Discusses the use of "there is" and "there are," and recommends notional agreement (agreement of a verb with its subject or of a pronoun with its antecedent in accordance with the notion of number rather than with the presence of an overt grammatical marker for that notion) as a useful approach to deciding which to use. (SR)

Discusses the use of "and" and "or" in technical writing. Suggests that the strict meanings of "and" and "or" are called for in technical writing much more than in ordinary prose. (SR)

Uses a detailed analysis of a single grammatical problem to present the principal commitments and mechanisms of a grammatical theory that assigns a central role to the notion of grammatical construction. The grammatical phenomenon used to introduce construction grammar is the construction that licenses the surprising syntactic and semantic…

People frequently make assumptions about others because of their spoken or written use of a particular dialect or language. The varieties of English that people use are often regarded as indicators of corresponding intelligence, competence, motives, and morality. Such assumptions--frequently based on myths and misconceptions about the nature of…