Have you seen any of the books referenced below?

Pamela K. Donehew
Reading/English Instructor
West Georgia Technical College
303 Fort Drive
LaGrange, GA 30240
706-845-4323 X5714









-----Original Message-----
From: Herb Stahlke [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 1:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: English grammar texts


For some very different approaches, I'd recommend four books.

Max Morenberg's _Doing Grammar_ is a systematic approach to the
syntax of English sentences that covers quite a lot of ground.  It
uses phrase structure trees but also builds in a fair amount of
functional information.  Pedagogically, it's a little force-fed,
but, on the other hand, I've found that students who've been
through it remember grammatical structure pretty well.   The trees
themselves are not something a linguist would take pleasure in,
but they work well for teaching purposes.

Lynn Berk's _English Grammar:  From Word to Discourse_ is an
excellent functionalist account that goes a long ways towards
helping the student make sense of not only how the language works
but why it works that way.  It is at a more advanced, demanding
level than Morenberg.  Both are from OUP.

Mark Lester's new edition of _Grammar and Usage in the Classroom_
has just come out.  If you like Reed-Kellogg diagrams, Lester's is
the book, because he emphasizes that.  He presents some excellent
analyses, including treatments of the auxiliary and of phrasal
verbs that are among the best I've read in any intro text.  If you
don't like traditional sentence diagrams, that part of the book
will be less satisfying, but he does the most thorough
presentation of that traditional and still widely used approach
that  you'll find in any grammar.

If you're more interested in good, sound, carefully argued
syntax, I'd recommend James McCawley's _The Syntactic Phenomena of
English_, which is now out in a one-volume edition.  It's heavier
going, but the analyses never fail to fascinate and there can't be
a much better coverage of the structure of English sentences.
While technical, the book is very well written and very readable.

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

>>> [log in to unmask] 10/17/00 11:27AM >>>
Hello!

In college I was an English major and we did not study any
grammar. I would like to independently further my studies.  Can
anyone give me recommendations for books?

Thank you,
Cheryl Richey