The Cassell Dictionary of English Grammar 1st paperback edition

Published in hardback in 1996, Aitchison’s comprehensive guide to how certain features of the English language function in writing and speech is a tour de force. Since the Latin‐based, prescriptive, (and largely inappropriate) model of English grammar began to be jettisoned in the 1950s, the sheer diversity of new, descriptive approaches and new disciplines has created confusion and contradiction, even in well‐versed academic minds. New terminology, too often ill defined, tantalises and ensnares student and teacher alike. Grammar today is, in effect, several grammars, that is, a number of grammatical theories, systems and terminologies, some of which contradict others....