American English Official Grammar Reference Book

[John Dunn]

One thing that I thought odd about the original request was the preference for the word 'goverment' in the title.  I know that for some languages there are more or less official bodies that exist to determine matters of terminology, but I don't think I have ever seen a reference grammar of any language that bore a government imprimatur.  In the case of Russian 'Nauka' has, to the best of my knowledge, published over gthe years three reference grammars, all of them with different merits and drawbacks,  but is any of them 'official'? And that is leaving aside the question whether 'Nauka''s scholarly respectability rested on the fact that the Academy of Sciences was among the least 'governmental' of Soviet institutions.  

It does, though, occur to me that I once had in my possession a textbook of elementary arithmetic produced by the U.S. government for the benefit of servicemen in World War II.  Could it be something like that (not necessarily elementary) that the enquirer had in mind?

John Dunn. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Hoffman <lino59 at AMERITECH.NET>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:41:13 -0800
Subject: [SEELANGS] American English Official Grammar Reference Book

What is superficial, uninsightful, and obvious to the native speaker may be less so to a non-native seeking an authorative reference to replace the native speaker's intuition or feel. I expect the asker will be the one to determine whether this resource meets his particular needs.
   

John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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