Geoffrey Leech - A Communicative Grammar of English, Third Edition

A Communicative Grammar of English A Communicative Grammar of English Third EditionGeoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik First published 1975 by Pearson Education Limited Second edition 1994 Third edition first published in Great Britain 2002 Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright 2002, Taylor & Francis. The rights of Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-0-582-50633-6 (pbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress Typeset in 9/12pt Stone Serif by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Contents Based on A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik A Communicative Grammar of English has established itself as both an authoritative and an innovative grammar. This thoroughly revised third edition gives increased emphasis on spoken English and makes more use of real examples based on corpus data. We have also tried to make the presentation more pedagogical by giving simpler explanations, in providing more corpus examples (from Longman Corpus Network), and in making clear the distinctions between major and minor points.

Another innovation is the accompanying new Workbook by Edward Woods and Rudy Coppieters which will help students to internalize the contents of grammar. The basic design of the book remains the same as in the second edition, including the numbering of sections. The book is divided into three parts: : A guide to the use of this book : Grammar in use : AZ in English grammar This book is partly based on A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Longman, 1985) by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. However, it cannot be regarded as a condensed version of that larger work since its arrangement is totally different, and it contains additional material (especially in a reference to the most relevant sections of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, so that, if required, a more detailed treatment of the topic can be consulted in that book. A more recent grammar using the same general framework, which can be consulted especially on matters of frequency, language variety and conversational grammar, is Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999) by Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan. Lancaster and Lund, August 2002

( )	Items in round brackets are optional, i.e. the sentence is acceptable also if the bracketed words are left out: Susan said she would call back but she didnt (do so). can be read either as but she didnt do so or as but she didnt Round brackets are also used for cross-references: (see 408) means see section 408 in this grammar (see CGEL 14.2) means see A Comphrehensive Grammar of the English Language, section 14.2
[ ]	Numerals in square brackets appear after examples when required for cross-reference: As in sentence [5] Square brackets are also used to separate items, such as two adverbials: We go [to bed] [early].
/	A slash indicates a choice of items, such as between some- or any-pronouns: Did somebody/anybody phone?
{ }	Braces indicate a range of choices, such as between different relative constructions:
~	A tilde indicates roughly equivalent, e.g. active and passive: They published this paper in 1999. ~ This paper was published in 1999. ~ This paper was published in 1999. A tilde is also used between related forms, e.g. verb forms or comparative forms: give ~ gave ~ givenbig ~ bigger ~ biggest
< >	Angle brackets are used around variety labels (see 4455): , , , ,
*	An asterisk signifies that what follows is not good English, i.e. it is unacceptable usage: We can say Anns car, BUT NOT *the car of Ann
//	Slashes enclose phonemic transcriptions (see 43): lean /li:n/ leant /lent/
'	A stress mark is placed before the stressed syllable of a word: 'over (stress on the first syllable) temp'tation (stress on the second syllable) transfor'mation (stress on the third syllable)
Underlined syllables carry the nuclear tone (see 38): How could you d that?
`	A falling tone: ys
A rising tone: ys
A fall-rise tone: ys
|	A single vertical bar indicates tone unit boundary (see 37): | I lmost phoned them p and said | Come a bit_lter |
A double bar separates from usage: spelling: colourcolor pronunciation:
S	subject (see 705)
V	verb phrase (see 735)
O	object (see 608)
C	complement (see 508)
A	adverbial (see 449)
SVO	subject + verb phrase + object
SVC	subject + verb phrase + complement
SVA	subject + verb phrase + adverbial