Concise Encyclopaedia of Grammatical Categories

Complementing Brown & Miller's recent Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories (1996), to which this is a companion volume, this encyclopedia is a collection of articles drawn from the highly successful Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. It presents a collection of 79 articles, all of which have been revised and updated. It also provides a number of newly commissioned articles, one of which has been substantially updated and extended. The volume is alphabetically organised and includes an introduction and a glossary. The Concise Encyclopedia of Grammatical Categories will provide a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of the building blocks of syntax: word classes, sentence/clause types, functional categories of the noun and verb, anaphora and pronominalisation, transitivity, topicalisation and work order.

Professor Nigel Vincent, The University of Manchester
Like the companion Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories, the Concise Encyclopedia of Grammatical Categories is a lucid and informative collection of articles, many of them written by leading scholars in the field. It not only provides an excellent introduction for the beginning or for the interested outsider, but is full of original and thought provoking insights that will stimulate even seasoned researchers in the field. I particularly like the way many of the entries range widely over a number of different languages, and thus reveal the richness and variety of the grammatical structures attested in the languages of the world and integrate them into a general picture of the phenomenon in question. Very valuable too are the detailed and up-to-date bibliographies that accompany each article. This is a must for every departmental and reference library.