Re: off topic: Grammar Question

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Carlo Caballero wrote:
> ...< amatter of convention, and you'd need to have
> recourse to scholarly work on English syntax (by linguists like Chomsky or Algeo, rather than stylists like Fowler or Bernstein) to get an answer as to whether some "rules" underlying that convention have been deduced.>>
Another good source for this would probably be Jespersen's monumental
A Modern English Grammar ("grammar" in the wider sense; he also
covers syntax and idiom). There's a copy in the NYPL reading room (or
was last time I looked) and I should not think much of any university
library that lacked it. And thank you, Carl, for recalling Quirk; heavy
terminology, but every science needs its terms of art, and he does
classify things (sometimes to a fare-thee-well, but who am I to complain?)
Patricia
>