Syntactic Structures

Noam Chomsky9783110172799, 3-11-017279-8

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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Table of contents :
Front cover……Page 1
Introduction by David W. Lightfoot……Page 8
Preface……Page 22
Table of contents……Page 26
1 – Introduction……Page 28
2 – The Independence of Grammar……Page 30
3 – An Elementary Linguistic Theory……Page 35
4 – Phrase Structure……Page 43
5 – Limitations of Phrase Structure Description……Page 51
6 – On the Goals of Linguistic Theory……Page 66
7 – Some Transformations in English……Page 78
8 – The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory……Page 102
9 – Syntax and Semantics……Page 109
10 – Summary……Page 123
11 – Appendix I: Notations and Terminology……Page 126
12 – Appendix II: Examples of English Phrase Structure……Page 128
Bibliography……Page 132