ABSTRACT
Linguistic surveys have included some study of grammatical items. Reviewers of The Linguistic Atlas of England have been remarkably unresponsive in their accounts of its treatment of grammar. The study of grammar in a linguistic survey presents quite different problems from the study of lexis or pronunciation. Syntax contrasts with lexis in that syntax never performs its communicative functions through the form of a word alone and rather more through the relationships between words in a sentence. Syntax operates by selection, in each morphological category there are usually a number of elements, or forms, which are available for selection. Only when these individual category choices are formed into a syntagmatic sequence may communication take place. Although recent studies have concentrated on particular areas or places, they have contributed considerably more information about syntactic variation, with which comparisons across the whole of Britain and Ireland are increasingly possible.
