issues but have had no less of an impact on the work and still others have contributed problem sets or editorial advice. This long list includes: Dong- Hwan An, David Adger, William Alexander, Dean Allemang, Gabriel Amores, Diana Archangeli, Ash Asudeh, Dali Balti, Brett Baker, Uldis Balodis, Mark Baltin, Luis Barragan, Andy Barss, Michael Bauer, Dane Bell, Emily Bender, Abbas Benmamoun, Jeff Berry, Tom Bever, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Laura Blumenthal, Claire Bowern, Joan Bresnan, Aaron Broadwell, Dirk Bury, Ivano Caponigo, Roy Chan, Ronald Charles, Danny Chen, Deborah Chen-Pichler, Jaehoon Choi, Barbara Citko, Ian Clayton, Peter Cole, Chris Collins, Jennifer Columbus, Richard Compton, Andrew Comrie, Robert Coren, Dick Demers, Lorenzo Demery, Sheila Dooley, Rebecca Drinkall, Joe Dupris, Yehuda Falk, Muriel Fisher, Megan Figueroa, Sandiway Fong, Leslie Ford, Amy Fountain, Stefan Frisch, Alexandra Galani, Andrew Garrett, Jila Ghomeshi, David Gil, Carrie Gillion, Erin Good-Ament, Anthony Green, Andrea Haber, Paul Hagstrom, Ken Hale, John Halle, Mike Hammond, Daniel Harbour, Jack Hardy, Heidi Harley, Josh Harrison, Rachel Hayes-Harb, David Heap, Bernhard Heigl, One-Soon Her, Caroline Heycock, Nicky Hoover, Stephan Hurtubise, John Ivens, Eloise Jelinek, Ling Jiang, Alana Johns, Mark Johnson, Hyun Kyoung Jung, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Dalina Kallulli, Simin Karimi, Dan Karvonen, Andreas Kathol, Chris Kennedy, Greg Key, Amy LaCross, Erwin Lares, Richard Larson, Péter Lazar, Carlos Gelormini Lezama, Jeff Lidz, Anne Lobeck, Leila Lomashivili, Pen Long, Sarah Longstaff, Alicia Lopez, Ahmad Reza Lotfi, Ricardo Mairal, Joan Maling, Jack Martin, Diane Massam, Jeffrey Maxwell, Martha McGinnis-Archibald, Nathan McWhorter, Dave Medeiros, Jason Merchant, Mirjana Miskovic-Lukovic, Tel Monks, Kumiko Murasugi, Alan Munn, MaryLou Myers, Jian Gang Ngui, Chris Nicholas, Janet Nicol, Jon Nissenbaum, Peter Norquest, Diane Ohala, Kazutoshi Ohno, Heidi Orcutt-Gachiri, Hiroyuki Oshita, Panayiotis Pappas, Jaime Parchment, Hyeson Park, Barbara Partee, Matt Pearson, David Pesetsky, Colin Phillips, Massimo Piatelli- Palmarini, Carl Pollard, Bill Poser, Kristen Pruett, Jeff Punske, Mike Putnam, Sevren Quijada, Eric Randall, Janet Randall, Marlita Reddy-Hjelmfelt, Jodi Reich, Norvin Richards, Frank Richter, Bob Ritchie, Betsy Ritter, Alexander Robertson, Sharon Rose, Ed Rubin, Jeff Runner, Ivan Sag, Nathan Sanders, Yosuke Sato and his students, Theresa Satterfield, Leslie Saxon, Sylvia Schreiner, Kevin Schluter, Carson Schütze, Jim Scobbie, Deborah Shapiro, Leah Shocket, Dan Siddiqi, Echo Ki Sihui, Peter Slomanson, Kyle Smith, Ryan Walter Smith, Norvel Smith, Nick Sobin, Peggy Speas, Megan Stone, Tania Strahan, Joshua Strauss, Dana Sussman,Maggie Tallerman, Takashi Tanaka, Chris Tancredi, Deniz Tat, Brian ten Eyck, Ariel Theisen, L isa deMena Travis, Alex Trueman, Adam Ussishkin, Huseyin Uysal, Sakari Vaelma, Robert Van Valin, Martin Walkow, Enwei Wang, Shan Wang, Natasha Warner, Andy Wedel, Jennifer Wees, Jerry Weltman, Mary Ann Willie, Marian Wiseley, Dainon Woudstra, Susi Wurmbrand, Alper Yavuz, Kimberley Young, Kim Youngroung, J.R. Yu, James Yuen, my Facebook friends who I regularly victimized as testers for the problem sets in the book, and several anonymous Blackwell and Wiley reviewers. I’m absolutely convinced I’ve left someone off this large list. If it is you many apologies – I really did appreciate the help you gave me. The students in my Introduction to Syntax classes in Michigan in 1997, and in Arizona in 1998–2019, have used all or parts of this textbook. Glynis Baguley, Ada Brunstein, Sarah Coleman, Danielle Descoteaux, Lisa Eaton, Simon Eckley, Rachel Greenberg, Charlotte Frost, Graham Frankland, Tami Kaplan, Becky Kennison, Julia Kirk, Meryl Le Roux, Hannah Lee, Tanya McMullin, Leah Morin, Allison Medoff, Anna Oxbury, Rhonda Pearce, Clelia Petracca, Iain Potter, Venkatnadhan Rajagopalan, Beth Remmes, Jennifer Seward, and Steve Smith of Wiley-Blackwell and their subcontractors all deserve many thanks for help getting this and the previous three editions to press. My family (my mother Jean, my late father Bob, Morag, Fiona, my lost love Pangur, and my new fur kids Crònan, Nechtan and Aoife) were all incredible in their support and love. Go raibh maith agaibh agus tapadh leibh!
The artwork in chapters3and 6 was created by Dane Bell for this book and is used with permission.
Part 1
Preliminaries
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Chapter 1
Generative Grammar
Learning Objectives
After reading chapter 1, you should walk away having mastered the following ideas and skills:
1 Explain why language is a psychological property of humans.
2 Distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive rules.
3 Explain the scientific method as it applies to syntax.
4 Explain the differences between the kinds of data gathering, including corpora and linguistic judgments.
5 Explain the difference between competence and performance.
6 Explain the difference between i-language and e-language
7 Provide at least three arguments for Universal Grammar.
8 Explain the logical problem of language acquisition.
9 Distinguish between learning and acquisition.
10 Distinguish among observational, descriptive, and explanatory adequacy.
0. PRELIMINARIES
Although we use it every day, and although we all have strong opinions about its proper form and appropriate use, we rarely stop to think about the wonder of language. So- called language “experts” tell us about the misuse of hopefully or lecture us about the origins of the word boondoggle, but surprisingly, they never get at the true wonder of language: how it actually works as a complex machine. Think about it for a minute. You are reading this and understanding it, but you have no conscious knowledge of how you are doing it. The study of this mystery is the science of linguistics. This book is about one aspect of how language works: how sentences are structured, or the study of syntax and the people who study syntax are called syntacticians.
There are many perspectives on studying linguistics. One could study language looking at languages across time, or one could study how language is used as a social too. But syntacticians typically take a different view. They look at language as a psychological or cognitive property of humans. That is, my mind contains certain principles that allow me to sit here and produce this set of letters, words and sentences, and you use similar principles that allow you to translate these squiggles back into coherent ideas and thoughts. At least I hope you can translate them back into coherent ideas!
There are several subsystems at work in when we use language. If you were listening to me speak, I would be producing sound waves with my vocal cords and articulating particular speech sounds with my tongue, lips, and vocal cords. On the other end of things, you’d be hearing those sound waves and translating them into speech sounds using your auditory apparatus. The study of the acoustics and articulation of speech is called phonetics. Once you’ve translated the waves of sound into mental representations of speech sounds, you analyze them into syllables and pattern them appropriately. For example, speakers of English know that the made-up word bluve is a possible word of English, but the word bnuck is not. This is part of the science called phonology. Then you take these groups of sounds and organize them into meaningful units (called morphemes) and words. For example, the word dancer is made up of two meaningful bits: dance and the suffix -er. The study of this level of language is called morphology. Next you organize the words into phrases and sentences. One usage of the term syntax is the cover term for studies at this level of language. Finally, you take the sentences and phrases you hear and translate them into thoughts and ideas. This last step is what we refer to as the semantic level of language.
