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An Introduction to the Principles of Transformational Syntax

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This book is about the construction of syntax theory. Why would someone (other than a linguist) want to know about that? I am constructing an intelligent web based agent, commonly known as a chatbot. Most chatbots are based on a set of ad hoc, limited rules in constructing answers from a human. Others use a series of canned responses. Most seem to be descendents from the original Eliza program, a computer based Rogerian therapist. Why Rogerian? It made it easy for the program to respond. Human: "I don't like cats." Rogerian Therapist: "Tell me more about why you don't like cats."

To make a "smarter" program, the system needs to have a large vocabulary and know more rules for how to construct sentences. This is where this book comes in handy. The introduction states "It is not so much a book about syntactic theory as it is an attempt to involve the reader in constructing syntactic theory" - that is my kind of book. It holds to this promise. The book covers sentence structure and transformations, and then what operations these transformation may perform. The books structure is perfect for someone coming from the viewpoint of wanting to create a system that can generate original, correct sentences in response to ad hoc inputs. The treatment in the book is not exhaustive but lays the groundwork for the reader to extend the models and is sufficient to build "version 1.0" of a more intelligent appearing chatbot.