This book is based primarily on material that I presented to high school English teachers participating in an eight-week NDEA Institute held at The Ohio State University during the summer of 1968. The limitations on the scope of this book are therefore explained in part by the limitations on what can be accomplished in thirty fifty-minute lectures, although considerable material that was not presented in those classes has been added. Like the course at the Institute, this book is designed to provide an appreciation of the structure and complexity of the English language, not a systematic description of that structure, or even of a small part of it. In addition, it is meant to provide an awareness of the various theoretical issues concerning the nature of language that are being debated
among grammarians today. The study of grammar, and particularly the study of English grammar, is once again a vigorous and flourishing discipline on university campuses, and, for the first time, in governmental and industrial research centers.