REVIEW FROM PREVIOUS EDITION: 'A slim and useful student textbook for English Syntax. Although most of the examples are from English, the book introduces general concepts which provide the necessary tools for a basic syntactic analysis of any language. The book concentrates on topics that will remain useful to the student who does not go on to study linguistics but, say, literature or EFL teaching.' - The Year's Work in English StudiesIn this revised and fully updated new edition of his popular textbook, Jim Miller discusses the central concepts of syntax which are applied in a wide range of...

Tackling the role of syntactic constructions in text, this textbook brings out the connections between syntactic structures and semantics/pragmatics and the function of different clausal structures in written and spoken texts. It also draws attention to variation in standard written English, to the grammatical structures and discourse devices in spoken English, and to ongoing changes in English grammar. It focuses on the concepts of descriptive grammar as extended and refined over the last fifty years. This is a practical yet flexible reference that you can return to again and again, whether...