English Syntax

This is an introduction to the subject of English syntax for students who have had no prior coursework in syntactic theory. The detailed revisions throughout this second edition are aimed at increasing its clarity and usefulness. There are changes in almost every chapter, including a number of new exercises and several new subsections. In addition there are two new appendices, the first sketching the relation of English syntax to the wider field of generative syntactic theory, the second summarizing the basic syntactic structures discussed in the body of the text. Specific changes include a fuller discussion, at the beginning of chapter three of the difference between complements and modifiers; a more systematic introduction to tree diagrams and what they express, at the end of chapter three; a new subsection in chapter four on how to analyse complex structures; a new discussion of the general nature of missing-phrase constructions in chapter nine; a significant revision of the discussion of comparative clauses in chapter 12; a new discussion of the scope of negation in chapter 15; and, in chapter 16, a new discussion of practical strategies for analyzing conjoined structures.