16.2486, Review: Syntax/Textbooks: Fabb (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2486. Thu Aug 25 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2486, Review: Syntax/Textbooks: Fabb (2005)

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What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
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1)
Date: 23-Aug-2005
From: Oliver Streiter < ostreiter at web.de >
Subject: Sentence Structure 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 23:29:46
From: Oliver Streiter < ostreiter at web.de >
Subject: Sentence Structure 
 

AUTHOR: Nigel Fabb
TITLE: Sentence Structure, 2nd ed.
SERIES: Language Workbooks
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis) 
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-783.html 

Oliver Streiter, National University of Kaohsiung, Taiwan

OVERVIEW

The book under review, "Sentence Structure, Second Edition" has 
been conceived as a textbook for students with no prior knowledge of 
syntax. It might serve in a one-semester course on syntax. In a very 
accessible language the fundamental notions of modern syntactic 
theories are introduced in only 60 pages, which is about half of the 
book. No attempts are made to relate these notions to one of the 
major syntactic theories. Terminology and reasoning are compatible 
with phrase-structure-based generative approaches to syntax 
(Government and Binding (GB), Principle & Parameters (P&P), Lexical 
Functional Grammar (LFG), Tree Adjoining Grammars (TAG), Head-
driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) etc). In general, thorny 
questions such as the definition of semantic roles are systematically 
avoided.

To further facilitate the access to the subject, most example sentences 
are taken from Modern Standard English or dialectal variants (e.g. 
Scottish English), an approach similar to Radford's Textbook on 
Minimalism (see Radford 2004). As a consequence, students do not 
have to wrestle with glossed examples in exotic languages to 
understand the point the author makes. This, however, does not mean 
that the book is limited to students with (near) native speaker 
competence in English. Even students with a somewhat shaky 
competence in English will get through the text and discover in the 
exercises interesting aspects of English syntax. Exercises which 
require English native speaker's competence are relatively rare and 
could be reformulated in future editions, e.g. those exercises involving 
an acceptability judgment of movements.

While all this might sound like a description of an easy-going textbook 
unable to trigger syntactic enlightenment, there is still much to be said 
about the second half of the book. This includes about 10 pages of 
parallel, sentence-aligned corpora in 4 languages (Cantonese, Madi, 
Malay and Tamil + English). Students learn on 2 pages how to 
proceed from the sentence-aligned corpus to a word-aligned corpus 
by contrasting sentences of minimal difference. Students are thus not 
confronted with ready-made glossed example sentences, but have to 
construct their dictionaries and example-sentences themselves. The 
advantages of this approach are obvious. The students will acquire 
competence, confidence and a play-like attitude in handling foreign 
language data, since doing this alignment is great fun. They will 
discover linguistic phenomena before they are theoretically introduced 
(e.g. word order phenomena) and certainly will recall phenomena and 
data much better than in the top-down approach of most syntax books.

After a first run through the corpora for which the teacher has to 
allocate enough time and find the appropriate form (e.g. switching 
for and back between personal home work, group work and class-
room discussion), the corpora will be referred to in the exercises of 
each chapter. In these exercises, students will explore passive, 
question formation or subordinate clauses for the four languages after 
the respective notions have been discussed in the text or developed 
in exercises with English material. Students thus go through phases of 
induction and deduction, theory formation and theory testing.

Most of the 26 pages of exercises (almost half as much as 
explanatory text) are dedicated to let the student discover, explore 
and explain phenomena not handled in the explanatory text. Some of 
these phenomena are named and shortly introduced (e.g. Dative Shift, 
zero-derivation) while others remain unnamed (e.g. binding, do-
support, gerund, mixed categories, preposition-stranding vs. pied-
piping, subject and object control, small clauses). The nature of the 
exercises, which focus frequently on unconventional examples from 
different dialects or particular English words like NEVER, FAST, 
ENOUGH or THOUGH, requires autonomous and creative thinking as 
solutions to the problems are not within the reach of a search engine. 
15 pages provide answers to most questions, thus making the book 
quite suitable for self-studies. A considerable portion of the book is 
used to let students exercise the drawing of tree structures and derive 
the underlying regularities. Tree structures are kept as simple as 
possible and don't become object of the linguistic reflection. Phrase 
structure rules are not explicitly discussed in the book.

CONTENT 

Chapter 1 introduces the methodology of syntactic research, phrase 
structures and tests for the identification of phrases. Although the 
focus of the chapter is clear, i.e. let the student understand the very 
central position of the phrase in syntactic reasoning, some unrelated 
topics such as prescriptivism or truth values emerge.

Chapter 2 continues to explore the notion of phrase, analyzing in 
detail the English noun phrase. Word classes, morphology and open 
vs. closed classes are introduced to characterize the components of a 
noun phrase.

Chapter 3 discusses adjective phrases, adverb phrases and 
preposition phrases, the notion of head and degree modifiers. The 
exercises mainly develop the internal structures of AdvP and PP 
including intransitive PPs.

Chapter 4 focuses on the verb and verb phrase, mentioning 
agreement, idioms, grammatical roles and auxiliaries. The exercises 
introduce the zero-derivation of verbs and the many-to-many relation 
between word class and meaning (something which Radford (2004) or 
Carnie (2002) directly mention when defining word classes). While 
one exercise suggests treating auxiliaries as head of VP, the 
suggestion remains without visible effect in the tree structures to 
follow. Overall, exercises are more loosely connected and there is 
maybe no major insight being aimed at.

The focus of Chapter 5 is the drawing of tree structures, discussing in 
addition the nature of conjunctions (coordinations) and compound 
words. The terms 'root', 'mother', 'daughter', 'sister', 'immediate 
containment' and 'non-immediate containment' are introduced. The 
formulation introducing the term 'constituent' is sloppy. It fails to make 
the distinction Carnie makes between a 'constituent' and 'constituent 
of' and might read simply as 'constituents are nodes'. The exercises 
let the student practice the drawing of trees, find regularities in 
compound formation (not only compound nouns) and contrasts 
complex proper names with compounds.

Chapter 6 returns to the topic of noun phrases and discusses variants 
of simple noun phrases, e.g. those containing a pre-nominal genitive, 
demonstratives, quantifiers, partitive structures and relative clauses. 
Three exercises deepen the understanding of pre-nominal genitives, 
two are concerned with demonstratives. Tree-drawing, rule induction 
and rule testing are as well part of the exercises as the discovery of 
mixed categories (English gerund) and the phenomenon of 
preposition stranding.

Chapter 7 contrasts root sentences and subordinate clauses, 
introducing subordinate conjunctions (including FOR) and accusative 
subjects of infinitival clauses. Practical hints are given of how to draw 
tree structures with subordinate clauses. In the exercises, again, much 
space is dedicated to let the student practice the drawing of trees. 
Students are encouraged to develop analyses for accusative subjects, 
small clauses, the behavior of THOUGH, SO, NEVERTHELESS, 
THEREFORE and BECAUSE and discover the scope of NOT.

Chapter 8 relates meaning to form. After the introduction of the 
terms 'predicator', 'arguments', 'thematic roles', structural 
rearrangements are discussed which do or do not significantly affect 
meaning (active, passive, topicalization, WH-questions, yes-no 
questions). This topic is elaborated in the exercises where the 'Dative 
Shift', the 'Middle', the 'GET passive', the 'SEE topicalization' and right 
shifting are introduced.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

What sets this book apart from all other introduction into syntax is its 
constructivist approach. Thus, syntax and example sentences are 
explained to a minimal extend only. Much more is left to the 
exploration by the reader who develops practical skills, linguistic 
intuition, curiosity, unconscious familiarity with syntactic phenomena 
and a basic understanding of the relation of meaning and form. 

Although it might be unreasonable to claim that such a Piaget-like 
approach to syntax is necessarily better than what other textbooks on 
syntax achieve (Carnie (2002), Kroeger (2004), Ouhalla (1994)), it is 
nevertheless possible to identify areas where this book might be more 
suitable as a base for a course on syntax, e.g. courses for non-
linguists (e.g. translators, language teachers, students of literature), 
courses for relatively young (old) students or as preparation to one of 
the aforementioned books. On the other hand, this book might be 
inappropriate in a curriculum related to computational linguistics, 
natural language processing, logic, mathematical linguistics etc).

The question in how far this book might prepare for the reading of 
more theory-oriented textbooks on syntax might depend on how 
implicit knowledge acquired with this book can be turned into explicit 
knowledge. The book itself is only partially helpful in doing so. A 
number of terms are mentioned without marking them explicitly as 
central syntactic term, definitions of terms are not recapitulated in a 
box (as e.g. Cook 1993) and phenomena are discussed without 
naming them (see above). The teacher might thus assume a central 
role in linking back and forth between the content of the book and 
notions of modern linguistic theory.

Another, more serious question might be in how far a simplified 
approach, a pedagogical adaptation, really facilitates the access to a 
science or whether they complicate the access through imprecise 
formulations, misleading metaphors etc. In this light the book under 
discussion is a true star as it remains scientific, exact and systematic. 
Exceptions are what seems to me a sloppy definition of a constituent 
(see above) and maybe the style of tree structure chosen and 
practiced in this book. More advanced/progressive/HPSG-
like/minimalist tree structures might be as easy to learn and would 
bring the reader closer to contemporary linguistic theories. No matter 
how such an improvement might look like, tree structures such as 
4.11, 6.11 or 8.14 shouldn't be allowed to look that flat.

As for the syntactic theories, although the book might be understood 
as promoting syntactic thinking without enforcing a specific syntactic 
theory, one should be aware that this is only possible to a limited 
extend. Much reasoning in this book is based on phrase structures 
thus excluding dependency grammar, relational grammar and others. 
In regions of the world where dependency grammars are a main 
source of linguistic conceptualization, such as in East-Europe or Asia 
(e.g. Boguslavskij et al. 2000) the book under discussion might not fit 
into a linguistic curriculum. For other regions, be it the United 
Kingdom, West-Europe or the Americas, full compatibility is assured.

To sum up, the book represents an excellent and flawless attempt to 
learn syntax through active explorations. Adopting this book in a 
syntax course should be based on conscious decisions which take 
into consideration the cultural background of the students, the 
linguistic environment and the nature of the university program. When 
used in conformity with these factors, the book will do a wonderful job.

REFERENCES

Boguslavskij, I. M., Grigorev, N. V., Grigoreva, S. A., Iomdin, Leonid L., 
Kreidlin, M. V., Sannikov, V. Z. and Frid, N. E. (2000) Annotirovannyj 
korpus russkix tekstov: koncepcija, instrumenty razmetki, tipy 
informacii. Proceedings of the Dialogue-2000 International Seminar in 
Computational Linguistics and Applications, Volume 2, Pages 41-47, 
Prodvino, Russia.

Carnie, Andrew (2002) Syntax, A Generative Introduction. Oxford: 
Blackwell.

Cook, V. J. (1988/1993) Chomsky's Universal Grammar. An 
Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kroeger, Paul R. (2004) Analyzing Syntax. A Lexical-functional 
Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ouhalla, Jamal (1994) Introducing Transformational Grammar, From 
Rules to Principles and Parameters. London: Edward Arnold.

Radford, Andrew (2004) Syntax, A Minimalist Introduction. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Oliver Streiter teaches computational linguistics and corpus linguistics 
at the National University of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His current research 
focuses on the compilation and annotation of linguistic resources to 
support low density languages.





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