Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (review)

This new textbook introduces students to syntactic theory, and in particular to a strictly derivational approach to syntax, following crucially Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist program (1995 and subsequent work). The textbook has three main aspects worth mentioning here that differentiate it from other books of the same type. First, Adger develops a system that has Chomsky’s ideas as its source, his aim being to show how one can deal with empirical data from a variety of languages by following a particular set of assumptions. Second, A has been very selective with respect to the coverage in the textbook: he deals only with problems that belong to core syntax. In doing so, he concentrates on phenomena that play an important role in the development of the theory or that are currently a matter of dispute. Third, A is extremely meticulous in the presentation of syntactic derivations, the aim being to familiarize students with more formal aspects of syntactic theory. A truly manages to achieve a good balance between a formal theoretical model and its empirical coverage. Each chapter includes excellent problem sets and a list of further readings.

Ch. 1 introduces the core concepts and reviews the basic premises of generative grammar. The focus here is on motivating the claim that knowledge of language is unconscious and partly innate, explaining why a theory providing the tools to analyze a particular set of data is needed, and enumerating the properties that such a theory should have.

Ch. 2 discusses morphosyntactic features. A addresses the question of what it is that syntax regulates. He pays particular attention to the ways one can motivate the existence of such features, the basic building blocks of syntax. At this point, the reader is informed about the main attribute of minimalist syntax—the existence of a universal pool of features—and about the way languages differ with respect to the actual instantiation of these features.

Ch. 3 introduces the idea that syntactic structures are hierarchical. A presents and motivates the syntactic operation Merge, whose function is to build larger units out of smaller ones. A number of other principles and conditions are discussed in this chapter, namely the principle of full interpretation, the checking requirement, the extension condition, and the unique-theta-generalization. Each of these principles and conditions is motivated on the basis of a number of empirical phenomena.

Ch. 4 builds on the ideas discussed in Ch. 3 and concentrates on the structure built up around the verb. A shows how phrase structure is built up through syntactic operations. The notion of c-command is introduced, which is used as a tool to probe the internal workings of the verb phrase. Syntactic objects are built up via the operation Merge, first Merge involving complements, then Merge involving specifiers. A further discusses adjuncts, which unlike specifiers are not incorporated in the structure via Merge, but rather via the operation Adjoin. While discussing the verb phrase, A focuses on ditransitives, causative v, and the distinction between unaccusatives and unergatives in terms of the features on little v. An important part of the discussion is devoted to the universal theta alignment hypothesis (UTAH) and to whether it can be maintained.

Ch. 5 focuses on the functional category TP which is taken to be the projection by which sentences are headed. Evidence from a variety of constructions (do, modals, to) is provided for this claim. The position of the subject with respect to these elements is explained by the assumption that the subject raises to Spec,TP. Claims about Agree and checking are illustrated on the basis of Tense features and A adopts a particular position on the nature of feature strength. The hierarchy of projections introduced in Ch. 4 is expanded here and further elaborated upon in subsequent chapters.

Ch. 6 addresses the question of the position of the subjects and objects in clause structure and looks at the syntactic dependencies that subjects and objects enter into. In particular A discusses the movement...