Foreword

The book A Grammar of the English Language has enjoyed sev­eral editions and has been widely used for teaching grammar at many universities and pedagogical institutes of the former USSR, and later Russia. The book was written by seven authors, one of whom was my mother — Elena Vasiliyevna Prokofiyeva, who died very early in her life. It is to her memory that I would like, first of all, to dedicate my revision of this book. I also wish to express my esteem and accountability to the other authors concerned in its original conception.

I feel it is my duty and responsibility to help this book continue its life, for it can rightly be called one of the best textbooks in grammar ever written for students. In a very compact and logical form it provides a profound and detailed description of the grammatical system of the English language.

The object of this book is to give a course in English grammar to students specializing in the English language.

The book includes Accidence, i. e. the parts of speech and mor­phological categories, and Syntax, i. e. the sentence and the parts of the sentence. The rules are illustrated by examples taken from English and American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. Some examples from modern dictionaries are also included in this edition.

Exercises on all topics covered in the manual are published in a separate volume, arranged in accordance with the chapters of the present book.

In the course of the years that have passed since the book was written, some changes have taken place in the English language. These concern, for example, the usage of the auxiliary verbs shall and will, the usage of the auxiliary verb do with the notional verb have, the shades in the meaning of some modal verbs, the use of some pronouns, etc. Changes in termi­nology have also occurred, for example, the term 'phrasal verbs' is by far more frequent than the term 'composite verbs' and 'exclamation mark' is used instead of'exclamation note'. And, it goes without saying, that there have been changes in the theory of the language.

I did not consider it my purpose to introduce considerable changes to the book. My basic objective was to bring it up to date by making necessary amendments. These tend to reflect the changes in the lan­guage rather than in the concept of syntax, which basically remains intact in this edition.

Elizaveta V. Ivanova

Introduction