Syntactic Structures (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages..." (more)
Key Phrases: phonemic distinctness, communication theoretic model, constructional homonymity, Linguistics Today, New York (more...)

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Review

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

Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 117 pages
• Publisher: Mouton 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.com Sales Rank: #128,119 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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13 of 19 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.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Linguistics and Psychology, January 21, 2008

By	S. Battersby (New York, New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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In this one of many books by Noam Chomsky, linguistics and psychology are intellectually intertwined in a way that makes them approachable for anyone from any academic background.

10 of 30 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)

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.