A comprehensive grammar of the English language. By RANDOLPH QUIRK, SID
Chap. 2 presents an overview of the grammar and introduces features of the descriptive model, which (appropriately enough, in view of the scope of the work) involves a minimum of formalism (34) CGEL recognizes a hierarchy of five units or ranks sentence, clause, phrase, word, and morpheme clearly influenced by Halliday's rank based model. (The analysis of Hurry! 42, as a sentence consisting of one clause, consisting of one phrase, consisting of one word, consisting of one morpheme, recalls that of Yes in Halliday, 1961:253, n. 31. But the rank scale does not figure at all prominently in the description; the morpheme, for example, is hardly mentioned again, since CGEL (wisely, in my view) eschews a morpheme based approach to both inflection and wordformation. Again as in Halliday's model, a systematic distinction is made between 'classes' and 'functions' in a green table, for example, a is a determiner with determinative function, green an adjective (phrase) with modifier function, and table a noun with head function. The primary clause functions are S, V, 0, C [predicative] complement) and A (adverbial) the primary word classes are noun, adjective, full verb, adverb, preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, modal verb, and primary verb (be, have, do) plus two 'lesser categories' numeral and interjection. Corresponding phrase classes are recognized for noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and preposition. CGEL does not make use of such 'theoretical formulations' as transformational rules, talking instead of 'systematic correspondences' between one structure and another (57) but these are frequently described in terms of 'processes' (78) equivalent to transformations in an informal sense cf. such formulations as [with such verbs as seem] we may say that extraposition is obligatory' (1392) CGEL emphasizes the frequently gradient nature of grammatical distinctions, and includes numerous matrix diagrams to illustrate it. The book also allows for the possibility of different coexisting analyses for a single unambiguous sentence: thus He looked at the painting has one analysis where looked is V, while at the painting is A, and another where looked at is V, while the painting is 0. Chaps. 3 4 deal with the verbal system: inflectional morphology, verb phrase structure (main verb auxiliaries) and the semantics of tense, aspect, and modals. Chap. 5 covers the 'basic' noun phrase with determinatives and noun head, but no modifiers. Chap. 6 is 'Pronouns and numerals' Chap. 7, 'Adjectives and adverbs' Chap. 8 is on the syntax and semantics of the A