An introduction to English syntax. Edinburgh textbooks on the English language.

This work discusses the central concepts of syntax which are applied in a wide range of university courses, in business, in teaching and in speech therapy. The book deals with traditional concepts which have been greatly refined and extended since the 1970s: what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are and how they can be recognized; what a subordinate clause is and how different types of subordinate clause can be recognized; and what subjects and objects are. The book draws out the connections between syntax and meaning; in particular, two chapters focus on topics such as tense, mood and voice which are central to the use of language and are of major importance in second language learning. there are also areas where meaning and grammar interconnect very closely. The final chapter of the book looks at how sentences are combined in the creation of texts and on the role of various syntactic constructions in texts.