内容简介
The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English is an entirely new grammar of American and British English-from the language of conversation to the language of academic textbooks. There are no made-up examples in this groundbreaking new-gramar. The authors began. not with preconceived notions of the grmmar of English. but with a huge bank of language data, the Longman Corpus Network.
A six-year research project brought together the linguistic expertise of an intenational author team-all acknowledged experts in the field of corpus linguistics and grammar.
The result of this research is the present volume. Many points of traditional grammar are confirmed. but now on the basis of much larger amounts of statistical data than ever before. Some aspects of traditional grammar are challenged by this book, and some new findings. not even suspected before now, will surprise and interest the reader.
What makes this book so special is that it turns English inside out. Professor Douglas Biber''s research team tagged and parsed the structures in the Corpus. This analysis revealed the degree to which different grammatical features of language vary according to the type of language. The way language is used in conversation is quite different from the waylanguage is used in fiction, which in turn isoften very different from the grammatical characteristics of newspapers or academic books.
Entirely corpus-based grammar of English
Over 350 tables and graphs showing the frequency of constructions across different registers, from conversation to fiction to academic prose
6,000 authentic examples from the Longman Corpus Network
British English and American English grammar compared
New and challenging findings
Reveals the differences between spoden and written English .