''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

. Its primary authors are

Rodney Huddleston Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of '' The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a com ...

and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was published by

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

in 2002 and has been cited more than 7,000 times.

History

Huddleston published a very critical review of ''

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' is a descriptive grammar of English written by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. It was first published by Longman in 1985. In 1991 it was called "The greate ...

'' in 1988. 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.

The

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

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". Pullum joined the project in 1995 after Huddleston "bemoaned the problems he was having in maintaining the momentum of this huge project, at that time already five years underway". In 2005, a shorter, simpler companion volume called ''A student's introduction to English grammar'' was published. The second edition came out in 2022.

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. *

Laurie Bauer Laurence James Bauer (born 9 August 1949) is a British linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is known for his expertise on morphology and word formation. Bauer was an editor of the journal '' Wo ...

* Betty J. Birner * Ted Briscoe * Peter Collins *

* Anita Mittwoch *

Geoffrey Nunberg Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945– August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician and author. In 2001 he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to Natio ...

* John Payne * Frank Palmer * Peter Peterson * Geoffrey K. Pullum * Lesley Stirling * Gregory Ward

Other collaborators

* David Denison * David Lee

Board of consultants

Barry Blake Barry Blake, born 1937, is an Australian linguist, specializing in the description of Australian Aboriginal languages. He is a professor emeritus at La Trobe University Melbourne. Career Blake was born in the northern Melbourne suburb of Ascot V ...

Bernard Comrie Bernard Sterling Comrie, (; born 23 May 1947) is a British-born linguist. Comrie is a specialist in linguistic typology, linguistic universals and on Caucasian languages. Early life and education Comrie was born in Sunderland, England on 23 ...

, Greville Corbett, Edward Finegan, John Lyons, Peter Matthews, Keith Mitchell, Frank Palmer, John Payne, Neil Smith,

Roland Sussex Roland (Roly) Denis Sussex OAM is Emeritus Professor of Applied Language Studies at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Sussex hosts a talkback program on language and li ...

, and the late

James D. McCawley James David McCawley (March 30, 1938 – April 10, 1999) was a Scottish-American linguist. Biography McCawley was born James Quillan McCawley, Jr. to Dr. Monica Bateman McCawley (b. 1901), a physician and surgeon, and James Quillan McCawley (b. ...

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'

* 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 The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

in 2004.

References

External links

Cambridge University, Linguistics

Review by Peter W. Culicover
Cambridge University Press books English grammar books 2002 non-fiction books Leonard Bloomfield Book Award books Corpus linguistics {{Grammar-book-stub