Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not an entry level text, September 4, 2004
We used this book as a text for a 400 level undergraduate advanced syntax course this summer (2004). Part of the purpose of the course was to evaluate the suitability of this book as a text (and minimalism as content material) for linguistics majors taking a 200 level syntax class in the future.
The book is highly technical, as is any serious linguistics text. According to the description, it is designed for readers with no linguistics background, but we were unable to imagine it being used as a text for any class beneath the level of ours. It probably would be more appropriate for use in a graduate seminar. There is no way it could be used for freshman with no linguistics background, and at the 300 level, English majors would be hung out to dry.
Issues? Lots of them made the book's arguments and logic hard to grasp. You're following with difficulty, reading and rereading as a concept is developed, and suddenly you realize one of the definitions you were given at the beginning has been completely changed, with no indication or explanation.
The book was full of obscure examples, which raised more questions than it answered at times, because common examples don't fit in the paradigm.
Examples of tree structure were very limited, showing only fragments of trees, which made the exercises at the end of the chapter extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming.
The last chapter seemed to be written as an afterthought. I think if the author had reread his examples, he would have seen that the verbs he had used as examples in his comparison were in no way functionally equivalent, although he seemed to be under the impression they were.
Proofreading would have been helpful, as there were lots of typos, some of which changed the meaning of the text or examples.
Some of us ended up wondering the extent to which the problems were with the book, and the extent to which they were with minimalism itself.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A different view, January 9, 2005
We used this book in my final year undergrad class and I loved it. It's true that there are some annoying typos, but actually fewer than I found in other similar books, like Carnie's. What I really liked was the methodical, step by step, explanations, and far from being terribley (sic) written, I thought the writing was clear and easy to follow (although the subject matter was, it''s true, really hard). I think that this isn't an introductory text, so the blurb on the back which says it is isn't right, but as an introduction to the Minimalist theory, at advanced undergrad level or higher, it's very good.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but confusing, October 29, 2004
The other reviewer is absolutely right--this text is NOT an entry-level text, even though it claims to be. I have an M.A. in linguistics and am currently working on a Ph.D., and I have some background in syntax, and I find this text quite difficult to follow. Some examples Adger lists as ungrammatical are grammatical, and vice versa. Adger seems to sometimes make claims without adequate explanation to the reader (e.g., he lists Adjective as [+Verb, -Noun]), which is disturbing because this is supposedly an introductory text. If you want an introduction to Minimalism, don't look here. If you're already a specialist in the field, this may be a good addition to you're collection (but you should be the judge of that--check it out from the library first).
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