Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction

<i>Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction</i> is unlike any other introductory textbook on the market. Targeting students with strong formal/mathematical skills, but assuming no particular previous background, this book focuses on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. The book begins with the inadequacy of context-free phrase structure grammars, motivating the introduction of feature structures, types and type constraints as ways of expressing linguistic generalizations. Step by step, students are led to discover a grammar that covers the core areas of English syntax that have been central to syntactic theory in the last quarter century, including: complementation, control, 'raising constructions', passives, the auxiliary system, and the analysis of long distance dependency constructions. Special attention is given to the treatment of dialect variation, especially with respect to African American Vernacular English, which has been of considerable interest with regard to the educational practice of American school systems.

Reference

Sag, Ivan A.

Wasow, Thomas

Words, Language & Grammar

Center for the Study of Language and Inf

Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction is unlike any other introductory textbook on the market. Targeting students with strong formal/mathematical skills, but assuming no particular previous background, this book focuses on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. The book begins with the inadequacy of context-free phrase structure grammars, motivating the introduction of feature structures, types and type constraints as ways of expressing linguistic generalizations. Step by step, students are led to discover a grammar that covers the core areas of English syntax that have been central to syntactic theory in the last quarter century, including: complementation, control, 'raising constructions', passives, the auxiliary system, and the analysis of long distance dependency constructions. Special attention is given to the treatment of dialect variation, especially with respect to African American Vernacular English, which has been of considerable interest with regard to the educational practice of American school systems.

Postverbal Behavior (Volume 145) (Lecture Notes)

Compared to many languages, English has relatively fixed word order, but the ordering among phrases following the verb exhibits a good deal of variation. This monograph explores factors that influence the choice among possible orders of postverbal elements, testing hypotheses using a combination of corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments. Wasow's final chapters explore how studies of language use bear on issues in linguistic theory, with attention to the roles of quantitative data and Chomsky's arguments against the use of statistics and probability in linguistics.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

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Books by Wasow, Thomas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wasow, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction

Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction

Postverbal Behavior (Volume 145) (Lecture Notes)

Postverbal Behavior (Volume 145) (Lecture Notes)