English and the good grammarian

The present article reviews some aspects of the content of a new reference grammar of English, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, while reflecting on the process of writing grammars at the beginning of the 2lst century, particularly regarding the relation between theory and description. It is not my goal to offer a comprehensive review of the contents of this grammar, but to examine critically the conceptual framework underlying the linguistic description. For this, I concentrate on the analysis of certain aspects of phrasal and clausal complements of verbs, with particular attention to non-finite (infinitival) subordinate clauses....