This fast-track introduction to syntax assumes no prior knowledge of linguistic theory. It is designed for specialist undergraduates and for those coming to linguistics for the first time as graduates.

A systematic introduction to core topics in syntax, focusing on how the basic concepts apply in the analysis of sentences.

The Core and the Periphery is a collection of papers inspired by the linguistics career of Ivan A. Sag (1949-2013), written to commemorate his many contributions to the field. Sag was professor of linguistics at Stanford University from 1979 to 2013; served as the director of the Symbolic Systems Program from 2005 to 2009; authored, co-authored, or edited fifteen volumes on linguistics; and was at the forefront of non-transformational approaches to syntax. Reflecting the breadth of Sag’s theoretical interests and approaches to linguistic problems, the papers collected here tackle a range of grammar-related issues using corpora, intuitions, and laboratory experiments. They are united by their use of and commitment to rich datasets and share the perspective that the best theories of grammar attempt to account for the full diversity and complexity of language data.

The book guides students through the basic concepts involved in syntactic analysis and goes on to prepare them for further work in any syntactic theory, using examples from a range of phenomena in human languages. It also includes a chapter on theories of syntax.

Experimental syntax is an area that is rapidly growing as linguistic research becomes increasingly focused on replicable language data, in both fieldwork and laboratory environments. The first of its kind, this handbook provides an in-depth overview of current issues and trends in this field, with contributions from leading international scholars. It pays special attention to sentence acceptability experiments, outlining current best practices in conducting tests, and pointing out promising new avenues for future research. Separate sections review research results from the past 20 years, covering specific syntactic phenomena and language types. The handbook also outlines other common psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods for studying syntax, comparing and contrasting them with acceptability experiments, and giving useful perspectives on the interplay between theoretical and experimental linguistics. Providing an up-to-date reference on this exciting field, it is essential reading for students and researchers in linguistics interested in using experimental methods to conduct syntactic research.

Research on the interplay between language structure and language use has shown that grammar is shaped, maintained, and modified by language use. In this view, then, grammar is not seen as existing apart from language use, but rather as a set of recurrent, grammaticized patterns of discourse. This book focuses on syntactic structuring in Finnish from the viewpoint of language use. The author sets out to study syntactic structures in their local contexts in order to discover the more global patterns and constraints on the use of these structures. The coding strategies point to the clause core as the locus of syntactic structuring: this is where syntactic relations emerge most clearly. It is shown that the key to understanding the coding of the core syntactic relations is the category of person. The clause core also shows strong intonational unity as it is most often presented in one intonation unit. Furthermore, analysis of spoken discourse shows the robustness of the category of noun phrase, both as a clausal constituent and as a free syntactic unit, the free NP.