Quirk grammar

The approach to grammatical description pioneered by British linguist (Charles) Randolph Quirk (Lord Quirk, b. 1920) and his associates, and published in a series of reference GRAMMARS during the 1970s and 1980s, notably A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985). It is a synthesis of knowledge about the grammatical structure of English, bringing together information from a range of DESCRIPTIVE approaches, informed by copious illustration from CORPUS materials, and paying special attention to STYLISTIC and regional VARIETIES. Terminology generally falls within the European tradition of reference grammars (CLAUSE, SUBJECT, VERB, OBJECT, etc.), but a number of novel terms are introduced, such as COMMENT clause, ECHO utterances, and the distinction between CONJUNCT, DISJUNCT, and SUBJUNCT.