Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The first published English grammar was a Pamphlet for Grammar of 1586, written by William Bullokar with the stated goal of demonstrating that English was just as rule-based as Latin. Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modeled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), used in English schools at that time, having been ...
Its use often conveys lighthearted informality in which many speakers intentionally use a dialect or colloquial construction they would probably not use in formal written English. The colloquial usage is widely understood by British speakers. Similarly, stood may be used instead of standing. To Americans and still to many Britons, those usages ...
A method of language teaching characterized by translation and the study of grammar rules. Involves presentation of grammatical rules, vocabulary lists, and translation. Emphasizes knowledge and use of language rules rather than communicative competence. This method of language teaching was popular in the 20th century until the early 1960s.
In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, generational, or other), difference between the social norms of spoken ...
An opinion piece excerpted from his book Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English. Grammar Puss Archived 2014-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, by Steven Pinker (1994). Argues against prescriptive rules. A revised draft of this article became the chapter "The Language Mavens" in The Language Instinct
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also ...
/ "Inflammable" can only mean "not flammable." The word "inflammable" can be derived by two different constructions, both following standard rules of English grammar: appending the suffix -able to the word inflame creates a word meaning "able to be inflamed", while adding the prefix in-to the word flammable creates a word meaning "not flammable".
When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People: How to Avoid Common Errors in English by Ann Batko; Plain Style by Christopher Lasch; Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage by Merriam-Webster; Usage and Abusage by Eric Partridge; The New Fowler's Modern English Usage by R. W. Burchfield; The King's English by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler