An introduction to syntax: Fundamentals of syntactic analysis, and: An Introduction to syntactic theory (review)

These two books are designed for different audiences: the first is an introductory syntax course, and the second is a more advanced text, designed for later undergraduate and graduate courses. They both have seven chapters and a similar number of pages, the first being an overview of what phenomena can be described as syntactic, and the second looking at the parameters of syntactic theories and alternative ways of analyzing the data already expounded in the first volume.

Each book is incredibly well organized, obviously the product of a very tidy mind. Each chapter opens with a chart of the numbered content and its pagination, in slightly greater detail than the listing of chapter contents in the introductory material. Then, before the chapter begins, there is an ingenious and intriguing quote that is fundamentally relevant to what is to come (each book is worth browsing just to digest these quotes!). Each chapter also ends with a relevant and welcome conclusion, followed by the notes and some exercises for the students when used as a course book.

The focal points of the first book are introduced in the preface as follows: 1) The syntactic form of sentences can be and must be described apart from their meanings; 2) Sentences can be and must be described apart from their functions; 3) Sentences can and must be described apart from the psychological and physical mechanisms underlying their structure and use; 4) Sentences can and must be described apart from how they change; 5) Syntax can be described in a relatively theory-neutral way and such descriptions have some utility. This is, in short, an orthodox presentation of syntactic data according to the tradition, founded originally by Bloomfield, of form over meaning, in contrast to the Saussurian view of the priority of meaning.

For Saussure the game of chess did not lie in the chess pieces, the directly observable markers, but in the moves that each could make; it was the meaningful role of the pieces that made the game of chess. There is no doubt that descriptions of the chess pieces have some utility, but the Bloomfieldian view that syntax is meaningless, and is best described without reference to meaning, deserves to be re-examined, starting with such syntactic minimal pairs as horse race versus race horse.

Since the two books very adroitly look into fundamental procedures of observation and description, it might have been advantageous to have had a further enquiry into this fundamental question, especially since a one-sided formal analysis, by ignoring important constraints, allows all kinds of different descriptions and explanations, with a resulting plethora of different theories.

Chapter 1 of the first book is entitled "What is syntax" and deals in an interesting way with such questions as observation, description, and explanation. Chapter 2, "Linear order", examines syntactic positions and examines rules to describe them, while Chapter 3, "Selection", discusses the choice of words and their ordering. There are occasional overstatements that may be suitable for beginners, but which nevertheless indicate problems for further comment. The sentence It is raining is not always ungrammatical (p. 65) without its subject. One can reply Is snowing in reply to It is raining, if sleet is observed. Likewise, the subject pronoun is often omitted when obvious: feeds five on a recipe, or prevents cavities on a tube of toothpaste, Want some? Thought you might like it in everyday conversation.

Chapter 4, "Categories", deals with parts and wholes, taxonomy and "partonomy" (a neologism of the author), or mereonomy, the relationship between parts and wholes, and Chapter 5 is entitled "Syntax, meaning and sound form". The presentation of meaning has its problems, being restricted to meaning as symbol, which leaves all kinds of unanswered questions about the nature of the signatum: is it a mental representation, or is it in...