Collins COBUILD English Grammar

1287 Pages·2017·5.962 MB·English

by  Collins UK

(cid:862)
Copyright
Published by Collins
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Westerhill Road
Bishopbriggs
Glasgow G(cid:866)(cid:864) (cid:862)QT
Fourth Edition (cid:862)(cid:860)(cid:861)(cid:867)
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank those authors and publishers who
kindly gave permission for copyright material to be used in
the Collins Corpus. We would also like to thank Times
Newspapers Ltd for providing valuable data.
FOUND)NG ED)TOR-)N-C()EF: John Sinclair
FOR T(E PUBL)S(ER: Maree Airlie, Robin Scrimgeour, Lisa Todd,
Celia Wigley
CONTR)BUTORS: Penny (ands, Kate Mohideen, Julie Moore,
Damian Williams
Acknowledgements
The publishers would like to acknowledge the following for
their invaluable contribution to the third edition:
Managing Editor
Penny (ands
Editorial Consultant
Roger Berry
Lingnan University, (ong Kong
Project Manager
Senior Corpus Researcher
Lisa Sutherland
Kate Wild
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The Grammar of Academic English
Corpus Researchers
University of Glasgow Language Centre
George Davidson
Dr Esther Daborn
Kate Mohideen
Anneli Williams
Elizabeth Potter
Louis (arrison
Elspeth Summers

Laura Wedgeworth
The Grammar of Business English
American English Consultant
Simon Clarke
Orin (argraves
Founding Editor-in-Chief
John Sinclair
We would also like to thank the following people for their
contributions to previous editions of the text:
Maree Airlie, Mona Baker, (enri Béjoint, Adriana Bolívar,
Jane Bradbury, David Brazil, Dominic Bree, Nicholas
Brownlees, Tony Buckby, Stephen Bullon, Annette Capel,
Michela Clari, Jane Cullen, John Curtin, Richard Fay, Gwyneth
Fox, Richard Francis, )ria Garcia, Gottfried Graustein, John
(cid:866)
(all, M.A.K. (alliday, Patrick (anks, Ron (ardie, Anthony
(arvey, Lorna (easlip, Michael (oey, Roger (unt, Sue
)nkster, Andy Kennedy, Lorna Knight, Ramesh
Krishnamurthy, Tim Lane, Marcel Lemmens, (elen Liebeck,
Alison Macaulay, Elizabeth Manning, Agnes Molnar,
Rosamund Moon, Sue Ogden, Charles Owen, Georgina
Pearce, Georgina Pert, Anne Pradeilles, Christopher Pratt,
Christina Rammell, Clare Ramsey, Ramiro Restrepo,
Christopher Royal-Dawson, Toňi Sanchez, Katy Shaw, Sue
Smith, Mary Snell-(ornby, Tom Stableford, John Todd, Bob
Walker, Laura Wedgeworth, (erman Wekker, Douglas
Williamson, Jane Winn, Deborah Yuill
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About COBU)LD
When the first COBU)LD dictionary was published in (cid:861)(cid:869)(cid:868)(cid:867),
it revolutionized dictionaries for learners. )t was the first of
a new generation of language reference materials that
were based on actual evidence of how English was used,
rather than lexicographer intuition.
Collins and the University of Birmingham, led by the
linguist John Sinclair, developed an electronic corpus in the
(cid:861)(cid:869)(cid:868)(cid:860)s, called the Collins Birmingham University
)nternational Language Database (cid:523)COBU)LD(cid:524). This corpus,
which for several years was known as the Bank of English®,
became the largest collection of English data in the world.
COBU)LD dictionary editors use the corpus to analyse the
way that people really use the language.
The Collins Corpus now contains (cid:864).(cid:865) billion words taken
from websites, newspapers, magazines and books
published around the world, and from spoken material
from radio, TV and everyday conversations. New data is
added to the corpus every month, to help COBU)LD
editors identify new words, grammatical structures, and
meanings from the moment they are first used.
All COBU)LD language reference books are based on the
information our editors find in the Collins Corpus. Because
the corpus is so large, our editors can look at lots of
examples of how people really use the language. The data
tells us how the language is used; the function of different
structures; which words are used together; and how often
these words and structures are used.
All of the examples in COBU)LD language materials are
examples of real English, taken from the corpus. The
examples have been carefully chosen to demonstrate
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typical grammatical patterns, typical vocabulary and
typical contexts.
COBU)LD English Grammar is no exception: Collins
editors and researchers have been able to use this wealth
of information to establish a unique and full description of
English grammar, and to track the development of certain
grammatical structures over time.
The corpus lies at the heart of COBU)LD, and you can be
confident that COBU)LD will show you what you need to
know to be able to communicate easily and accurately in
English.
)f you would like to learn more about COBU)LD and the
Collins Corpus, go to www.collinselt.com and click on
'COBU)LD Reference'.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
About Cobuild
)ntroduction
(ow to use this Grammar
Glossary of grammatical terms
Chapter (cid:861) Referring to people and things
Nouns
• Countable nouns
• Uncountable nouns
• Singular nouns
• Plural nouns
• Collective nouns
• Proper nouns
• Nouns that are rarely used alone
• Adjectives used as nouns
• Nouns referring to males or females
• -ing nouns
• Compound nouns
Pronouns
• Personal pronouns
• Possessive pronouns
• Reflexive pronouns
• Generic pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• )ndefinite pronouns
• Reciprocal pronouns
• Relative pronouns
• )nterrogative pronouns
Determiners
• Definite determiners: the
• Definite determiners: this, that, these and those
• Possessive determiners: my, your, their, etc.
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• The possessive form: apostrophe s (cid:523)(cid:495)s(cid:524)
• )ndefinite determiners: all, some, many etc.
• )ndefinite determiners: a and an
• Other indefinite determiners
Chapter (cid:862) Giving information about people
and things
Adjectives
• Qualitative adjectives
• Classifying adjectives
• Colour adjectives
• Showing strong feelings
• Postdeterminers
• Adjectives that are only used in front of a noun
• Adjectives that always follow a linking verb
• Position of adjectives in noun phrases
• -ing adjectives
• -ed adjectives
• Compound adjectives
Comparatives
Superlatives
Saying things are similar
Talking about different amounts of a quality
Saying things are different
Noun modifiers
Talking about amounts of things
Numbers
• Cardinal numbers
• Ordinal numbers
• Fractions
• Measurements
• Age
Approximate amounts and measurements
Expanding the noun phrase
• with prepositional phrases
• with adjectives
• Nouns followed by to-infinitive, -ed participle, or -ing participle
Chapter (cid:863) Types of verb
)ntransitive verbs
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