HUDDLESTON, Rodney D(esmond) 1937-

PERSONAL:

Born April 4, 1937, in Bowdon, Cheshire, England; son of Denis Wilson and Dorothy (Marsland) Huddleston; married Joan Mulholland (a university tutor), December 18, 1965 (divorced, 1978); married Vivienne Pool, December 6, 1988. Education: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, B.A. (honors), 1960; University of Edinburgh, Ph.D., 1963.

ADDRESSES:

Home—64 Seaview Terr., Sunshine Beach, Queensland, Australia, 4069.

CAREER:

University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, lecturer in linguistics, 1963-64; University of London, London, England, research assistant in linguistics, 1964-67; University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, England, lecturer in linguistics, 1967-68; University of London, lecturer in linguistics, 1968-69; University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 1969-97, began as lecturer, became reader in linguistics, then professor emeritus.

MEMBER:

Linguistic Society of America, Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Linguistic Society of Australia.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities, awarded a Personal Chair, 1990; 'Excellence in Teaching' award; Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of linguistics, 2003; Leonard Bloomfield Award, Linguistic Society of America, for Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(With others) Sentence and Clause in Scientific English, Communication Research Centre, University College (London, England), 1968.

The Sentence in Written English: A Syntactic Study Based on an Analysis of Scientific Texts, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1971.

An Introduction to English Transformational Syntax, Longman (London, England), 1976.

Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

English Grammar: An Outline, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Geoffrey K. Pullman) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to linguistics journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rodney D. Huddleston, a former professor of English at the University of Queensland in Australia, has spent years studying grammar and linguistics. Among his books on English grammar are Introduction to the Grammar of English, English Grammar: An Outline, and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

In an article posted on the University of Queensland Web site, Huddleston explained the aim of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language as "presenting a grammar faithful to the principles of modern linguistics but still accessible to readers without formal linguistics training." With the help of coeditor Geoffrey Pullum and a team of linguists from five countries, Huddleston produced, as Library Journal 's Manya S. Chylinski called it, "a comprehensive and detailed look at the principles of the English language."

Divided into subsections within its chapters, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language describes grammatical categories and encourages the idea that certain ways of speaking are not necessarily wrong, as much as they are different from the Standard English taught in textbooks. By taking more care when selecting the grammatical categories and simplifying some areas of the book, the authors hoped to make it more appropriate for a modern readers. Eric Griffiths, in a Guardian Unlimited Books review, claimed, "[ The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ] offers a satellite Polaroid of the current language and avoids on principle any suggestions about how to air-brush up your style. Fretful sub-editors who want to know the better way with 'which' and 'that' must apply elsewhere." A contributor to Library Journal commented, "The emphasis is on the evolution of rather than the rules for English-language usage," and a writer for Contemporary Review wrote, "[The book's] procedure is to eschew a 'diachronic' or historical description of English and instead to give a 'synchronic' or 'descriptive grammar of general-purpose, present-day, international Standard English.'" The writer continued, "this latest publication must now stand as one of the best analyses of modern English." Library Journal 's Chylinski dubbed the book "an authoritative addition to the fields of both English grammar and linguistics."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Collins, Peter, and David Lee, editors, The Clause in English: In Honour of Rodney Huddleston, John Benjamins (Philadelphia, PA), 1999.

PERIODICALS

British Book News, February, 1985, review of Introduction to the Grammar of English, p. 96.

Choice, December, 2002, J. B. Beston, review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Contemporary Review, August, 2002, review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pp. 119-121.

Language, 2004, Peter Culicover, review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pp. 127-141.

Library Journal, September 1, 2002, Manya S. Chylinski, review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p. 166; April 15, 2003, review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p. 43.

ONLINE

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language,http://uk.cambridge.org/linguistics/cgel/ (August 25, 2004), "Meet the Authors: Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum."

Guardian Unlimited Books,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (July 13, 2002), Eric Griffiths, "The Lavender of the Subjunctive," review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

University of Queensland,http://www.uq.edu.au/ (May 14, 2004), "Research at UQ, Minding the Language."