This study grew out of a series of lectures Jespersen gave at Columbia
University in 1909-10, called An Introduction to English Grammar.
It is the connected presentation of Jespersen's views of the general
principles of grammar based on years of studying various languages
through both direct observation of living speech and written and
printed documents.
"The Philosophy of Grammar" and "Analytic Syntax"] set
forth the most extensive and original theory of universal grammar
prior to the work of Chomsky and other generative grammarians of the
last thirty years....

This second edition of James D. McCawley's classic textbook offers in one volume a complete course in the syntactic structure of English. New to this edition are sections on appositive constructions, parasitic gaps, contrastive negation, and comparative conditional sentences, as well as expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. The presentation is coherent, comprehensive, and systematically organized, beginning with an overview of McCawley's approach to syntactic analysis and progressing through the major constructions and processes of English grammar. No prior special...

How reliable are all those stories about the number of Eskimo words for snow? How can lamps, flags, and parrots be libelous? How might Star Trek's Commander Spock react to Noam Chomsky's theories of language? These and many other odd questions are typical topics in this collection of essays that present an occasionally zany, often wry, but always fascinating look at language and the people who study it.
Geoffrey K. Pullum's writings began as columns in "Natural Language and Linguistic Theory" in 1983. For six years, in almost every issue, under the banner "TOPIC. . .COMMENT," he...