Synopses & Reviews
This new updated third edition confirms Professor Leech's pre-eminence in the field. The book is still the clearest and most authoritative statement of meaning in the verb phrase, and the revised extended treatment of modality and mood constitutes a new standard for English language study. The writing is clear, precise and combines complexity with accessibility. Descriptive linguists, applied linguists, critical discourse analysts, teachers and students of the English language across the world will continue to reach for this book again and again.
Professor Peter Stockwell, University of Nottingham
This new edition, taking into account recent studies on English grammar, is elaborately organized with lucid and insightful descriptions of the relationship between form and meaning - indispensably valuable work that will no doubt greatly benefit teachers and students of English as a second/foreign language. Professor Miyazaki Akio, Mie University, Japan
Every language has its peculiar problems of meaning for the foreign learner. In the English language, some of the biggest yet most fascinating problems are concentrated in the area of the finite verb phrase: in particular, tense, aspect, mood and modality.
Meaning and the English Verb describes these fields in detail for teachers and advanced students of English as a foreign or second language. This new third edition uses up-to-date examples to show differences and similarities between American and British english, reflecting a great deal of recent research in this area. It also takes account of the subtle changes which are taking place in the language today.
In print for over 30 years, Meaning and the English Verb has established itself as a recognised authority on the meaning and use of verb constructions in English. This updated third edition will ensure that it remains an invaluable text for teachers and students of English worldwide.
Geoffrey Leech is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at Lancaster University. He has published 20 books with Longman, including 'A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry' and 'A Communicative Grammar of English'.
Synopsis
A practical rather than a theoretical approach to 'trouble-spots' of the English language for foreign learners.
- Throughly updated with new examples.
About the Author
Geoffrey Leech was Professor of Linguistics and Modern English Language at Lancaster University from 1974 to 1996. He then became Research Professor in English Linguistics. He has been Emeritus Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University, since 2002.
He has written, co-authored or co-edited 25 books in the areas of English grammar, literary stylistics, semantics, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics and pragmatics. They include:
English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain (1966); A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969); Meaning and the English Verb (1971, 2nd ed. 1987, 3rd ed. in preparation); A Communicative Grammar of English (with J. Svartvik) (1975, 2nd edn. 1994, 3rd edn. 2002); Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose (with M. Short) (1981); Principles of Pragmatics (1983); A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (with R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum and J. Svartvik) (1985); Spoken English on Computer: Transcription, Mark-up and Application (ed. with G. Myers and J. Thomas) (1995); Corpus Annotation: Linguistic Information from Computer Text Corpora (ed. with R. Garside and T. McEnery) (1997); Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (with D. Biber, S. Johansson, S. Conrad and E. Finegan) (1999); Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus (with P. Rayson and A. Wilson) (2001); Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (with D. Biber and S. Conrad) (2002)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Key to Sumbols
Preface to Third Edition
Introduction
1. Simple Present and Past Tenses
2. Progressive Aspect
3. The Expression of Past Time
4. The Expression of Future Time
5. The Primary Modal Auxillaries
6. Modality Continued
7. Indirect Speech
8. Mood: Theoretical and Hypothetical Meaning
Further Reading
Index