For a grammar guide, the book has seen stratospheric success. But among academic linguists, Gwynne’s Grammar gets a very different kind of reception. Nevile Gwynne’s little book is just about the worst I have ever seen on the topic of English grammar, Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist at the University of Edinburgh, told me by e-mail. From a scholarly perspective, the view of English set forth in Gwynne’s Grammar is hopelessly out of fashion; it’s long been recognized that language is culturally contingent and constantly evolving, rather than being a strict, logical system that can be frozen in its 16th-century state, as Gwynne would have it.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:48:44 +0000
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