Academic English Grammar: For Intermediate and Advanced Learners

Sharifzadeh, Ahmad

Academic English Grammar:

For Intermediate and Advanced Learners

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahmad Sharifzadeh

2019


To

My most beloved, Fatemeh


About the book

When we are talking about a language, we are talking about the four skills -- listening or better to say watching, reading, writing, and speaking -- the first two of which are receptive skills and the second two are productive skills along with the two language components (i.e., grammar and vocabulary). This book, dedicated to language components (lexicon & grammar), has a different look at grammar.

Although theoretically grammar and lexicon are distinct components of languages, they are in practice interwoven to a great extent so that applying grammatical rules depends on the type of words used in a sentence and in a broader context. Their inextricable dependency on each other forced the author to take account of them both in this single volume.

In the author’s view, grammar is the same as a map (plan) in carpet weaving, which makes it possible to put the linguistic knots (i.e., words) at the intersection of the weft (syntagmatic axis) and the wrap (paradigmatic axis) syntagmatically and paradigmatically so that the intended meaning is conveyed verbally or in a written form. Grammar (or better to say, syntax) lets us both produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences which are correct syntactically using a limited number of grammatical (syntactic) rules. Keep in mind that although sentences might be correct grammatically, they might be semantically or pragmatically incorrect.

Any language is the interface between syntax [1] , semantics [2] , and pragmatics [3] . Taking into account the fact that the readers of the book are familiar with the rudimentary concepts, this book aimed at familiarizing them with the more complicated aspects, especially those confronted in the academic and advanced texts and contexts.