Reviews for Old English Grammar

The average rating for Old English Grammar based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-04-13 00:00:00 London Chapman It's often said that what is most familiar to us can in fact be what is most enigmatic to us. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the intimate perplexities of language, the folds of which envelop us even while we ply and pleat it as if at will, in the ease in which words tumble out of us. The signal achievement of Denise Riley's Impersonal Passion is to forcefully remind us of just these bewitching charms of language, the uncanny strangeness of which insinuates itself in the very tissue of our most passionate and personal speech. In the words that hurt us, in the name that designates us, in the cries of 'why me?' that we cast out in frustration and sorrow; in all these and more Riley teases out, in a series of linguistic vignettes, the ways in which language works its peculiar magic. Not so much in the manner of how words mean, but rather, how they act upon us, lay claim upon who we are and what we do, impelling us now in one way, then another. It's in this 'impersonal' and anonymous dimension of language that Riley stakes her study, tracing the ways in which the ordinances of language incite and inflect our desires, hopes, dreams, fears and hatreds. Above all, Impersonal Passion is a celebration of language, both in content and style. Riley's prose has a tendency to leap off the page in flourishes that are in turns moving, funny, brilliant, and, in most cases, all three at the same time. It's hard not to feel the sheer enjoyment and exhilaration of writing at work, with words shimmering allusively amongst themselves, reverberating in their playful incisiveness. Whether engaging in a phenomenology of language, critiquing a certain stand of anti-abortionist rhetoric, or exploring the ins and outs of social inclusion, Riley's attention to the nuances of expression sheds an incomparable light on the wonder that is language, and in turn, the lives which weave themselves alongside it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-29 00:00:00 Bob Scharr a well-rounded view of the major theories of constituent structure in syntax