Nicholas Sobin 
Syntactic Analysis 
The Basics

Highly readable and eminently practical, Syntactic Analysis: The
Basics focuses on bringing students with little background in
linguistics up to speed on how modern syntactic analysis works.

* A succinct and practical introduction to understanding sentence
structure, ideal for students who need to get up to speed on key
concepts in the field

* Introduces readers to the central terms and concepts in
syntax

* Offers a hands-on approach to understanding and performing
syntactic analysis and introduces students to linguistic
argumentation

* Includes numerous problem sets, helpfully graded for
difficulty, with model answers provided at critical points

* Prepares readers for more advanced work with syntactic systems
and syntactic analyses

Table of Content

Introduction: Introductory notes & references.

Chapter 1: Doing science with language.

Chapter 2: The structure and classification of words.

Chapter 3: Determining the structure of sentences.

Chapter 4: Rules of sentence structure–a first approximation.

Chapter 5: Assigning meaning in sentences.

Chapter 6: Some category-neutral processes.

Chapter 7: How structure affects pronoun reference.

Chapter 8: Complex verb forms.

Chapter 9: Real vs. apparent sentence structure.

Chapter 10: Generalizing syntactic rules.

Chapter 11: Functional categories.

Chapter 12: Questions, relative clauses, and WH movement.

Chapter 13: NP movement.

Chapter 14: Things to come–various aspects of ‘current theory’.

About the author

Nicholas Sobin is Professor of Language and Linguistics at The University of Texas at El Paso. He has published numerous articles on various topics in syntax in such journals as Linguistics Inquiry, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, and the Journal of Linguistics, and has held Visiting Scholar appointments at M.I.T. and Harvard University. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.