Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing

Grammatical Complexity in Academic English challenges stereotypes and assumptions about linguistics, demonstrating that embedded phrasal structures and dependent clauses are essential, and that grammatical change occurs in writing and speech. It establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed, often not explicit in expressing meaning, and has been the locus of significant grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 291 pages
\n Publication date: 21 March 2019
\n Publisher: Cambridge University Press
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Grammatical Complexity in Academic English delves into corpus-based analyses to challenge prevailing stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics. Biber and Gray explore the essence of grammatical complexity, highlighting the significance of embedded phrasal structures alongside embedded dependent clauses. The authors also upend ingrained notions about linguistic change, demonstrating that grammatical evolution transpires in both written and spoken forms. Through their comprehensive exploration, the authors establish that academic writing exhibits structural compression rather than elaboration, often lacking explicit expression of meaning. Moreover, scientific academic writing has emerged as a focal point for significant grammatical transformations in English over the past two centuries. This groundbreaking work is a must-read for discourse analysts, sociolinguists, applied linguists, descriptive linguists, and historical linguists, providing robust textual evidence to support its insights.

\n Weight: 430g\n
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 14 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781108712958\n \n