Syntactic Structures Revisited: Contemporary Lectures on Classic Transformational Theory

This book provides an introduction to some classic ideas and analyses of transformational generative grammar, viewed both on their own terms and from a more modern, or minimalist perspective. The major focus is on the set of analyses treating English verbal morphology. The book shows how the analyses in Chomsky’s classic Syntactic Structures actually work, filling in underlying assumptions and often unstated formal particulars. From there the book moves to successive theoretical developments and revisions -both in general and in particular as they pertain to inflectional verbal morphology. After comparing Chomsky’s economy-based account with his later minimalist aproach, the book concludes with a hybrid theory of English verbal morphology that includes elements of both Syntactic Structures and A Minimalist Programme for Linguistic Theory .