Speakers of British and American English display some striking differences in their use of grammar. In this detailed survey, John Algeo considers questions such as: •Who lives on a street, and who lives in a street? •Who takes a bath, and who has a bath? •Who says Neither do I, and who says Nor do I? •After 'thank you', who says Not at all and who says You're welcome? •Whose team are on the ball, and whose team isn't? Containing extensive quotations from real-life English on both sides of the Atlantic, collected over the past twenty years, this is a clear and highly organized guide to the differences - and the similarities - between the grammar of British and American speakers. Written for those with no prior knowledge of linguistics, it shows how these grammatical differences are linked mainly to particular words, and provides an accessible account of contemporary English in use.
• Not written in formal ‘grammar book language’; instead it gives extensive examples of actual contemporary English in use • Statistics are provided to give actual evidence of usage, rather than relying on speaker intuitions • Provides a highly organized and specific presentation of the facts
Contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Parts of Speech: 1. Verbs; 2. Determiners; 3. Nouns; 4. Pronouns; 5. Adjectives; 6. Adverbs; 7. Qualifiers; 8. Prepositions; 9. Conjunctions; 10. Interjections; Part II. Syntactic Constructions: 11. Complementation; 12. Mandative constructions; 13. Expanded predicates; 14. Concord; 15. Propredicates; 16. Tag questions; 17. Miscellaneous; Bibliography of British book citation sources; Bibliography of studies, dictionaries and corpora; Index of words.
Review
'… no other book covers quite the same ground. It will be useful for lexicographers, translators, editors, and material writers, as well as linguists and researchers. Not least, it will provide many ideas for students who are beginning research into the varieties …' Journal of English Linguistics
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