About this Elements Series

In the mid-1950s the study of natural language syntax underwent a revolutionary shift in focus from the description of sentences to “the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages”, as syntax was defined in Syntactic Structures (1957). This new perspective aligned linguistics with the natural sciences (which are concerned with the underlying principles and processes that animate the natural world). The study of generative grammar that blossomed from this work in the early 1950s and 1960s has flowered into a field of research with enormous breadth and depth.  This series presents what has been learned about natural language syntax over the past sixty-five years, focusing on underlying principles and processes, how these apply across a broad range of languages, and where this research may be heading in the future (including what outstanding questions remain to be answered).

This series covers the core of syntax (operations and their combination in derivations of the structures they generate, including general principles that constrain these operations and structures). It also addresses the interfaces between syntax and other components of a grammar: the lexicon, semantics, and phonology. Additional volumes will address related topics, including diachronic syntax (the evolution of languages across time), the acquisition of syntax (the evolution of language within the individual), experimental syntax (the evaluation of speaker judgments, the empirical basis on which theories and analyses are constructed), computational approaches to syntax (a perspective that has been fundamental to syntactic research and the formulation of theories since the beginning), and an overview of the conceptual shifts that have occurred in the history of modern syntactic theory, still ongoing.

Elements in Generative Syntax will address the following questions:

• What are the key concepts of syntactic analysis?
• What are the major areas of research to which these concepts apply?
• What are the principal findings of the research?
• What are the implications of these findings for the field of syntax and the study of language?
• What are the unanswered questions and potential new avenues for research?
• What are the key readings?