The study of syntax over the last half century has seen a remarkable expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge about the structure of natural language. TheHandbook of Syntax presents a comprehensive survey of the major theoretical and empirical advances in the dynamically evolving field of syntax from a variety of perspectives, both within the dominant generative paradigm and between syntacticians working within generative grammar and those working in functionalist and related approaches.
Language permeates human interaction, culture, behavior, and thought. The Foundations of Modern Linguistics Series focuses on current research in the nature of language. Linguistics as a discipline has undergone radical change within the last decade. Questions raised by today's linguists are not necessarily those asked previously by traditional grammarians or by structural linguists. Most of the available introductory texts on linguistics, having been published several years ago, cannot be expected to portray the colorful contemporary scene.
In this book, we will examine the historical context in which the "new" generative morphology has evolved (Chapter I), the work that "founded" the field, Halle's 1973 proposal (Chapter II) and the first theoretical, non episodic, proposal, that of Aronoff 1976 (Chapters III and IV). Following this, a model of the organization of the lexical component is given, along with some well formedness conditions (Chapter V), In addition, a model is proposed for the interplay among the various types of morphological rules, namely derivation, inflection and compounding rules (Chapter VI).
This groundbreaking book offers a new and compelling perspective on the structure of human language. The fundamental issue it addresses is the proper balance between syntax and semantics, between structure and derivation, and between rule systems and lexicon. It argues that the balance struck by mainstream generative grammar is wrong. It puts forward a new basis for syntactic theory, drawing on a wide range of frameworks, and charts new directions for research.
This textbook provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the major issues in Principles and Parameters syntactic theory, including phrase structure, the lexicon, case theory, movement, and locality conditions.
