Oxford Modern English Grammar

Really handy educational book, very good reference book, great value for money.

I never know English grammar can be dissected so organized and systematical. This book is surely not for a non native English speaker of level far from advance. In the book, very often, it will use just few sentences to explain some very important grammar usage and one also needs to be very careful in understanding the various terminologies used in order to follow the explanations and usage. I believe it will take me many years before I can assimilate most of the materials in the book.

Perfect

Brilliant source of knowledge, but also very difficult. Make sure you will first get basic knowledge about grammar before move to this one.

I'm learning a lot. Very concise.

Fully met my expectations. I like the layout as well as the indexing. It is also comprehensive and covers every aspect of English grammar.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the positive side, Aarts makes it clear from the outset that he is describing English grammar as it is used, not telling us what we SHOULD say or write. For example, he quite rightly dismisses the claim that we should not split infinitives. (I’ve always thought that the famous Star Trek split infinitive is a good way of accentuating the word “boldly” in “to boldly go…”) He also shows that what is acceptable changes over time. For example, it is now perfectly OK to use “they” instead of having to write “he or she”. I’ve also learned some things. For example, pronouns are apparently no longer classed as a separate part of speech (word class). They are now a sub-group of the class of nouns. (Hmm…) But on the bad side, there is the complex JARGON. Some parts of the book are clearly written, but much of it is very difficult. Here, for example, is the beginning of the section on “Determinatives”: “Words belonging to the class determinatives function as the Heads of determinative phrases (DPs) which in turn principally function as Determiners inside noun phrases (see Chapter 5 for examples of DPs performing other functions).” (Hmm…) It’s been said that we only really start to understand the grammatical structures of our own language when we study a foreign language. That’s certainly true in my case. I did French, German and Latin A Levels over fifty years ago, and I’ve now been studying Italian for twenty years. That is certainly what led me to understand what the subjunctive is in English, for example. But it has also led me to object to some of the terminology used today in books like this one. For me, “I have been to the shop” will always be the PERFECT tense (a PAST tense), not the “PRESENT perfect”, as it is described today. Similarly, I prefer the terms imperfect and pluperfect tense rather than “past continuous/progressive” and “past perfect”. My main disagreement with Aarts, though, is over the subjunctive. He is in the vanguard of those who say that there is no longer a subjunctive mood in English. He admits only that there are “subjunctive clauses” and “relics” of the old subjunctive. I can’t go along with this. It’s true that the English subjunctive is a shadow of its former self, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still in use. He even gives examples himself, but then discounts them from being proper subjunctives. For example, “I urged in my previous letter that these research staff BE treated…” Overall, this book can be a useful reference to dip into in relation to purely GRAMMATICAL points – if you can fight your way through the jungle of jargon. But for general English USAGE, I would recommend the recent edition of “Fowler’s Modern English Usage” by Jeremy Butterfield, a gem which I have also reviewed here on Amazon.

I bought this for my Polish daughter-in-law whose English is very good but who still has problems with the finer points (esp. the article and the continuous tense), so she's delighted to be able to perfect her grasp of English grammar by using this excellent book.

Thanks

Excellent book to start with

An excellent electronic copy of this popular Oxford Modern English Dictionary. Great search functions with Amazon's free Kindle app for both Apple and Android smartphones and Ipads. The explanations are great. Worth every penny.

This book is perfect. Learning grammar isn't funny for foreigners, but this book makes it quite easy to understand the English grammar and helps a lot to feel more secure... It seems to be "complete", which means that the authors didn't forget anything according to the explanations. I don't use the book to learn actively, I use it to look something up whenever I'm not sure how to use a tense or a form... and it works perfectly. I highly recommend it to all of you!

Me ha gustado la forma innovadora, clara y sencilla en que se ejemplifica cada punto gramatical tratado.