Errors and corrections

Sorry, sorry, sorry . . ! Even grammarians are merely human, and thus imperfect. There are errors in the first printing of our book. The six we know about in the first edition are shown in the table below. We'd be most grateful if other corrections discovered could be emailed to <gpullum @ ling.ed.ac.uk> and <rdnhuddleston @ gmail.com>.

Page

Error and correction

We give the wrong numbers in the text discussion that follows example [52]. We should have referred to [ia], [iia], and [iiia]. So we should have written this:

In [ia], I may not know that he overslept, but I'm inferring that he did. In [iia], I don't know that she's ill, but I also don't know that she isn't, and I'm allowing it as a possibility. In [iiia], I don't know how long the storm will last, but the probability or expectation is that it will be over soon.

In exercise 9, items iii and iv should be in the left-hand column, with vi and vii moving to the right. So it should have looked like this:

i. appear vi save

ii. consider vii send

iii. judge viii show

iv. keep ix turn

v. promise x wish

At the third bullet in section 6, this sentence needs an addition:

Those in [iii] do not require the presence of a determiner: they occur, for example, with proper nouns, as in even Kim, Julia herself, etc.

The revised sentence should be:

Those in [iii] (three adverbs and a reflexive pronoun) do not require the presence of a determiner: they occur, for example, with proper nouns, as in even Kim, Julia herself, etc.

That change makes it clear how to answer question [xiv] in exercise 5 on page 111.

147

Strictly, question iv of exercise 1 is not answerable at this stage because it demands a knowledge of Chapter 14. (The right answer concerning the category of the complement of in as used in "My life might have been passed in ease and luxury" is that it is a coordination.) We did not intend to make the exercises for chapter 7 depend on knowledge of chapter 14. So in future editions of the book we propose to replace this sentence by a different one:

I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.

(The preposition to should be double-underlined here; your browser probably will not show that.) Please answer the question for that example instead.

238

The numbers in the table of contents for chapter 15 are all wrong — they're off by 7 for some peculuar reason (possibly sunspots). Here are the corrections:

Introduction starts on page 238 (not 245);
Passive clauses starts on page 240 (not 247);
Extraposition starts on page 247 (not 254);
Existential clauses starts on page 249 (not 256);
The it-cleft construction starts on page 251 (not 258);
Pseudoclefts is on page 254 (not 261);
Dislocation is on page 255 (not 262);
Preposing and postposing starts on page 256 (not 263);
Reduction starts on page 258 (not 265).

303

The glossary entry for Non-finite clause gives having written it as an example of a non-finite clause headed by a past participle. This is misleading: it's true that there is a past-participial clause in there: written it is a past participial clause. But having written it has the verb having as its head, and so it is a gerund-participial clause. We should have underlined written it. It is not very easy to find simple examples of past participial clauses that have subjects; an example of one would be the underlined part of this sentence: The letter written, we turned to the question of when it should be sent out. But the change we propose to make to the text of the book is simpler: we plan to replace having written it by written by my grandmother. That is a subjectless past participial clause. So the entry should have read like this:

Non-finite clause. Subordinate clause headed by gerund-participle (his writing it), past participle (written by my grandmother), or plain form in the infinitival construction (to write it).

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Brett Reynolds for his eagle eye and his helpful correspondence.