Transformational Syntax a Student's Guide to Chomsky's Extended Standard Theory

Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics

by Andrew Radford

Transformational syntax

Genres: Linguistics, Reference, Nonfiction, Language

Paperback

First published January 29, 1982

Reviews

[Marcus Lira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this book is awfully outdated now, and Andrew Radford's "Minimalist Syntax" already rendered this book kind of obsolete, it's a great read (and a lovely introduction to this wacky stuff Chomskians work with, specially if you want to know what happened before things went Minimal in Generative Grammar). It really feels like professor Radford himself is by your side teaching you how to get through the most abstract concepts with simplicity and humour.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew, I finally finished. This is a solid syntax book as a primary syntax-learning source, even though it's old now (like me). A lot of dense math texts have a few cheeky lines which keep you going, but this had whole paragraphs of personality! Radford did good there. Of course, I already like syntax much more than math, and I was reading this sort of with a historical eye (“so this is how they did things…”) and a pedagogical one (“any exercises I can adapt? :D?”) rather than as a learner myself. The exercises are more thought-provoking than a lot of popular introductory syntax books (more data sets and hypothesis testing vs mechanical application of concepts), which I appreciate. Big Sandy Chung vibes.

I feel obligated to point out that there are plenty of “of the time” sexist things and gender stereotype-y comments, mainly in the interest of keeping things ~fun~, but that’s par for the course in pre-2000s syntax (and, possibly, pre-2000s life). There's also a lot of "we'll get to this in volume 2", which annoyed me once I discovered that "Volume 2" wasn't the second half of this book, but instead a different sequel book. HOWEVER, I don't think that Volume 2 was ever even published, so my annoyance has turned to lols.

[A.rhubarb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very dry and difficult to read. Hence the lower rating for content and applied uses I would give it five. This must have been a difficult book to write. Not necessarily a book read for pleasure. I read it because I love language, deep structure and surface structures alike. I enjoy grammar.

[Leonardo]

...provides a gentle introduction to transformational grammar, and can be recommended for its coverage of transformational approaches to unbounded dependency constructions.

Natural Language Processing with Python Pág.322

[Dan'l · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps the most accessible (yet then-comprehensive) introduction to transformational grammar of its era back in the early 1990s, when I took this class as an undergraduate. Rare is the thrill to read to see the mind opened up to mechanisms underlying how the mind works.

[A. Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A text, but one of the few which helped in the start!

[Rawia]

very good