An annotated syntax reader: Lasting insights and questions ed. by Richard S. Kayne, Thomas Leu, and Raffaella Zanuttini (review)

This collection of papers constitutes another volume in Wiley-Blackwell’s important series ‘Linguistics: The essential readings’. The topic of the volume is syntax, and although not made explicit, more specifically, generative transformational approaches to syntax. It presents a collection of ‘excerpted foundational articles in the field of syntax’, as it says on the cover of the book. In this brief review, it is impossible to summarize and discuss each particular chapter. I therefore mostly focus on more general issues that arise in the context of a collection like the present.

The editors have included thirty-five papers in the volume, each consisting of about ten to twelve pages. These pages are excerpts from the original papers, which inevitably means that the chapters do not always read as well as the original papers. The book contains contributions from the following scholars: Stephen R. Anderson, Mark Baker, Filippo Beghelli, Joan W. Bresnan, Anna Cardinaletti, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Noam Chomsky, Sandra Chung, Guglielmo Cinque, Liliane Haegeman, Kenneth Hale, Anders Holmberg, Norbert Hornstein, C. T. James Huang, K. A. Jayaseelan, Richard S. Kayne, Samuel Jay Keyser, Hilda Koopman, Jan Koster, Richard K. Larson, Julie Anne Legate, Giuseppe Longobardi, Diane Massam, Jean-Yves Pollock, Paul Postal, Luigi Rizzi, Dominique Sportiche, Michael Starke, Tim Stowell, Rint Sybesma, Anna Szabolcsi, Lisa Travis, and Raffaella Zanuttini. Each paper is prefaced with ‘Lasting insights’, which places the paper in its historical context and illustrates the impact the paper has had since it was first published. At the end of the excerpt, the editors have come up with fifteen to twenty-three questions per paper. In terms of year of publication, the papers range from 1966 (Ch. 1) to 2005 (Ch. 35). The editors state that they made an explicit decision to only include papers published before 2006. In addition to the thirty-five chapters, the volume contains a well-written introduction and a comprehensive index.

The introduction outlines some of the rationale behind the selection of chapters. In addition, it provides an overview of some of the core notions that have remained central throughout the history of generative transformational syntax. These are: (i) constituent structure, including phrase structure, (ii) transformations and locality conditions on transformations, (iii) mismatches between the surface position of a constituent and the position where the constituent originated, (iv) deletion of elements in the syntax, (v) silent elements in the syntax, (vi) the (universal) distinction between nouns and verbs, and (vii) parameters. These notions are covered in various chapters in the volume, and it is very helpful for the reader that they are so clearly outlined in the introduction. The editors also mention a few cases where the theory has changed so that what were movement operations in earlier versions of generative transformational grammar are now analyzed in other terms. They provide the following examples: agent-postposing in passives, downward movement from subject position in sentences like There has arrived a letter for you, and rightward heavy-NP shift. Some of these phenomena are also discussed in the book. I think the editors have written a very helpful and concise introduction that every reader will benefit from reading.

Each chapter’s introductory ‘Lasting insights’ section contextualizes the chapter and briefly outlines its major claim(s). It is laudable that the editors also outline why the issues addressed in each of the chapters are important to the field. At the end of the section, a general issue emerging from the paper is highlighted, either as a challenge for current theoretical approaches, or as a review of how later research has dealt with the issue. Although primarily intended for students and scholars from other fields, I think this section will be appreciated by senior researchers as well.

The editors’ questions that close each chapter vary widely. Some deal with relevant...