field of linguistics." Ostensibly, it is written for a reader with no background in English grammar or linguistics, though, as Geoffrey Leech notes, "in practice the intensity of detail, including much unfamiliar terminology, is likely to deter the nonspecialist." It includes a list of sources for further reading but does not cite any sources in the main text. It is informal in the sense that it is not based on a grammatical formalism.

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