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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work and can also be used as a textbook. Each chapter is prefaced by a list of
contents and a summary of the chapter. You may wish to read through a whole
chapter or to consult particular sections. The Glossary at the end of the book
will provide you with succinct explanations of terms that are frequently used in
the book.
In writing this book, I have drawn on my many years of experience in
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
of
them come from American
and British newspapers, magazines, and books. Most are taken from two
sources:
ICE-GB
(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

parsed corpus.
Thanks are due to a number of colleagues for their comments on one or more
draft chapters: Judith Broadbent, Justin Buckley, Alex Chengyu Fang, Gerald
Nelson, Ni Yibin, Andrew Rosta, Jan Svartvik, Vlad Zegarac. I am also grateful
to Marie Gibney for typing the drafts.
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Pronunciation Table
Abbreviations and Symbols
Explanations of Corpora Citations
1 The English Language
2 The Scope and Nature of Grammar
3
An Outline of Grammar
4 Word Classes
5 The Grammar of Phrases
6 Sentences and Clauses
7 Text
8 Words and their Meanings
9 The Formation of Words
10
Sounds and Tunes
11 Punctuation
12 Spelling
x
xi
xiii
xiv
1
21

in verbs 472
Table 10.3.1 English consonants 482
List of Figures
Figure 2.5.1 Tree diagram 30
Figure 5.2.1 Structure of a noun phrase 209
Figure 5.2.2
Premodifiers
and NP heads 210
Figure 5.2.3
Postmodifiers
and NP head:
Sentence
[3] 210
Figure 5.2.4 Postmodifiers and NP head: Sentence [4] 211
Figure 5.39.1 Structure of an adjective phrase 288
Figure 5.43.1 Structure of an adverb phrase 295
Figure 5.47.1 Structure
of
a prepositional phrase 300
Figure 6.2.1
Co-ordination
of two main clauses: Sentence
[1]
312
Figure 6.2.2 Co-ordination of three main clauses: Sentence [2] 312
Figure 6.4.1 Subordinate clause within a main clause: Sentence
[5]
316
Figure 6.4.2 Co-ordination of final subordinate clauses: Sentence [6] 316
Figure 6.4.3 Co-ordination of initial subordinate clauses: Sentence

b
d
g
V
5
z
3
d
3
Vowels
a
a:
£
a: (RP)
3(GA)
i
i:
pen
top
cat
few
thin
but
dog
get
van
this
zoo
vision
Jar

ei
(RP)
e:
(GA)
so (RP) o: (GA)
s:
is
(RP)
i
(GA)
31
ua
(RP)
o
(GA)
AI3
(RP)
Al
(GA)
aus
(RP)
au
(GA)
Sit
she
chip
he
man
n
ring

PRONUNCIATION TABLE
more detailed discussion of the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, see
10.3-8.
Syllabic consonants (consonants that constitute a syllable by themselves) are
marked by a subscript vertical line: 1,
n.
Primary stress is marked by (') before the syllable, and secondary stress by
(,)
before the syllable:
'capitalize.
See 10.10-12.
The ends of tone units are marked by vertical lines, and the nuclear syllable is in
capitals:
UnFORtunately|
I've caught a
COLD|
The direction of the tone is shown by an arrow before the nuclear syllable.
See
10.15
f.
Abbreviations and Symbols
A adverbial
GA General American
ICE-GB
British corpus of ICE (International Corpus of English)
M main clause
NP noun phrase
O
object
P predicative

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
either'S'
(spoken texts) or 'W (written
texts). The major divisions within these two categories are:
SI
S1A
SIB/
S2
S2A
S2B
Wl
W1A
W1B
W2
W2A
W2B
W2C
W2D
W2E
W2F
dialogue
private conversations
public dialogues
monologue
unscripted monologues
scripted monologues

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
1.9
1.10
The spread of English in second-
language countries 8
English pidgins and

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
17
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
official language in the majority of these countries after independence because

first or second language. It has been estimated that over
150
million children
are studying English as a foreign language in primary or secondary schools.
Many millions of foreigners listen to BBC broadcasts in English, and many
millions follow the BBC English lessons on radio and television. 'Follow Me',
the BBC English
by_Television
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
1992
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

Germanic languages.
In 1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and
became its king. The Norman conquest established a French-speaking ruling
class. French was the language of the royal court, the nobility, the church
leaders, parliament, the law courts, and the schools. Most of the population
continued to speak English, but bilingualism became common. Bilingualism
resulted in an enormous influx of French words into English. From the late
fourteenth century English displaced French for most purposes, and during
the next century a standard English language emerged to meet the needs of the
central bureaucracy, the printers, and the educators. Latin, however, was the
language of learning throughout the Middle
Ages—as
in the rest of
Europe—
and remained so in England as late as the seventeenth century.
English arrived early in Scotland. By the seventh century the northern
English kingdom of Bernicia had extended its
territory—and
its
dialect—into
what is now Southern Scotland. This dialect is the source of Scots, an ancient
dialect of English that may be viewed as parallel with Modern English in their
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
1603
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

Catholic education system in opposition to the use of Irish by Protestant
proselytizing societies. Despite attempts since independence to revive the use
of Irish in the Republic of Ireland, there are few Irish monolinguals and
perhaps only 2 per cent of the population use Irish regularly.
The United Kingdom, but particularly England, has a high proportion of
speakers of immigrant languages. A 1981 survey, covering all pupils in
primary and secondary schools under the control of the Inner London
Education Authority, found that nearly 45,000 pupils (about 14 per cent)
spoke a language at home other than English or in addition to English. The
five
most frequently reported languages, in order of frequency, were Bengali,
Turkish, Greek, Spanish, and Gujerati.
3
British-born descendants of
Caribbean immigrants, mostly from Jamaica, may speak a variety of English
(related to Jamaican Creole) that has been termed British Black
English.
4
1.3
The spread of
English in other
first-language
countries
Beginning in the early seventeenth century, the English language was
transported beyond the British Isles by traders, soldiers, and settlers. During
the next two centuries Britain acquired territories throughout the world. In
some of these territories, British settlers were sufficiently numerous to
dominate the country linguistically as well as in other respects, so that the
indigenous population came to adopt English as their first or second language.
More importantly for the future of English, the numbers of the early settlers

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
Canada became a British possession in 1763, wrested from the French.
After the American War of Independence, large numbers of loyalists settled in
Canada, followed during the next century by waves of immigrants from the
United States and the British Isles. Canada has a large minority of unilingual
French speakers (nearly 17 per cent), concentrated in the province of Quebec,
as well as an almost equal percentage of bilingual speakers in French and
English, which are the joint official languages of Canada. Virtually all
Canadians speak English or French, apart from some rural indigenous or
immigrant communities.
In
1770
Captain James Cook claimed the eastern coast of Australia for
Britain. Soon afterwards, penal colonies were established to which convicts
were transported from Britain. Until after the Second World War,
immigration from Asian countries was restricted and most immigrants were
English-speaking. Many of the Aborigines (the indigenous population before
British colonization), who number fewer than
200,000,
speak only English.
The first British settlement in New Zealand was in 1792. New Zealand
became part of New South Wales and then after 1840 a British colony in its
own right. Most settlers have been English-speaking. The indigenous Maori
language, spoken by about 300,000, has official status in the courts.

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
1600
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
1859
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
education for the elite, a policy that was adopted and put into practice by the
British administration. After the partition of British India into India and
Pakistan in
1947,
Hindi became the official language of India and English
remained as an associate official language for the country as a whole as well as
an official language in some states; in Pakistan, English is an official language

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
1898
and a self-
governing commonwealth in 1935. The country gained independence from
the United States in
1946.
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

Caribbean island of Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain to the United States in
1898 and since 1952 has been a semi-autonomous commonwealth linked to
the United States. Because of its links with the United States, many Puerto
Ricans are bilingual in Spanish and English.
English is an official language in two locations in Europe outside the British
Isles: Malta (jointly with Maltese) and Gibraltar. The Republic of Malta, which
comprises several islands in the Mediterranean Sea, was a British colony from
1802
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
1713.
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
mixtur^of
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.

12
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
1.6
English as an
international
language
The pre-eminence of English for international communication is in part
indebted to
the
spread of English (outlined in 1.3-5) as a first or second
language for internal communication in numerous countries that were once
part of the British Empire. The role of English as an international language has
gathered momentum since the end of the Second World War through the
economic and military global dominance of the United States and the
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
1992
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
official
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.

in those countries.
At present, there are no established and generally acknowledged standard
varieties in second-language countries. As a result, teachers and examiners are
uncertain as to the norms towards which teaching should be geared: those of