Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis

Thinking Syntactically takes a new approach to teachingintroductory students the skills of relating data to theory andtheory to data. The main goal of the book is to create a mindsetfor scientific thinking and gives students a heightened sensitivityto language that empowers them to go beyond the material taught inclass. Though generative in spirit, this textbook does not focus onteaching the details of a specific theoretical approach, but ratherenables students to understand and evaluate different approachesmore easily.

The book is structured around a wide range of exercises that useclear and compelling logic to build arguments and lead up totheoretical proposals. Each step is conceptually and empiricallymotivated to cultivate the argumentation skills of the reader.Using data drawn from current media sources including newspapersand novels, Liliane Haegeman helps students formulate and testhypotheses.

Preface.

1: Introduction: The Scientific Study of Language.

Discussion.

Exercises.

2: Diagnostics for Syntactic Structure.

Discussion.

Exercises.

3: Lexical Projections and Functional Projections.

Discussion.

Exercises.

4: Refining Structures: From One Subject Position to Many.

Discussion.

Exercises.

5: The Periphery of the Sentence.

Discussion.

Exercises.

Bibliography.

Index.

Liliane Haegeman is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lille and a member of the CNRS research group SILEX. Her numerous works include Introduction to Government and Binding Theory (second edition, Blackwell, 1994) and English Grammar: A Generative Perspective (with Jacqueline Guéron; Blackwell, 1999).