ANDREW RADFORD

Andrew Radford’s latest textbook, Minimalist Syntax, provides a concise, clear, and accessible introduction to current work in syntactic theory, drawing on the key concepts of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. Assuming little or no prior knowledge of syntactic theory, Radford takes students through a diverse range of topics in English syntax - such as categories and features, merger, null constituents, movement, case, and split projections - and shows how the ‘computational component’ works within the minimalist framework. Beginning at an elementary level, the book introduces grammatical concepts and sets out the theoretical foundations of Principles and Parameters and Universal Grammar, before progressing in stages towards more complex phenomena. Each chapter contains a workbook section, in which students are encouraged to make their own analyses of English phrases and sentences through exercises, model answers, and ‘helpful hints’. There is also an extensive glossary of terms.

This textbook provides a concise, clear, and accessible introduction to current syntactic theory, drawing on the key concepts of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. Assuming little or no prior grammatical knowledge, Andrew Radford takes students through a wide range of topics in English syntax, beginning at an elementary level and progressing in stages towards more advanced material. There is an extensive glossary of technical terms, and each chapter contains a workbook section with ‘helpful hints’, exercises and model answers, suitable for both class discussion and self-study. This is an abridged version of Radford’s major new textbook Minimalist Syntax (also published by Cambridge University Press), and will be welcomed as a short introduction to current syntactic theory.

Andrew Radford's textbook is written for students with little or no background in syntax, and introduces them to key concepts of Chomsky's minimalist programme (e.g. merger and movement, checking, economy and greed, split VPs, agreement projections), as well as providing detailed analysis of the syntax of a range of different construction types (e.g. interrogatives, negatives, passives, unaccusatives, complement clauses). Illustrative material is drawn from varieties of English (Standard English, Belfast English, Shakespearean English, Jamaican Creole and Child English). There is a substantial glossary and an extensive integral workbook section at the end of each chapter with helpful hints and model answers, which aim to get students to analyse phrases and sentences for themselves within a minimalist framework.