Andreea S. Calude is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has a background in mathematics and linguistics and researches (spoken) grammar, language evolution, loanwords and just about any quantitative language-related question she can get data on. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Te Reo - the Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand and the co-editor of Questions About Language, with Laurie Bauer (2020).

Laurie Bauer FRSNZ is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of over twenty books including The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (2013), which won the LSA's Leonard Bloomfield Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand's Humanities Medal.

'In this exciting and innovative book Calude and Bauer demystify English grammar by cracking some of its hard nuts. Warmly recommended to anyone who is interested in the study of English syntax.'

Bas Aarts, UCL, UK

'This unconventional treatment of a wide selection of topics in English grammar calls many previous explanations into question. In citing factors which influence speakers' choices it goes beyond the narrow confines of traditional grammars to include overarching factors like on-going change, spoken-written differences, and the language variety of the speaker-user.'

Stephan Gramley, Bielefeld University, Germany