A Fragment of Pedagogical English Grammar

A pedagogical grammar, as the name suggests, is aimed at foreign students of a language to help them master the structure of the language. This book focuses on one of many aspects of noun usage in English. The focus is on the description of nouns aimed at helping learners with the use of determiners, particularly the articles. Standard practice is to classify all common nouns into one of two classes: countable nouns or uncountable nouns. A rider is added to this classification: some nouns may be countable or uncountable depending on their use. The position taken in this book is that the count-uncount classification fails to capture adequately the noun usage in English with respect to the occurrence of articles with nouns. The noun needs to be considered from a wider perspective for a more accurate description of its use with articles. This focus is emphasized in the title of the work: A Fragment of Pedagogical English Grammar: The Noun from a Wider Perspective.