[infurl]

I'm considering buying the book "Practical English Grammar" by Michael Swan.

http://www.bookdepository.com/Practical-English-Usage-Michael-Swan/9780194420983

Before I do that, I was wondering if anyone had any other recommendations or experiences with language reference books that they would like to share.

After years of just talking, researching, and coding foundation libraries, I've finally reached the point where I can start working on my attempt at an English language parser.

[Bragi]

perhaps you can first start with an online book like this one:http://primus.arts.u-szeged.hu/bese/contents.htm. 

[Merlin]

I assume you have taken a look at the Link Grammer Parser?
http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/

Grammar Encyclopedia
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/enc2010/frames/frameset.htm

[infurl]

perhaps you can first start with an online book like this one:http://primus.arts.u-szeged.hu/bese/contents.htm.

Thanks Jan, that's an excellent reference book. I downloaded the PDF version and have already spent a good deal of time reading it. I think it will be very useful, not just for the information that it contains, but for the methodology which it presents for systematically deriving that information.

[infurl]

I assume you have taken a look at the Link Grammer Parser?
http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/

Grammar Encyclopedia
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/enc2010/frames/frameset.htm

Thanks Merlin, I first looked at the Link Parser more than ten years ago. Although it finally seems to have been adopted by some other projects, it doesn't look to have improved much in that time. It seemed like a neat idea but I think in practice it is neither efficient enough or versatile enough to tackle real world natural language parsing problems. I don't know if you read Bruce Wilcox's account of the Loebner competition, but he was using it in ChatScript at one stage. He had to abandon its use, as it was not up to the task.

The Grammar Encyclopaedia could be useful. I've been looking through it, and although it is a bit sparse, it could be helpful for a few things.