'This book has three outstanding virtues: it is comprehensible (a rare quality nowadays in books of this kind), it is truly comprehensive within its terms of reference, and it is laudably without all but the most necessary footnotes and references.' - Review of English Studies 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 The second edition of this invaluable introductory text has been extensively revised to take account of recent developments in syntactic studies. Dealing with the whole range of syntax, this book explains, in a lucid and approachable way, why linguists have adopted certain solutions to problems and not others. Features: * Syntax is often taught solely within the framework of transformational grammar. This book introduces the basic concepts used in the description of syntax, independently of any single model of grammar. * Profusely illustrated with diagrams, there are sets of exercises for every chapter which can be used in class or by students working independently.

Table of Contents:
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.