Adventures in English Syntax

For anyone who wants to become a more effective writer, a more perceptive reader, and a more precise thinker, an understanding of English sentence structure is indispensable. This book shows you how to begin. Using clear and engaging examples from English, it introduces the basic concepts of syntactic structure to readers with no background in linguistics. Starting with simple, familiar phrases, and progressing to more complex sentences, it builds on what we already intuitively know, to provide a step-by-step account of why we understand these examples as we do. It then shows how that understanding can be applied to writing, helping us to avoid some of the common hallmarks of 'bad writing', such as ambiguity, redundancy, and vagueness. A unique and valuable resource, this book will enrich your understanding of English in ways that will make you a more effective user of the language. Publisher's note: The e-book edition of this title, like the print editions, contains color. For those e-reader devices and applications that cannot display color, the color material is available in pdf format as an online resource: www.cambridge.org/Freidin

1. One fish two fish: an adventure in ambiguity; 2. Exceptional students and teachers; 3. Introduction to language and linguistics; 4. A review of a book by two philosophers; 5. Bob is certain to succeed; 6. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife; 7. Does every politician who cheats instinctively lie?; 8. Inferior defenses could then, as now, be tackled, as Vernon did at Porto Bello, Exmouth at Algiers, and Seymour at Alexandria; Concluding comment.

Robert Freidin is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University, New Jersey and author of Syntax: Basic Concepts and Applications (Cambridge, 2012).