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Published March 29, 2017
Firstly, the apparent freshness used to express curiosity over linguistic phenomena (which Chomsky sums up in his «willingness to be puzzled» quote) is nice and can make the experienced reader re-achieve the feeling of being new to the field, even if just for a moment. Truly therapeutic for a syntactician to get his treelets as the child does her sweets.
Secondly, the syntactic relations and operations are tidily organised and introduced to the reader in a didactic manner. Of course, this makes for short usefulness, if one is to deal with more complicated phenomena. But the book doesn't purport to present exhaustive definitions, whence one knows himself to be looking in the wrong place if he wishes to access the more rigorous technicalia of the field. All in all, the authors do manage to pin down the crucial aspects of those relations and operations, whereby one can remember what this or that operation might «be about», or «conceptualise», if he's perchance lost in the sea of different definitions and reformulations of Agree, principles of Binding Theory, Case relations and perhaps even Merge itself. As much as it's the linguist's responsibility to deal with all that, it's also the linguist's inner human's right merely to be tired of intricacies and want to just revisit what the basic essence of the operations and relations even are. This book is not the only one to concede that to the reader, but it's good with it.
Thirdly, the data are curated to bring the reader's attention to some facts that show such relevance to linguistic theory as to become staples of the generative enterprise (sensitivity to local relations and domains; binding phenomena; syntactic features; movement and restrictions thereof; Case relations, yaddayaddayadda). Together with the fact only English data are contemplated, this has obvious negative side effects. Not focusing on them, however, helps one to see in this at least one quality: such curation aids the reader to remember the essential properties of historically significant syntactic phenomena, as well as to develop an initial instinct for recognising potentially pertinent patterns in data, which might lead him to a discovery about the grammar.
That's what I've separated as personal benefits with the book, phrased in a way to express how they might also serve as others benefits. Apart from them, on the other hand, a reader with intermediate to advanced knowledge of syntax can feel outright bored with the book. I wonder to what extent one should expect this, and I'm not sure I'd paint it as a defect of the book. It does what it says: it introduces syntax to the layman. And it actually does it well, methinks, notwithstanding some criticisable decisions, such as the representation of adjunction chosen (adjunction to X'/intermediate projections) and too heavy a simplification of phenomena/technical repertoire at times. I guess I understand why the authors chose such path, though. Perhaps it's better for the uninitiated to acquaint himself with more rigorous discussions after he's been... well, introduced to syntax.
To summarise: the book is good if one's a newbie syntactician/minimalist and less so if one's already familiar with the field, albeit he can nevertheless detect some value in it. In any event, I suppose it'll make a worthwhile read — a fun and light one, in the least.