Syntactic Structures (2nd Edition) [Paperback]

Noam Chomsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2002 | ISBN-10: 3110172798 | ISBN-13: 978-3110172799 | Edition: 2nd

Noam Chomsky's first book on syntactic structures is one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological theory is understood by experts in those fields. It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalogue, nor another specualtive philosophy about the nature of man and language, but rather a rigorus explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an overt theory of the internal structure of languages; and it may well provide an opportunity for the application of explicity measures of simplicity to decide preference of one form over another form of grammar.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It has been the single most inspiring book on linguistics in my whole career." -- HenkvanRiemsdijk

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. David W. Lightfoot is Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 117 pages
• Publisher: Walter de Gruyter; 2nd edition (December 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3110172798
• ISBN-13: 978-3110172799
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for any serious language scholar, May 17, 2010

By 

Earthmother-from-NJ (Hillside,NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Syntactic Structures (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

In 1993,I was fortunate to inherit this book from my father who used it during his undergrad studies at Columbia University in the 1960s.It was as relevant to my studies of Foreign Language and Lit as it was to my music major dad. It was a terrible blow when it was stolen with my car some ten years later,and indeed I never could bring myself to tell my dad that our precious Chomsky collection was in my trunk. So I was actually tearful when I found it available on Amazon.

One must always stand in awe of the fact that this groundbreaking tome was Chomsky's Bachelor thesis. It is intimidating to me and anyone who gets past the first chapter that a college senior produced this astounding labor.He knows his subject and he knows it well.My entire understanding of syntax,surface structure and deep structure of language began from this work.It made the difference in my study of language and helped me grow from instinctive,intuitive knowledge to reasoned thoughtful understanding of how we communicate with our fellow humans.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for Linguists, April 26, 2000

By 

f s - See all my reviews

This review is from: Syntactic Structures (Janua Linguarum Series Minor, Volume 4) (Anua Linguarum Series Minor 4, Series Volume 4) (Paperback)

Although Chomsky later changed his ideas towards linguistics in'Aspects of the Theory of Syntax', but this book is essential in understanding his relation to the Bloomfildean school and is essential for understanding 20'th century linguistics.

13 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Right, Back On The Corner, April 3, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Rubard (Beaverton, OR US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Syntactic Structures (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

Chomsky's *Syntactic Structures* is legendary today for its being the founding document in the field of generative grammar; but this is to say that the many theses of this book are poorly understood from a distance. Originally the student of Bloomfieldian Zellig Harris, Chomsky released this work after many years in Cambridge, Mass.; and although the traditional concerns of structuralist linguistics are well-represented in Chomsky's work, here this is through an engagement with the work of Willard van Orman Quine which has to my mind never been fully extracted. Chomsky took Quinean scruples concerning the "theory of meaning" as a guide for syntactic theory, namely as the extent to which an adequate syntax for natural language must "sin" against the strictures of compositionality embodied in formal languages; and although his strategy here has had its fans, the "stepwise" construction of his argument and its import have to my knowledge never been fully addressed.

Beginning with an immensely convincing case against the Markovian logic implicit in cybernetic analyses of communication, Chomsky sketches the extent to which various "rigorizations" of the communicative upshot of utterances (visions of the "speaker-hearer circuit" literally displayed by Saussure) fail to capture the grammatical articulation of sentences, and this in a *theoretically constitutive* way. The fate of each such "fail-safe" demonstrates the extent to which the "story about the story", the speaker's implicit grammar, serves an empirically regulative function (i.e., is palpably part of the observable activity of "reasoned" discourse); and this is presented in a theoretical vocabulary so lean as to have invited further formalization beyond the "core" theory's subsequent refinements by Chomsky and students.

In other words, this is essential reading for anyone trafficking in linguistic "transitions" of any kind: simply reaffirming a hostility to "Enlightenment commonplaces" will not relieve the researcher of the theoretical burdens imposed by the well-nigh-unavoidable desiderata of theoretical adequacy both explicit and implicit here. This is not a "what-if" narrative, concerning an alternate history for linguistic theory: this is just-so stuff which should constrain your understanding of what is already the case, and in no very "normative" way (though individuals primarily concerned with Chomsky's politics can easily absolve themselves of responsibility for linguistic theory by ignoring it). A true classic.