday. He remained a professor at the University of Edinburgh UK and later at the University of Queensland. For his contribution to grammatical theory he has won several awards
The book is an introductory text for courses in English grammar at college and university levels. It offers an outline account of the most important content in English grammar. The book assumes that the reader knows nothing on the subject and tries to build the basic concepts of English grammar. The most Central ideas about grammatical Constructions and categories have been explained systematically.
The approach to the grammar is descriptive and is based on the theoretical advances made so far in modern linguistics. Therefore the book can be used as a course on linguistics at BS level. One of the significant features of the book is its significant departures from traditional grammar in approach,analysis, and terminology. Another significant and distinctive feature of the book is that it discusses the major grammatical categories at both the language particular and language general level thus differentiating the language particular level and the language general level systematically and linguistically, enabling the reader to know whether a word is a noun or verb, adjective or adverb in English at language particular level and whether some clause is imperative, declarative, exclamatory or interrogative in English. The analysis at the general level is concerned with what is common to the grammatical categories across all languages and analysis at the language particular level concerns English, therefore the book can be used as a basis for writing books on the same subject in other languages.
The book deals with the two basic units of grammar ;the word and the sentence. One subcomponent of grammar called morphology deals with the form of words while the other called syntax deals with word-combinations to form sentences. The book comprises of 13 chapters, each one specifically dealing with a specialised area of language description. The first chapter is the preliminaries; explaining and delimiting the basic grammatical terms, ideas and terms that will be used throughout the text. The second chapter deals with parts of speech, dividing all word-forms into eight form- classes. These eight classes have been further subdivided into two major groups, the open classes and the closed classes. Each word-class is analyzed and discussed under four subheadings ,inflection, function, dependents and lexical morphology. The third chapter deals with verbs, explaining verbs and verb phrases in detail. The fourth chapter is about the structure of kernel clauses and the fifth one is about the tense aspect and modality. This sixth one is about nouns and noun phrases, the seventh one is on adjectives, determinative and numerals. The eighth one is about adverbs and prepositions. The last 5 chapters are about sentence structure explaining clause types, negation, subordination, coordination and the thematic system of the clause. Ideas have been explained through diagrams and illustrations. Each chapter is followed by an elaborate exercise for evaluation.
The approach to the description of grammatical categories is based on grammatical form and usage rather than notional definitions, therefore the book aims to be understood and comprehended rather than taxing the memory of the reader. The book applies a deductive approach to language analysis and is really enjoyable.
There are a few shortcomings of the text as well. The book is based on modern linguistics which, if not known to the reader, makes it tough for the reader to understand. The terminology and jargon used is quite new and is hard to digest. Another problem is its total deviation from conventional grammatical theory which makes it a bit tough for a novice reader. One has to go through the text several times to be able to understand it.