Minimum of English Grammar: An Introduction to Feature Theory, Volume 1

Minimum of English Grammar: An Introduction to Feature Theory, Volume I provides a comprehensive exploration of feature theory grammar. The text presents grammar in a way similar to the Periodic Tables of Elements-allowing for the tinkering with sub-particles of words to show how isolated features project one phrase over another, and contribute to particular phrasings. The book presents the kind of theoretical syntax highly regarded among Chomskyan linguists.

Section I analyzes the segments of language in a systematic way, recognizing both lexical and functional categorization. It addresses parts of speech, movement and constituency, and common grammatical errors. Section II covers general questions surrounding linguistic phenomena. Particular attention is given to how a feature given account can assist in understanding specific language disorders and historical language change. This section includes a standalone chapter on the nature of child language acquisition. Section III is devoted to phonology and the (American) English International Phonetic Alphabet. It includes anecdotal evidence calling for a dual mechanism model of phonological representation. The final chapter discusses the use of tree diagramming in phonology.

The revised first edition includes a conclusion chapter, glossary, and index, allowing the first volume to be a self-contained text.

Minimum of English Grammar is an excellent introduction textbook for students of linguistics, syntax, and morphology.

A well-respected syntactician in the tradition of Noam Chomsky, Dr. Joseph Galasso has two recent publications on young children's utterances that postulate the nature of the innate language capability based on actual data: "Small Children's Sentences are 'Dead on Arrival': Remarks on a Minimalist Approach to Early Child Syntax" in Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development and the monograph "From Merge to Move: A Minimalist Perspective on the Design of Language and its Role in Early Child Syntax (LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 59. 238pp. 2016). A follow-up monograph on syntax was published in 2019 entitled "Recursive Syntax: A Minimalist Perspective on Recursion as the Core Property of Human Language and tis Role in the Generative Grammar Enterprise: (with Special Notes on Dual Mechanism Model, Problems of Projection, Proto-language, Recursive Implementation in AI, and the Brain"). His work has appear in The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics (2016) (eds. Jeffrey L. Lidz, William Snyder, and Joe Pater). Dr. Galasso is a faculty member in the departments of English and Linguistics at California State University, Northridge, and serves as an adjunct faculty member of linguistics at California State University, Long Beach.