2002 compendium on the English language
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 and has been cited more than 7,000 times.[1]
History
Huddleston published a very critical review of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language in 1988.[2] In his review, he wrote,
there are some respects in which it is seriously flawed and disappointing. A number of quite basic categories and concepts do not seem to have been thought through with sufficient care; this results in a remarkable amount of unclarity and inconsistency in the analysis, and in the organization of the grammar.[2]
The University of Queensland provided a special projects grant to launch the project in 1989, when Huddleston began work on CGEL. From 1989 to 1995, "workshops were held regularly in Brisbane and Sydney to develop ideas for the framework and content of the grammar".[2] Pullum joined the project in 1995[3] after Huddleston "bemoaned the problems he was having in maintaining the momentum of this huge project, at that time already five years underway".[4]
In 2005, a shorter, simpler companion volume called A student's introduction to English grammar was published. The second edition came out in 2022.[5]
Contributors
Huddleston is the sole author on seven of the chapters and co-author on the other 13. Pullum is co-author on six chapters. The following are the authors in alphabetical order.
Other collaborators
Board of consultants
Barry Blake, Bernard Comrie, Greville Corbett, Edward Finegan, John Lyons, Peter Matthews, Keith Mitchell, Frank Palmer, John Payne, Neil Smith, Roland Sussex, and the late James D. McCawley.
Reviews
- Aarts, Bas. (2004). Grammatici certant. Journal of Linguistics, 40, 365–382.
- Culicover, Peter W. (2004). "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (review)". Language, 80 (1), 127–141.
- Griffiths, Eric. (2002). "Review: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K Pullum". The Guardian.[1]
- Leech, Geoffrey. (2004). A new Gray's Anatomy of English grammar. English Language and Linguistics, 8 (1), 121–147.
It also won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award of the Linguistic Society of America in 2004.[6]
