The new edition of the bestselling textbook on the linguistic study of English grammar, helping students understand and question assumptions and beliefs about every day English use
Navigating English Grammar presents an engaging and insightful introduction to the linguistic study of the structure of English. Lobeck and Denham’s inquiry-based approach encourages students to discover the fundamentals of the structure of English by investigating their own intuitive knowledge of the language. This popular textbook proficiently equips students with a practical set of tools to analyze English in all its forms.
By exploring how English varies from community to community, and how English has changed over time, students find that English, like any other language, is a dynamic system, and that attitudes about language are based on social perceptions rather than linguistic fact. In this fully revised and updated second edition of Navigating English Grammar, student-friendly chapters with examples taken from diverse varieties of American English illustrate the grammatical concepts of a living language, whose “rules” are decided by language users instead of language authorities. Accessible to any reader regardless of background in language and linguistics, this important textbook features:
- Entirely revised chapters on clauses, subordination and coordination, and modification
- Basic phrase structure rules and tree diagrams to provide accessible graphic representations of language structure
- Updated language examples drawn from varieties of American English that illustrate English as a dynamic system that changes over space and time
- Revisions and updates to all chapters to demonstrate basic grammatical concepts from different varieties of English and include new exercises, text excerpts, and boxes
Assuming no prior familiarity with the linguistic study of English grammar, Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language, Second Edition is an excellent textbook for undergraduate courses in English grammar and related courses in English linguistics, second language acquisition, and language education programs. It is also a valuable resource for students studying the linguistics of other languages who want to improve their understanding of grammar.
