The Oxford
nglish
Grammar
SIDNEY GREENBAUM
In memoriam
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Sidney Greenbaum 1996
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First published by Oxford University Press 1996
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teaching, research, and writing. I have taught English language in a range of
institutions and to different age-groups: at primary schools, at a secondary
(grammar) school, at a college of further education, and at universities. My
university teaching has encompassed a British university, universities in the
United States, and a university in a country where English is a foreign language.
I have been in English language research for over thirty years, and have directed
a research unit (the Survey of English Usage) for the last twelve years. My books
have ranged over various types of writing: monographs, reference works
(including co-authorship of the standard reference grammar of English),
textbooks, and books addressed to the general public.
Numerous citations appear in this book. Many them come from American
and British newspapers, magazines, and books. Most are taken from two
sources: (the British million-word component of the International
Corpus of English, drawing on language used in the period 1990-3) and the
Wall Street Journal (about three million words from this American newspaper
for 1989, provided in a CD-ROM by the Association for Computational
Linguistics Data Collection Initiative).
ICE-GB was tagged and parsed with the assistance of programs devised by
the TOSCA Research Group (University of Nijmegen) under the direction of
Professor Ian Aarts. ICE-GB was compiled and computerized, with extensive
mark-up, by researchers at the Survey of English Usage, who also undertook
substantial manual work on the outputs of the TOSCA programs as well as
manual pre-editing for parsing. The following Survey researchers were involved
in the creation of ICE-GB or in the subsequent grammatical processing: Judith
Broadbent, Justin Buckley, Yanka Gavin, Marie Gibney, Mortelmans, Gerald
Nelson, Ni Yibin, Andrew Oonagh Sayce, Laura Tollfree, Ian Warner,
PREFACE
I am especially grateful to Gerald Nelson for overseeing the
compilation of and the grammatical processing. He is also responsible
for drawing up the annotated list of sources for ICE-GB texts in the Appendix.

Sounds and Tunes
11 Punctuation
12 Spelling
x
xi
xiii
xiv
1
21
39
88
203
305
363
394
435
477
503
556
Notes
Appendix: Sources of Citations in ICE-GB
Glossary
Index
577
601
615
637
of Tables
Table 4.18.1 Classes of irregular verbs 127
Table 4.34.1 Primary pronouns 166

complements: Sentence [17] 319
Figure 6.4.11 Four to-infinitive clauses in asyndetic co-ordination:
Sentence [18] 320
Figure 9.2.1 Structure of a complex word 440
Figure 10.6.1 Vowel chart 486
Pronunciation Table
Consonants
voiceless
P
t
k
f
e
voiced
b
d
g
V
5
z
3
Vowels
a
a:
£
a: (RP)
3(GA)
i:
pen
top

(RP)
e:
(GA)
so (RP) o: (GA)
(RP) (GA)
(RP) (GA)
(RP) (GA)
(RP) (GA)
she
chip
he
man
n
ring
leg
red
we
yes
ago
my
how
day
no
hair (RP) (GA)
near (RP) near (GA)
boy
(RP) (GA)
tire (RP) tire (GA)
(RP) (GA)
The pronunciation symbols follow those used in The New Shorter Oxford

V verb
() comment or explanation after citation; optional letter(s) or word(s)
[ ] comment or explanation within citation; phonetic transcription
/ / phonemic transcription (cf. 9.36)
{} morphemic transcription (cf. 9.38); alternatives, e.g.:
a piece of 1 bread
a bit of / information
Explanations of
Corpora Citations
All citations preserve the original wording. If anything is omitted (to avoid
irrelevant distractions), the omission is indicated by [...].
A few citations come from the American component of ICE (International
Corpus of English). They are cited by references beginning and
are direct (face-to-face) conversations.
Citations from the Wall Street Journal are for issues published in 1989.
References consist of three sets of digits, for example 890929-0070-49. The first
set indicates the date by year, month, and day; the second set is the identity
number for the item; the third set identifies the sentence.
Citations for the British component of ICE, are for language used
during the years 1990-3. Pauses are indicated by <,>, a short pause (the
equivalent of a single syllable uttered at the speaker's tempo), and by <„>, a long
pause (the equivalent of two or more syllables uttered at the speaker's tempo).
Citation references for ICE-GB begin (spoken texts) or 'W (written
texts). The major divisions within these two categories are:
S1A
S2
S2A
S2B
W1A
W1B

SlB-046-63. The first set is the major category, in this instance a public dialogue
the second set is for the identity number of the text, which in this instance
is a broadcast interview (in the to the third set is
for the number of the text unit. The basic unit for reference in each text is the text
unit. In written texts, the text unit corresponds to the orthographic sentence. In
spoken texts, it is the approximate equivalent of the orthographic sentence,
though there may be more than one equivalent in writing and sometimes a
spoken text unit is grammatically incomplete.
A list of the sources of all texts, including any subtexts, in ICE-GB appears in
the Appendix at the end of the book.
Chapter 1
The English Language
Summary
English throughout the world (1.1-6)
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.7
1.8
English internationally 3
The spread of English in the British
Isles 4
The spread of English In other first-
language countries 6
The standard language (1.7-10)
Standard English 14
Variation In standard English 15
1.4
1.5
1.6

and discriminatory language.
English throughout the
World
1.1
English
internationally
The geographical spread of English is unique among the languages of the
world, not only in our time but throughout history. English is the majority
first language in twenty-three countries. It is an official language or a joint
official language in about fifty other countries, where it is used in addition to
the indigenous first languages for a variety of public and personal functions. It
is also used as a second language, though without official status, in countries
such as Bangladesh and Malaysia. Countries where English is a first or second
language are located in all five continents. The total population of these
countries amounts to around 2.5 billion, about 49 per cent of the world's
population. Where English is a first or second language, it is used internally for
communication between nationals of the same country. In addition, English
is used extensively as a foreign language for international communication by
people who do not ordinarily employ it when speaking or writing to their
compatriots.1
The number of first-language speakers of English has been estimated at
well over 300 million, of whom over 216 million live in the United States. The
United Kingdom has about 53 million, Canada over million, and Australia
about 14 million. Countries where English is a majority first language may
have large percentages of bilingual speakers and speakers for whom English is
a second language. For example, Canada has a large minority of unilingual
French speakers (nearly 17 per cent) as well as an almost equal percentage of
speakers who are bilingual in French and English.
Most countries with second-language speakers of English are former
British colonies, such as India and Nigeria. English has been retained as an

millions follow the BBC English lessons on radio and television. 'Follow Me',
the BBC English 60-programme course for beginners, produced
in 1979 with a consortium of European television stations, has been shown in
over 80 countries. It attracted vast audiences in countries throughout the
world in the 1980s, and in China alone it had an estimated audience of over 50
million. Over half a million visitors, mostly from the European continent,
currently visit the United Kingdom each year to study English as a foreign
language. A poll conducted in December showed that English is the most
popular language in the European Union (then called the European
Community) among young people (aged 15 to 24), and while 34 per cent of
that age group spoke English in 1987 the figure in 1990 had risen to 42 per
cent. A European Commission report for 1991-2 showed that 83 per cent of
secondary school students in the European Union were learning English as a
second language, compared with just 32 per cent learning French, the nearest
competitor.
1.2
The spread of
English in the
British Isles
From the middle of the fifth century and for the next hundred years, waves of
invading tribes from the European Saxons, Jutes, and
their Germanic dialects to Britain, settling in the country
and driving the Celtic-speaking Britons westward to Wales and Cornwall.
Isolated from other Germanic speakers, the settlers came to acknowledge their
dialects as belonging to a separate common language that they called English.2
Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, from
which have and its Romance derivatives,
Greek, Celtic, and Sanskrit. The Germanic dialects of the settlers belonged to
West Germanic, the parent language also of modern German, Dutch, Flemish,
ENGLISH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

common derivation from Old English. By the middle of the sixteenth century
Scots was becoming influenced by English in word forms and spellings, a
process encouraged by the use of English Bibles in Scotland in the absence of
a Scots Bible. When James VI of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in
to become James I of England, combining the thrones of the two kingdoms,
there was a quickening of the pace of adoption of English in Scotland for
writing and by the gentry for speech. The final blow to Scots as the standard
dialect of Scotland was the Act of Union in 1707, when the two kingdoms were
formally united. Despite attempts at reviving Scots, it remains restricted
mainly to literary uses and to some rural speech. It has, however, influenced
Scottish English, the standard variety of English in Scotland. About 80,000
people speak Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language that is confined to the West
Highlands and the Western Isles of Scotland, but nearly all of them are
bilingual in Gaelic and English.
Wales was England's first colony. It was ruled from England as a
[ principality from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and was
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
incorporated into England by the Acts of Union of 1535 and 1543, which
promoted the use of English for official purposes. The standard variety of
English in Wales is thought to be identical with that in England. There are,
however, distinctive Welsh English accents. According to a 1991 census, over
half a million inhabitants of Wales above the age of 3 (19 per cent) speak
Welsh, a Celtic language, most of whom are bilingual in Welsh and English.
As a result of current education policies, the number of Welsh speakers among
the young is now increasing.
English was permanently introduced into Ireland when the Normans
invaded the country during the twelfth century and settled French and English
speakers in the eastern coastal region, though many of their descendants
adopted Irish (or Irish Gaelic), the Celtic language of the native inhabitants.
In the sixteenth century the Tudor monarchs began a policy of bringing to

were swelled enormously by waves of immigration and even when the
newcomers brought another language their descendants generally spoke
ENGLISH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 7
English as their first language. All the major countries outside the British Isles
where English is the dominant language have succeeded in assimilating
linguistically their immigrants from non-English-speaking countries: the
United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The permanent English settlements were established in the New
World, beginning with the founding of Jamestown in 1607. The colonial
period came to an end when the American colonies rejected British rule in the
War of Independence (1776-83). Both before and after their independence,
the Americans acquired territories that were occupied by speakers of other
languages, Dutch, French, and Spanish. These have
influenced American English, together with the languages of immigrants in
German and Yiddish. It is estimated that over 27
million United States residents speak a language other than English at home,
about half of whom use Spanish. Every year over half a million new
immigrants enter the United States, most of them from non-English-speaking
countries and most of them Spanish speakers.
Political independence of the United States led to
and hence to the growth of a separate standard
American English that no longer looked to Britain for its norms. Though
regional differences in pronunciation are conspicuous, American English is
more homogeneous than British English in vocabulary and grammar, because
of its shorter history and because of past migrations across the American
continent and present easy mobility. As a result, dialect differences have not
had as great an opportunity to become established and there has been much
mixing of regional dialects. Black English, originally restricted regionally as
well as ethnically, is used by most black speakers in a range of standard and
non-standard varieties.5

Of the countries where English is primarily a second language, South Africa
has the largest number of people who speak English as their first
over 1,800,000. At the time of writing there are eleven official languages:
English and Afrikaans, a language related to Dutch, and nine African
languages. Dutch settlements began in the Cape in 1652 and were well-
established when the British arrived in and then annexed the Cape in
1814. Many of the Dutch-speaking Boers soon moved away to establish their
own republics, but after two wars won by the British the Boer republics were
absorbed in the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a dominion of the British
Empire. In 1931 South Africa became an independent country within the
British Commonwealth and in a republic outside the Commonwealth. It
has recently rejoined the Commonwealth. Blacks, who constitute the majority
of the population (about 70 per cent), speak a variety of indigenous languages.
White first-language speakers of English, mainly of British descent, number
about 1,120,000. The Indian community (about 400,000) are first-language
speakers, as are increasing numbers of the ethnically mixed coloureds, who
have been shifting their language loyalty from Afrikaans to English. In
addition, about 1,750,000 Afrikaners and 5,500,000 blacks are bilingual in
English. Afrikaans is associated with the ideology of apartheid, and therefore
English is more popular in the non-Afrikaner population. In the absence of a
common indigenous language, English is likely to survive the recent political
and social changes in South Africa, at least as a second language.
English first came to South Asia (the Indian subcontinent) through trade.
In Elizabeth I granted a charter to some London merchants giving them
a monopoly on trade with India and the East. The East India Company
gradually gained control over most of India, but in it was replaced by
direct British rule. English was first introduced through Christian missionary
schools, and its study was then encouraged by those Indian scholars that saw it
as a means of gaining access to Western culture and science. In 1835 Lord
Macaulay produced an official Minute that favoured English as the medium of

3,000 daily newspapers in English.
English and French are official languages in Mauritius, a small island in the
Indian Ocean. At one time a French colony, it was a British colony from 1810
until it gained its independence in 1968.
Three former British colonies or protectorates are located in South East
Asia: Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore. Brunei was a British protectorate from
1888 until its independence in 1984, and it has retained English as a joint
official language with Malay. Britain competed for control over Malaysia from
the sixteenth century onwards, formally incorporated parts into the British
Colony of the Straits Settlements in 1826, and established protectorates over
other parts in the late nineteenth century. Malaya gained its independence in
1957 and, after other countries joined it, the federation of states became the
Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Singapore left the Federation in 1965 to
become an independent city state. English is no longer an official language in
Malaysia, though it is a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools
and is used in the media and in higher education. English remains an official
language in Singapore (jointly with Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil),
used extensively both internally and externally for business. The Philippines,
also located in South East Asia, became an American colony in and a self-
governing commonwealth in 1935. The country gained independence from
the United States in English remains an official language, jointly with
Filipino, but its functions are becoming restricted.
10
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The joint official languages in the British colony of Hong Kong, located in
East Asia, are English and Cantonese, though only a minority of the
population use English. Hong Kong Island was ceded by China to Britain in
1842, and the mainland New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898. Hong
Kong is due to be returned to China in 1997, but its importance as a centre for
international trade is likely to ensure the survival of English in its business

Isles: Malta (jointly with Maltese) and Gibraltar. The Republic of Malta, which
comprises several islands in the Mediterranean Sea, was a British colony from
and became an independent republic in 1974. The British colony of
Gibraltar, a peninsula on the south-west coast of Spain, was ceded by Spain to
Britain in Spain claims sovereignty, but Gibraltarians generally prefer to
remain British or to become an independent territory within the European
Community.
ENGLISH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 11
1.5
English pidgins
and Creoles
Pidgins are languages that are not acquired as mother tongues and that are
used for a restricted set of communicative functions. They are formed from a
languages and have a limited vocabulary and a simplified grammar.
Pidgins serve as a means of communication between speakers of mutually
unintelligible languages and may become essential in multilingual areas. A
Creole develops from a pidgin when the pidgin becomes the mother tongue of
the community. To cope with the consequent expansion of communicative
functions, the vocabulary is increased and the grammar is elaborated.
There are about thirty-five English-based pidgins and Creoles, English-
based because they draw heavily on English vocabulary.6 They can be divided
into Atlantic and Pacific varieties. The Atlantic varieties are linked to West
African languages. They were established in West Africa and also developed in
the Caribbean as a result of the slave trade when slaves speaking different West
African languages were deliberately mixed on the transport ships and in the
Caribbean plantations to reduce the risk of rebellions. The Pacific varieties
developed later, mainly in the nineteenth century, and continue to flourish in
Hawaii, Papua New Guinea (where the pidgin is called Tok Pisin), and other
Pacific islands.
A pidgin may be creolized, becoming a mother tongue for some of its

resources it deploys for scientific and technological progress. The United
States remains by far the richest country in the world as measured by gross
domestic product, which amounted in to 5,905 billion dollars, compared
with 3,508 billion for Japan, its nearest rival.8
In developing countries, English is regarded as the language of
modernization and technological advancement. Most of the world's scientific
and technical journals are in English. It is commonly required for
international trade and at international conferences, and is the
medium for communication at sea and in the air. Television programmes in
English are viewed in many countries where English is a foreign language, and
when demonstrators wish to achieve the maximum international impact they
chant and display their slogans in English.9
The English taught to foreign learners is generally British or American
English in their standard varieties. Except for pronunciation the differences
between the two are relatively minor, as indeed they are between the standard
varieties in any of the countries where English is the majority first language.
The mass media are ensuring, if anything, the smoothing of differences and
are encouraging reciprocal influences, though the influence of American
English is predominant. Despite some trivial variation in spelling and
punctuation, and some more important variation in vocabulary, the standard
first-language varieties of written English are remarkably homogeneous.
Predictions that they will diverge to become mutually unintelligible are
implausible. It is reasonable to speak of an international standard written
English. It is also reasonable to speak of an international standard spoken
English if we limit ourselves to the more formal levels and if we ignore
pronunciation differences. Even pronunciation of course
exist within each national not constitute a major obstacle, once
speakers have tuned into each other's system of pronunciation.
The situation in countries where English is primarily a second language is
fluid and varies. In the past these countries have looked to British or American