Bent Preisler

Mastering english: An advanced grammar for non-native and native speak

Abstract Mastering English is an advanced descriptive grammar of English, intended as a textbook for native and non-native students in university and other tertiary education. It is also a reference book for professional linguists and teachers of English, treating specific topics separately and exhaustively, with explicit attention to controversial issues. Methodologically it is eclectic, being mainly influenced by British Structuralism, other obvious sources being Generative Grammar, semantico-pragmatic Functionalism and ‘Traditional’ (‘Notional’) Grammar. Though structured according to grammatical form, the description alsofocuses on function — syntactic, semantic and pragmatic — the general concern being how to represent the relationship between form and function most appropriately at all constituent levels in English. The data derive from a number of sources as well as from introspection, i.e. the description is not corpusdriven.