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Title: English Grammar : An Outline by Rodney Huddleston ISBN: 0-521-31152-7 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 16 June, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Difficult to read and not didactic at all
Comment: I bought this book because it was recommended by the lecturer of an undergraduate course in English grammar at the University of Cologne, Germany.
This book didn't help me at all, though. When looking in Huddleston's grammar I mostly felt that I understood less than I had already understood before. "English Grammar - An Outline" proved confusing rather than helpful.
I'm not so much complaining about what is written in this book, but how it is written and how the the matter is presented:
- too complicated
- too condensed
- too few examples
- almost no diagrams to visualize concepts/problems
- barely any tables to give a structured overview of what's being talked about
- no solutions to the exercises
- no glossary
Although I have a keen interest in grammar, grammatical theory, the English language and linguistics in general, I had to force myself to read this book - and I finally gave up. Nevertheless, I still believe that grammar - even on a theoretical/academic level - can be presented in a clear, accessible and interesting way.
Perhaps this book is best suited to feed academic debate about certain issues of English grammar - as a previous reviewer already pointed out - but certainly not "for students who may have no previous knowledge of linguistics and little familiarity with 'traditional' grammar" as the publishers suggest.
Rating: 2
Summary: Neither a learner's grammar nor a reference grammar.
Comment: This book presents a progressive model of English grammar that has many deviant features. For example, contractions such as "can't" and "shouldn't", traditionally regarded as two words, are combined into one. In other words, Huddleston treats the clitic "n't" as an inflexion. On the other hand, and equally as controversial, " 's" indicating possession is treated not as an inflexion, but rather, as a clitic.
In this book, Huddleston has created a highly fanciful, not to mention radical, model of English grammar, with scant regard for traditional grammar. As an example, Huddleston has created a hodge-podge class he calls 'determinatives' based on a very slender thread of reasoning. This "part of speech" includes words traditionally determiners, e.g., the articles 'the' and 'a', possessive adjectives, e.g., 'his', 'my', 'their', demonstrative adjectives 'this', 'those', quantitative adjectives like 'few', 'all', etc. This melting pot of words from divers classes are tenuously combined into one class.
That is not to say the book has no merits. Huddleston makes a few valuable distinctions in English grammar hitherto ignored, such as that between the form and the function of a word.
In addition, the book describes a theoretically interesting, if capricious, model of English grammar, which although in the main deserving of derision, nonetheless has some novel and practical aspects.
This book is definitely not for those who which to learn English grammar, nor is it useful as a reference grammar. Its chief use is as an abstract theoretical model to serve as a battlefield for academic and linguistic wars. It has little pedagogical value.
Rating: 3
Summary: Difficult but educative
Comment: This book is difficult to read. The material is on a high level. And it is very theoretic. However, you'll learn some important linguistic consepts and some information is indeed indespensible.
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