Chambers Adult Learners' Writing Guide is aimed at adults who are seeking to gain confidence in their writing skills. The book is spaciously laid out using a two-colour text with plentiful examples and exercises to reinforce key learning points. A simple and practical approach provides users with an understanding of the basic concepts and requirements of any writing task. The book also demonstrates how to negotiate real-world situations such as filling in forms or making an official complaint.

ABOUT THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE: UPDATED FOR PRESENT-DAY USE "The ancients wrote at a time when the great art of writing badly had not yet been invented. In those days to write at all meant to write well." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. I was originally born in Ohio.... Well, that's interesting, I thought, as I absentmindedly listened to the sports announcer on the radio. Wait STOP "I was ORIGINALLY BORN IN OHIO..."? Well, gosh. Where were you born after THAT? Then there are the baseball commentators who routinely say things like: "If he makes that play, the run may not have scored." Well, again, wait just a minute. "If he MAKES that play...." But the play is already over. Why is the sentence in the present tense? ..".The run may not have scored." But it DID score, so in this case, the proper word is "might," "MIGHT not have scored." A baseball announcer with any feeling for elementary good grammar would have said: "If he had made that play, the run might not have scored." Oh, and then there are little niceties like this: "If I'm the Dallas Cowboys, I gotta believe...." But you AREN'T the Dallas Cowboys, and besides, how could one person be an entire football organization? Okay, okay, sports broadcasters are easy to pick on (though one wonders why sports announcers, who are paid to speak, can't speak clearly, grammatically, and well). The problem is -- and it's the problem squarely confronted in this book -- that such loose, breezy, and ungrammatical language is epidemic in print, too. Newspapers and magazines are full of cliches and buzzwords, and there's not one writer in ten who understands that difference between "lay" and "lie." If you have a friend who goes duck hunting, and s/he gives you a bunch of down, you might want to LAY the down on your mattress. Similarly, you LAY turf in the yard, or LAY bricks in the patio. But when you take to your bed for a nap, you LIE down. (The issue is clarified in this book.) Language, whether spoken or written, is like a game, and like all games, it has rules. Now, "rules" does not have to be a scary word, and we all know that in language, the rules are constantly changing. "Ain't" was once a fairly common, and unremarkable, word, but nowadays, the President cannot use "ain't" in a State of the Union address; that's just the way the game is currently played. Furthermore, we judge language, whether spoken or written, by how well it accomplishes its ends within the agreed-upon rules. (On the subject of games without rules, Robert Frost said, apropos free verse: "I would as soon play tennis with the net down.") There are many rules, formal and informal, and many little distinctions, to be learned, in language, and the author considers it fun, rather than a chore, to learn them. What is the difference between "loath" and "loathe"? When do we use "who," and when do we use "whom"? What is a gerund, what is apposition? These, and many other niceties of language, are investigated and explained in this updating of William Strunk, Jr.'s classic work. The book is based on Strunk's original text of 1918, which he wrote for the use of his students at Cornell University; it proved to be a landmark. The book was revised and expanded by E.B. White, of New Yorker fame, in 1959, but it has had no significant update since 1979. And since that time, many little affronts (for some of us, insults) to the eye and ear have gotten into the language. So here is a new edition of Strunk's classic work, with many of his rules and pronouncements expanded and explained; with new sections on proper usage and correct spelling; and even a "Rogue's Gallery" comprised of samples of egregious writing culled from current newspapers and magazines. For anyone who will reflect on it, language is an ongoing, fascinating adventure. The author intends this book to make that adventure more rewarding, and more enjoyable. Oh. The difference between "dryer" and "drier"? That, like so much else, is in the bo

How often teachers of speech must long to discover some fresh exercises - here is a book of exercises which have been proved in the author's classes.

The Routledge Student Guide to English Usage is an invaluable A-Z guide to the appropriate use of English in academic contexts. The first part of the book covers approximately 4000 carefully selected words, focusing on groups of confusable words that sound alike, look alike or are frequently mixed up. The authors help to solve academic dilemmas, such as correct usage of the apostrophe and the crucial difference between infer and imply. Examples of good usage are drawn from corpora such as the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The second part covers the key characteristics of formal English in a substantial reference section, comprising: * stylistic features * punctuation * English grammar * the use of numbers * email writing. This is the essential reference text for all students working on improving their academic writing skills. Visit the companion website for a range of supporting exercises: www.routledge.com/cw/clark.

Linguists have standardly assumed that grammar is about identifying all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, which implies that there must be other, 'bad' sentences - but in practice most linguists know that it is hard to pin those down. The standard assumption is no more than an assumption. A century ago, grammarians did not think about their subject that way, and our book shows that the older idea was right: linguists can and should dispense with the concept 'starred sentence'. We draw on corpus data in order to support a different model of grammar, in which individuals refine positive grammatical habits to greater or lesser extents in diverse and unpredictable directions, but nothing is ever ruled out. Languages are not merely alternative methods of verbalizing universal logical forms. We use empirical evidence to shed light on the routes by which school-age children gradually expand their battery of grammatical resources, which turn out to be sometimes counter-intuitive. Our rejection of the 'starred sentence' concept has attracted considerable discussion, and we summarize the reactions and respond to our critics. The contrasting models of grammar described in this book entail contrasting pictures of human nature; our closing chapter shows that grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension.

Linguists have standardly assumed that grammar is about identifying all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, which implies that there must be other, 'bad' sentences- but in practice most linguists know that it is hard to pin those down. The standard assumption is no more than an assumption. A century ago, grammarians did not think about their subject that way, and our book shows that the older idea was right: linguists can and should dispense with the concept 'starred sentence'. We draw on corpus data in order to support a different model of grammar, in which individuals refine positive grammatical habits to greater or lesser extents in diverse and unpredictable directions, but nothing is ever ruled out. Languages are not merely alternative methods of verbalizing universal logical forms. We use empirical evidence to shed light on the routes by which school-age children gradually expand their battery of grammatical resources, which turn out to be sometimes counter-intuitive. Our rejection of the 'starred sentence' concept has attracted considerable discussion, and we summarize the reactions and respond to our critics. The contrasting models of grammar described in this book entail contrasting pictures of human nature; our closing chapter shows that grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension.

A Reference Grammar of Chinese is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the linguistic structure of Chinese, covering all of the important linguistic features of the language and incorporating insights gained from research in Chinese linguistics over the past thirty years. With contributions from twenty-two leading Chinese linguists, this authoritative guide uses large-scale corpora to provide authentic examples based on actual language use. The accompanying online example databases ensure that a wide range of exemplars are readily available and also allow for new usages to be updated. This design offers a new paradigm for a reference grammar where generalizations can be cross-checked with additional examples and also provide resources for both linguistic studies and language learning. Featuring bilingual term lists, this reference grammar helps readers to access relevant literature in both English and Chinese and is an invaluable reference for learners, teachers and researchers in Chinese linguistics and language processing.

Contemporary Japanese is a textbook series for beginning students of Japanese at the college or high school level. It is intended for classroom use as well as self-study. Each lesson in the books is very short--meant to be covered in just an hour--and has a single, clearly-defined objective. All lessons make use of the "active discovery" approach which encourages rapid learning through "guess and try" problem-solving and participation as opposed to rote memorization. This highly effective method uses real-life conversations that make learning fun by involving you in a conversation with your peers. It also removes the fear of saying something wrong! This book, the second volume in the series, contains 45 short lessons grouped into 12 chapters--each of which presents a wide variety of activities and exercises and yet is designed to be covered in a single session. This "daily multivitamin" approach to language learning makes it easy to track your progress and to review later! Free online audio files can be downloaded, providing native speaker recordings and giving correct pronunciations for the dialogs and vocabulary in each lesson. In this book you'll learn more about: Kanji and their meanings Japanese verb forms Comparison and stating preferences Using common set phrases and making requests Evaluating facts and expressing opinions Sightseeing, food cravings and tastes Insights into Japanese culture Accompanying the textbook is Contemporary Japanese Workbook Volume 2--it serves as a supplementary material as well as a standalone comprehensive workbook for practicing and reviewing the language.

Guide for Grammar, Voice, and Sentence Structure "If you're going to have one grammar book on your shelf, make it this one!" -Dani Alcorn, COO at Writing Academy and cofounder of Writer's Secret Sauce #1 New Release in Writing, Research & Publishing Guides, Composition and Language, Grammar Reference, Semantics, Vocabulary Books, Study & Teaching Reference, Reading Skills, and editing Comma Sense by Ellen Feld is a style guide for all things grammar. Learn the rules of adverbs, punctuation, abbreviations, prepositions, and much more. Feld shows you how to write technically, professionally, and personally. Grammar for everyone. Master English grammar with Ellen Feld. Comma Sense goes above and beyond the average grammar book. Professional writers, students, novices, and experts can benefit from learning or relearning the basics of grammar and beyond: em dashes, parentheticals and parallelism, diction and logic, run-on sentences and sentence fragments, and more. Become a master of capitalization and punctuation, subjects and predicates, and contractions and possessives. Test Your Knowledge. After every chapter, take a quiz to practice your new grammatical skills in this great grammar workbook. At the end of the book, a comprehensive test allows you to utilize all you have learned. Inside, you'll find: The basics of grammar and beyond Tips for better writing Terrific supplementary resources Readers who enjoyed The Elements of Style; Actually, the Comma Goes Here; The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation; or The Perfect English Grammar Workbook will love Comma Sense: A Guide to Grammar Victory. Workbook will love Comma Sense: Your Guide to Grammar Victory.

This volume contains papers presented at a workshop held at the 18th annual meeting of Deutsche Gesellschaft fA1/4r Sprachwissenschaft in 1996. The articles contained in this volume focus on the lexical vs. functional categoryhood of prepositional elements, their syntactic and semantic properties (also with respect to grammaticalization), aspects of automatic language processing and the meanings of prepositional elements in cognitive linguistics.

Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.

Recent developments in generative grammar have been very stimulating. The current theory defines a small set of principles that apply to all human languages. Efforts have been made to demonstrate the adequacy of this theory for a wide range of languages. We thus see an interesting interface of theory and empirical data: the study of natural languages contributes to defining the properties of Universal Grammar and the predictions of the theory help in uncovering generalizations regarding natural languages. This book aims to add to this exciting development by showing how the analysis of Mandarin Chinese constituent structures helps to define Case Theory and how interesting generalizations concerning Chinese grammar are uncovered through verification of the theoretical predictions. Starting from the inadequacy of work by Koopman, Li, and Travis on the effect of Case directionality on word order, the book shows that a detailed study of Chinese constituent structures allows us to reduce the phrase structure component to a minimal statement concerning the position of the head in a given phrase. It argues that in a given language the constituent structures can be adequately captured by the interaction of Case Theory, Theta Theory, Government Theory, and X Theory. Long standing controversies concerning Chinese basic word order are resolved by showing that underlying word order generalizations can differ from surface word order generalizations."

The compendium offers an up-to-date picture of international research on language didactics. The aim is to re-examine the importance of grammar in the university training of future teachers by confronting established assumptions about working with grammar and language instruction in primary schools with newer concepts emerging from linguistic research.

In diesem Sammelband finden sich Beitrage, die aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven einen funktionalen Sprachbeschreibungs- und -vermittlungsansatz diskutieren. So werden im ersten Teil an Beispielen der deutschen und russischen Sprache theoretische Fragen des feldergrammatischen Konzepts behandelt. Ausgewahlte grammatische Themen, Einzelfelder und Textsorten stehen im Mittelpunkt des zweiten Teils, wobei die Blickrichtung komplementar ist. Es werden grammatische Einzelerscheinungen strukturell-formal und semantisch-pragmatisch beschrieben, zugleich wird ihrem Vorkommen in Textsorten und ihren textuellen Leistungen nachgespurt. Textsorten bilden aber auch den Untersuchungsausgangspunkt, um charakteristische Textfunktionen wie Sprachhandlungen und entsprechende Verbalisierungsmuster deutlich zu machen. Den Moeglichkeiten des feldergrammatischen Ansatzes als Konzeptbaustein fur einen handlungs- und lernerorientierten Fremdsprachenunterricht widmen sich die Beitrage des dritten Teils.

This book explores nominal dislocations in simultaneous bilingual French and German language acquisition in early childhood. The study shows that this process involves a grammatical area that is not vulnerable to language influence. In addition, empirical analyses provide evidence that postverbal, non-resumptive subjects are dissociated elements in French as spoken by children.

The volume contains a selection of papers given at a workshop organized in 1994 on major lexical categories. The seven articles in this volume take a variety of viewpoints concerning problems of distinguishing major categories in general, as well as problems in connection with specific categories, namely nouns, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

An enjoyable and effective way to learn Japanese kanji! This useful reference book helps self-study and classroom students remember the meanings and pronunciations of 520 essential kanji. An otherwise daunting task, memorization is made easier with this book--which uses mnemonic techniques based on the psychology of learning and memory. Key principles include the use of visual imagery, the visualization of short "stories," and the systematic building-block approach that shows how more complicated characters are constructed from basic elements. This is a practical guide with a clear, concise, and appealing layout; it is well-indexed with easy look-up methods. The kanji in this volume give you the majority of characters you will encounter in daily life, from newspapers to street signs. It also includes the kanji required for the AP Japanese exam and N4 & N5 JLPT tests. Accompanying online audio provides recordings by native Japanese speakers to perfect your pronunciation.