Oxford Modern English Grammar By Bas Aarts -

Eleanor blinked. “You’ve read Aarts?”

She didn’t correct his sentence. She no longer needed to. Bas Aarts hadn’t given her a rulebook. He had given her a mirror—and in it, language lived, breathed, and occasionally split an infinitive with perfect grace. oxford modern english grammar by bas aarts

Dr. Eleanor Marsh, a retired editor whose pulse still quickened at a misplaced apostrophe, had just received two gifts. One was a bottle of expensive Chianti. The other was a brand-new copy of Oxford Modern English Grammar by Bas Aarts. Eleanor blinked

Eleanor felt the floor of her linguistic universe tilt. She had spent forty years wielding who/whom like a sword. Now Aarts’s book sat on the sideboard, its calm blue cover a quiet rebellion. Bas Aarts hadn’t given her a rulebook

By dessert, she opened her own copy. “He writes that modal verbs are ‘defective’ because they lack non-finite forms,” she said, almost happily.