Phonetic symbols are used only occasionally in this book, where they are needed to illustrate a grammatical point or rule. We have tried to use a system of transcription which is not biased towards a particular kind of speech, but this is not easy since British and American English (the two national varieties we are mainly dealing with) differ more in pronunciation than in any other respect. To make things simple, we consider only one accent from each national variety: Received Pronunciation (or RP), which is commonly used as a standard accent for the learning of British English pronunciation, and General American pronunciation (GA), which has a somewhat comparable status in the United States of America.
However, considering the limited use we make of phonetic symbols, other standardized varieties of speech (e.g. for Australian English) are also reasonably well represented. Phonetic symbols, where they occur, will be enclosed in slant lines, for example: /θ/, /aʊ/, /mΛst/. We use the double bar (||) to separate RP and GA pronunciations, as in for clerk.
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Note
Corresponding to the <RP> diphthongs are the <GA> r-coloured diphthongs which may be transcribed: Similarly, corresponding to the <RP> long vowel /jk/ is the r-coloured vowel which may be transcribed: e.g. for bird.
Geographical and national varieties: <AmE> and <BrE>
English is spoken as a first language by almost four hundred million people: in the United States of America, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the Caribbean, and other places. This means there is a great abundance of English dialectal variation throughout the world. But when we come to the study of grammar in standard varieties of English, the differences are small. Within each English-speaking country there are many differences of regional dialect, e.g.
between the English spoken in the Southern States of the USA and in other parts of the same country. These differences rarely affect grammatical usage in written English or in standardized spoken English, and so we ignore them in this book.
Since the varieties of English used in the United States and in Britain are the most important in terms of population and use throughout the world, the only national varieties we shall distinguish in this book are American English <AmE>
and British English <BrE>. The grammatical differences between these two varieties (in comparison with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary) are not very great, and are almost negligible in <formal, written> usage. However, some brief examples here will show the kinds of difference which exist between <AmE>
and <BrE>, and which will be pointed out in Parts Two and Three.
• Article usage: <AmE>, but not <BrE>, tends to use the definite article with university and hospital (see 475):
<AmE>: Our daughter is at the university.
<BrE>: Our daughter is at university.
<AmE>: I’ve got to go to the hospital for an operation.
<BrE>: I’ve got to go to hospital for an operation.
• got/gotten: <AmE> has two past participle forms of get: gotten and got, whereas <BrE> has only one: got (see 559). The past tense is got in both varieties. For example:
<AmE>: Have you gotten/got the theater tickets?
<BrE>: Have you got the theatre tickets?
• Simple past and present perfect: There is also a tendency to use the simple past tense in <AmE> where the present perfect is used in <BrE>, for example, with yet or already (see 125, Note a):
<AmE>: Did you eat breakfast already?
<BrE or AmE>: Have you eaten breakfast already?
• Subjunctive: The use of the subjunctive is more common in <AmE> than in
<BrE> after verbs like demand, require, insist and suggest, after adjectives like important and necessary, and after nouns like demand and requirement. In
<BrE> should + infinitive is usually preferred (see 706):
<typical of AmE>: The press suggested that Burt be dropped from the team.
<typical of BrE>: The press suggested that Burt should be dropped from the team.
• different from/than/to: The adjective different can be used with from in both varieties, but different than is mostly <AmE> and different to uniquely <BrE>:
<BrE & AmE>: He’s just different from everybody else.
<AmE>: He’s just different than everybody else.
<BrE>: He’s just different to everybody else.
• from … through, from … to: There are some other differences in prepositional usage, such as the use of from X through Y in <AmE> to clarify that a period includes both X and Y (see 163):
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<AmE>: The tour lasted from July through August.
<BrE>: The tour lasted from July to August (inclusive). [In <BrE> the word inclusive is sometimes added to make clear that the period includes the last-mentioned period, here August.]
On other differences see the listing in the index under <AmE> and <BrE>.