Functional Grammar and Spoken and Written Communication in English is specially designed for use as a textbook in the first year of the undergraduate degree programmes offered by the University of Kerala. The book s content has been developed according to the prescribed syllabus, and the topics for study as well as the exercises have been chosen with the aim of helping students prepare to take the examination at the end of the course. The larger objective of the book, however, is to equip undergraduate students with a comprehensive understanding of the important aspects of English, which will allow them to communicate effectively in the language. The book has five chapters dealing with grammar, pronunciation, reading comprehension and vocabulary, written communication and spoken communication. Besides offering learners clear explanations and guidance on major topics in their respective areas, the chapters in the book offer additional support in the form of examples of sounds and grammatical structures as well as samples of the use of English to communicate in common situations and to perform important language functions. The book also includes a large number of exercises that will enable valuable language practice. There are three appendices in the book. The first of these is a list of errors commonly made together with their corrections. This can be used for quick reference as well as for practice in correct usage. The second appendix is an introduction to soft skills, which in combination with good communication skills, are of great relevance in the present world. The third appendix in the book is a key to its grammar and pronunciation exercises, which will allow students to check their work and to correct themselves.

Inspired by the ideas of the Prague School, the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) is concerned with the distribution of information as determined by all meaningful elements, from intonation (for speech) to context. A central feature of FSP is communicative dynamism. Jan Firbas discusses the distribution of the degrees of communicative dynamism over sentence elements, which determines the orientation or perspective of the sentence. He examines also the relation of theme and rheme to, and implementation by, syntactic components. Special attention is paid to the relation between FSP and word order. The second part of the book deals with spoken communication and considers the place of intonation in the interplay of FSP factors, establishing the concept of prosodic prominence. It tackles the relationship between the distribution of degrees of communicative dynamism as determined by the interplay of the non-prosodic FSP factors and the distribution of degrees of prosodic prominence as brought about by intonation.

This book applies the techniques of systemic functional grammar to the description of the Old English historical dialect, 650-1150 CE. Systemic functional grammar is an approach to the description of language which distinguishes three separate functions in communication: language as representation, language as attitude, and language as the construction of text. Most applications of systemic functional theory have concentrated on modern English. This book is the first comprehensive description of the Old English dialect on systemic functional principles. The book begins with an outline of systemic functional grammatical theory. It then describes the Old English clause with a separate grammar for each of the three general functions it serves, the representational, the attitudinal, and the text-formative. Other areas covered include structures and functions within nominal, verbal and adverbial groups; relationships among clauses; embedding; and cohesion. The book is thus designed to suit the needs of systemic functional grammarians who are interested in the historical development of the English language. It is also designed for students of Old English who are looking for ways of explaining the grammatical system of Old English on terms other than those of traditional grammar.

A Manual for English Language Laboratories offers a rigorous training in phonetics and role play and eventually builds on these two elements and discusses scenarios ranging from informal speech, such as giving directions and describing people or things, to more formal English in official or educational settings, such as participating in telephone interviews or debates. It is useful for first-year IT\ITU engineering students as well as other readers who need to develop their English language and soft skills.

The approach to language and grammar that motivates this book is unabashedly functional; grammar is not just a system of empty rules, it is a means to an end, an instrument for constructing concise coherent communication. In grammar as in music, good expression rides on good form. Figuratively and literally, grammar like musical form must make sense. But for the instrument to serve its purpose, it must first exist; the rules must be real, they can be explicitly described and taught. This book is intended for both students and teachers, at college level, for both native and nonnative speakers. With the guidance of a teacher this book will serve as a thorough introduction to the grammar of English. Volume II continues with syntactic and communicative complexity: embedded clauses – verb complements, relative clauses; detransitive voice – passive, anti-passive, impersonal and middle voice, reflexive and reciprocal constructions; focus and topic constructions; nondeclarative speech acts. It closes with interclausal connectivity: conjoined and subordinate clauses, the grammar of discourse coherence, clause chains and thematic paragraphs.

This book uses a corpus of manuscript letters from Bess of Hardwick to investigate how linguistic features characteristic of spoken communication function within early modern epistolary prose. Using these letters as a primary data source with reference to other epistolary materials from the early modern period (1500-1750), the author examines them in a unique and systematic way. The book is the first of its kind to combine a replicable scribal profiling technique, used to identify holograph and scribal handwriting within the letters, with innovative analyses of the language they contain. Furthermore, by adopting a discourse-analytic approach to the language and making reference to the socio-historical context of language use, the book provides an alternative perspective to the one often presented in traditional historical accounts of English. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of early modern English and historical linguistics.