The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
I was reading this on the train up to Providence, and back. I figure that in about eight pretty solid hours of reading I managed to get almost all the way through…two chapters. And I used to pride myself on being a fast reader. I was never bored, but man is that a dense book. And at over 1700 pages, I suspect that Huddleston and Pullum are quite correct in supposing that not many people are going to sit down and read it cover to cover. Maybe if we ever actually launch a manned voyage to Mars…
I’m not sure that I can summarize it. In fact, I’m sure that I can’t. But I can relate one or two things that were new to me, and struck me as highly interesting:
I’m quite impressed with the simplification of lexical verbs into six inflectional forms: preterite, present 3d singular, present plain, plain form, gerund-participle, and past participle.
What syncretism has joined, let no fossilized paradigm put asunder!
Also, the classification of former contractions as negative forms of auxiliary verbs was novel to me, but makes sense. When I described this to some of my friends they were skeptical (except about “won’t” because of the obvious shift), but came around when presented with the non-expandable examples such as “Don’t you think that it’s true?” or “Can’t you see her?”
In general, I really liked the approach that they take, explaining in detail exactly what considerations led them to the decisions that they made, and giving copious examples. The writing, while dense, and often technical, is quite clear and I appreciate the flashes of humor. If only it weren’t such a workout to lug it around, I probably would make the attempt to read it cover to cover.