English Syntax

"English Syntax is an important new text for courses in grammar at the undergraduate level and at the beginning graduate level. Written by a well-known syntactician, it offers an informal but systematic discussion of the basic rules of English sentence structure. It incorporates the fundamental insights that have been brought to the field of English syntax by research in generative grammar. "English Syntax" introduces the goals and techniques of syntactic study. It then takes up basic topics in phrasal syntax, including phrase types, heads, complements, and subjects; completes the discussion of phrasal syntax by describing various kinds of modifying structures; and looks at several special constructions, including the existential construction, the cleft construction, direct questions, imperatives, and exclamatives. A concluding section discusses negation conjunction, ellipsis, tense, aspect, and other areas in which syntax and semantics are closely related. The book's pedagogical aids are particularly useful. These include many illustrations - both standard tree diagrams and a variety of special diagrams. In addition each chapter contains several sets of exercises, each set occurring at a key point in the body of the chapter. Several chapters include special sections that provide practical guidance to situations in which distinct constructions share perplexing superficial similarities. C. L. Baker is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas, Austin He is author of a textbook on syntactic theory, "Introduction to Generative-Transformational Syntax, " and a co-editor (with John McCarthy) of "The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition.

C. L. Baker was a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.