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The order and behaviour of the premodifier (an adjective, or other modifying word that appears before a noun) has long been a puzzle to syntacticians and semanticists. Why can we say 'the actual red ball', but not 'the red actual ball'? And why, conversely, do some other premodifiers have free variation in sentences; for example we can say both 'German and English speakers' and 'English and German speakers'? Why do some premodifiers change the meaning of a phrase in some contexts; for example 'young man', can mean 'boyfriend', rather than 'man who is young'? Drawing on a corpus of over 4,000 examples of English premodifiers from a range of genres such as advertising, fiction and scientific texts, and across several varieties of English, this book synthesises research into premodifiers and provides a new explanation of their behaviour, order and use.

This paper takes up the recent discussion of what controls speakers' use of the -5 and of-genitives, as in the university's budget and the budget of the university. Most of the paper deals directly with control ofthat "genitive variation". It first argues that there is a third variant, as in the university budget. It then discusses why all three just given, for example, are grammatical, but, with a litre of petrol, the alternatives {*apetrol's litre and '^a petrol litre) are not grammatical, arguing that the grammaticality is controlled by whether the word and phrase meanings are compatible with their syntax. It then argues that, where there are equally grammatical alternatives, the speakers" choice often depends on the same issues of semantic and syntactic compatibility. The last main section of the paper deals with the grammatical status ofthat third variant, arguing that the ¡ budget truly is genitive.

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Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures. The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them. Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English. As of October 2024, this e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.