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Title Details:
SYNTAX
Other Titles: Grammar and Minimalism
Authors: Roussou, Anna
Reviewer: Georgiafentis, Michail
Subject: HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE > GRAMMAR > THEORIES AND MODELS OF GRAMMAR > FORMAL GRAMMARS > GENERATIVE TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR
HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > FIELDS OF LINGUISTICS
HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > THEORY AND METHOD
HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > LINGUISTIC UNITS
HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE
HUMANITIES AND ARTS > LINGUISTICS > FIELDS OF LINGUISTICS > FIELDS RELATED TO THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE > SYNTAX
Keywords:
Minimalism
Merge
Agree
Parametric Variation
Lexicon
Interfaces
Generative Grammar
Phrase Structure
Universal Grammar
Locality
Movement
Dependency
Left Periphery
Features
Description:
Abstract:
This book is an introduction to syntactic theory, following the Generative Grammar framework (Chomsky 1986, 1995, forward). Its basic goal is to introduce students to the study of syntactic structure and to teach them the metholodology and the theoretical framework in analysing empirical data. The book chapters cover the definition of syntax and its role in grammar, the mechanism producing phrase structure (how phrases are formed, the syntax-lexicon interface, and the syntax-morphology interface), as well as dependency relations amognst the lexical items in the clause structure (or phrase structure in general).

The subject-predicate relation is an important one for the definition of what qualifies as a sentence. In this context, the book examines the realization of the subject (whether it is overt or null) and its syntactic realization as a grammatical subject as an external or internal argument (e.g. passives, unaccusatives). The positioning of arguments in certain syntactic positions (as subjects or objects) is examined in relation to the role of case and its syntactic implementation as a categorial feature. The subject position is also relevant in binding relations, such as anaphoric binding (reflexives) as opposed to pronouns. These are all dependencies involving argument positions (A-dependencies).

Dependency relations are also expressed via movement (displacement), as is the case with wh-questions and relativization. Wh- and relative pronouns have the properties of quantifiers which bind a variable. This approach also extends to other phenomena, such as topicalization and focusing (roughly for old and new information respectively). These phenomena do not involve argument positions (A’-dependencies) and include features in the left periphery of the clause, defining their scope over the variable they bind accordingly.
Table of Contents:
Table of contents
List of abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
1. Language and grammar
2. Syntactic categories
3. From word to phrase: phrase structure
4. Syntax and the lexicon
5. Grammatical functions and (null) arguments
6. Agree and argument relations
7. The left periphery I: Complement clauses
8. The left periphery ΙΙ: wh-questions and Ā-dependencies
Glossary of Greek and English terminology
Linguistic Editors: Fragkaki, Georgia
Technical Editors: Ioannis, Angelakos
Type: Undergraduate textbook
Creation Date: 2015
Item Details:
ISBN 978-960-603-280-6
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/gr
Handle http://hdl.handle.net/11419/581
Bibliographic Reference: Roussou, A. (2015). SYNTAX [Undergraduate textbook]. Kallipos, Open Academic Editions. https://hdl.handle.net/11419/581
Language: Greek
Consists of: 1. Language and grammar
2. Syntactic categories
3. From word to phrase
4. Syntax and the lexicon
5. Grammatical functions and (null) arguments
6. Agree and argument relations
7. The left periphery I
8. The left periphery II
Number of pages 235
Publication Origin: Kallipos, Open Academic Editions