Syntax

'The authors have an easy fluent style, and they present their information in a readable way. This book achieves what its authors set out to do: to provide an introductory account of syntax without too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. It is a volume which could be read with profit not only by those interested in language, but also those with literary interests.' - - Lore and Language

Jim Miller is a Lecturer in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. Keith Brown is a Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex.

Preface to the first edition -- Preface to the second edition -- Introduction -- Part one: Constituent structure -- 1 Constituent structure -- 1.1 Determining constituent structure -- 1.2 Representing and talking about constituent structure -- 1.3 Hierarchical structure -- 2 Form classes -- 2.1 Form classes -- 2.2 Widening the data base -- 3 Constituent structure grammar -- 3.1 A simple grammar -- 3.2 Generating and parsing sentences 3.3 Generative grammar -- 4 Formal grammars -- 5 Verbs and nouns -- 5.1 Some verb classes in English -- 5.2 Some noun classes in English -- 5.3 Selection restrictions -- 6 Adjectives and prepositions -- 6.1 Adjectives and adjective phrases -- 6.2 Prepositions and prepositional phrases -- 7 Optional constituents -- 7.1 Optional constituents -- 7.2 Modifiers and heads -- 7.3 Adverbs and adverbials -- 8 Intermediate levels of structure -- 8.1 Intermediate levels of structure -- 8.2 The specifiers, modifiers and complements of the major categories -- 9 Embedding, recursion and ambiguity -- 9.1 Embedding and recursion -- 9.2 Attachment and ambiguity -- 10 Relations between sentences -- 10.1 Introduction -- 10.2 Active and passive -- 10.3 Declarations and interrogatives -- 10.4 Wh movement and relative clauses -- 11 The sentence -- Part two: Morphology -- 12 Words and morphemes -- 12.1 Identifying words -- 12.2 'Inflectional' and 'derivational' morphology 12.3 Models of inflectional morphology -- 12.4 Some terminology -- 12.5 Lexical and grammatical morphemes -- 12.6 The morpheme as an abstract unit -- 13 Morphemes and morphs -- 3.1 Morphs -- 13.2 Morphs and allomorphs -- 13.3 Realization -- 14 The morphology of the English verb -- 14.1 Singular and plural: a problem in analysis -- 14.2 Subject-verb concord -- 14.3 Tense and aspect in the English verb -- 15 Lexical morphology -- 16 Form classes and grammatical categories -- 16.1 Form classes: nouns, adjectives and verbs -- 16.2 Grammatical categories -- Part three: Functional relations -- 17 Heads and modifiers: the encoding of dependency relations -- 17 .1 Heads and modifiers -- 17 .2 Encoding: word order and marking -- 17 .3 Linkage: agreement and government -- 18 Processes and participants -- 18.1 Introduction -- 18.2 Actions and states -- 18.3 Agent and patient: range, result and neutral -- 18.4 Location and motion: locative place, goal, source and path -- 18.5 Inchvative and causative-inchoative verbs -- 18.6 [State] propositions: description and identification; neutral and attribute -- 18.7 Conclusion -- 19 Grammatical functions -- 19.1 Subject -- 19.2 Object -- 19.3 Indirect object -- 19 .4 Complement -- 19.5 Adjuncts -- 19.6 Conclusion -- 20 Sentences in texts -- 20.1 Theme, rheme and end focus -- 20.2 Given and new -- 20.3 Topics -- 20.4 Conclusion -- Further reading -- References -- Index.