English Grammar Writing

Abstract

This chapter charts the history of English grammar writing from the first published grammar of 1586 up to the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The first section covers the period up to the latter part of the nineteenth century, embracing grammars for English as a foreign language as well as key writers such as John Wallis and Lindley Murray. The second section covers the so-called “European scholarly tradition” of Henry Sweet and the following generation of linguists, several of whom were the first professors of English in their home countries. The following section turns to the United States and structuralist and generative studies of English grammar. The final section completes the story, considering the major “families” of both printed and online grammatical works. A red thread running through the chapter is the question of how and why particular approaches to grammar become “successful.”

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