English Grammar By Bas Aarts: Oxford Modern

Eleanor laughed. It was a rusty, surprised sound. All evening, they talked about aspect versus tense , the rise of the get -passive (“The window got broken”), and the curious life of the singular they .

Dr. Eleanor Marsh, a retired editor whose pulse still quickened at a misplaced apostrophe, had just received two gifts. One was a bottle of expensive Chianti. The other was a brand-new copy of Oxford Modern English Grammar by Bas Aarts. oxford modern english grammar by bas aarts

Tom grinned. “See, Aunt Ellie, that’s a ‘prescriptive rule.’ Bas Aarts would say my sentence is fine. ‘Me’ in subject coordination is common in informal English.” Eleanor laughed

By dessert, she opened her own copy. “He writes that modal verbs are ‘defective’ because they lack non-finite forms,” she said, almost happily. The other was a brand-new copy of Oxford

She opened the wine first, then the book. “Descriptive, not prescriptive,” she murmured, reading the preface. “Grammar as it is , not as it should be.” She found this both liberating and deeply unsettling.