Acknowledgements

A grammar takes shape over a long period of time, evolving in version after version an author's ideas must be challenged repeatedly for the work to develop it is a process which does not end with publication, for, of course, a grammar can never be complete or completed

I have been privileged to have the many versions of my manuscript read over a period of years by one of the foremost grammarians of our time R A Close His detailed comments have helped me to shape my ideas and realize my aims I owe him a debt of gratitude that cannot be measured I am equally indebted to my editorial and research assistant, Penelope Parfitt, for her invaluable commentaries and for the arduous compilation of lists

I would also like to thank Philip Tregidgo and Bill Lillie for sharing with me some of their original insights into the workings of English My particular thanks are due to Michael Palmer whose vigorous and incisive commentary helped me to cut the manuscript down to an acceptable length

Only a comparison of the successive drafts of this work with the final text could reveal how great is my debt to these commentators - though they certainly will not agree with many of the decisions I have made¹ take full responsibility for the book that has finally emerged and lay sole claim to its imperfections

A grammar taxes the resources of a publisher as much as it strains the abilities of an author I would like to thank my publishers for their faith and unstinted support while the work was in progress Specifically, my thanks are due to my publisher, Michael Johnson, for his constructive advice and for the exercise of his formidable managerial skills, to Paul Price-Smith for designing the work with such zest and imagination, to Joy Marshall for her superlative editing and amazingly retentive memory, to Tina Saunders and Joy Cash for photocopying, collating and dispatching recurring mountains of paper, to Ken Moore of the computer department and Clive McKeough of the production department for resolving the innumerable technical problems involved in computer-setting from disks

Constantly rather than finally, I depend on the patient support of my wife, Julia, who shared with me not only her own acute linguistic insights, but beyond that, the exhilaration and despair which such work inevitably brings

L G A

VI

Introduction