“Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves. The more we are aware of how it works, the more we can monitor the meaning and effectiveness of the way we and others use language. It can help foster precision, detect ambiguity, and exploit the richness of expression available in English.”
“All languages have a complex grammar: there may be relative simplicity in one respect (e.g., no word-endings), but there seems always to be relative complexity in another (e.g., word-position). ... Simplicity and regularity are usually thought to bedesirable features of language; but no natural languageis simple or wholly regular. All languages have intricategrammatical rules, and all have exceptions to those rules.”
