Welcome to the companion website for the fourth edition of The Frameworks of English, a step-by-step introduction to the language’s complex internal structures.

This exciting new edition contains several innovations, most notably an extensive chapter on historical English. Sitting alongside the chapter on regional and global variation in Present-Day English, it touches on some of the socio-cultural circumstances which brought about changes in the language, while still focussing chiefly on specific language features.

Also in this new edition are an increased number of exercises and you can find all the answers (along with the original questions) by clicking the button on the left.

Since the first edition of The Frameworks of English (over 20 years ago!), a wide range of resources for studying English (and language in general) has become available online, and links to some of these websites can be found via the weblinks button. The inclusion in the fourth edition of ‘Point of Comparison’ boxes (comparing aspects of English frameworks to those of other languages) reflects the amount of global language data that has been collected and collated with the help of web-based technology.