Hardcover, Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

Rating:
Summary: Not recommended: just statistical/frequency data
Review: If you are a teacher, student or a writer seeking guidance, this is not the book which I would suggest, as it's really not prescriptive at all. It's chock full of frequency data wrt various grammatical constructs. It's like reading the census data, if you know what I mean. You'll be left out in netherspace, to basically extract the rules by yourself. Would much rather suggest using your hard earned dollar to buy the "Comprehensive Grammar ..." by Quirk to get some real guidelines. However, if you like statistics, buy this book, you'll love it ...

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is an excellent descriptive grammar of the English language. A few months ago I compared several English grammars side-by-side, and this was one of the top two, the other being Quirk et al.'s far more [costly]work. In general, every construction is discussed in terms of a grammatical analysis (theory-neutral), quantitative analysis, and a functional analysis of the quantitative results. I've found the functional descriptions to be especially helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is an excellent descriptive grammar of the English language. A few months ago I compared several English grammars side-by-side, and this was one of the top two, the other being Quirk et al.'s far more [costly]work. In general, every construction is discussed in terms of a grammatical analysis (theory-neutral), quantitative analysis, and a functional analysis of the quantitative results. I've found the functional descriptions to be especially helpful.

Rating:
Summary: The English Language Redefined
Review: This work redefines the English language. Working with a corpus of more than 40 million words, the authors conform every important grammatical point of the English language with its frequency in British and American speaking and writing. As a professional language tester, one of my greatest problems is the validation of my products. While I design products that withstand validation scrutiny, I have to admit, until now much of my success has been based on intuition rather than science. The LCSWE will be a tremendous boon to my work, as it should be to the work of professional English language testers the world over.

Rating:
Summary: The English Language Redefined
Review: This work redefines the English language. Working with a corpus of more than 40 million words, the authors conform every important grammatical point of the English language with its frequency in British and American speaking and writing. As a professional language tester, one of my greatest problems is the validation of my products. While I design products that withstand validation scrutiny, I have to admit, until now much of my success has been based on intuition rather than science. The LCSWE will be a tremendous boon to my work, as it should be to the work of professional English language testers the world over.