This comprehensive textbook is an engaging introduction to syntax. Clearly organized and accessible, it provides students with a thorough grounding in the analysis of syntactic structure using data from a typologically wide variety of languages. The book guides students through the basic concepts involved in syntactic analysis and goes on to prepare them for further work in any syntactic theory, using examples from a range of phenomena in human languages. It also includes a chapter on theories of syntax. Each chapter includes generous exercises and recommendations for further study. The emphasis on languages and data sets this book apart from other introductions to syntax. This book is an essential text for undergraduate and graduate students on courses devoted to the study of syntax. It will also be very valuable to students in other cognitive science fields who are interested in language.
"...it is a great success. The book is well organised and clearly written. It gives both general knowledge and a bird-eye view of the current syntactic research; it also addresses many particular syntactic problems.... VV's Introduction is an excellent guide for any student of syntax, including the beginners, but can also be used by syntacticians as a very convenient conspectus. It illustrates the main aspects of syntactic analysis with data from typologically diverse languages; the clear presentation helps a lot in understanding the most complicated syntactic problems. It is highly recommended as a textbook for any student in linguistics, and as a summary of achievements, trends, and problems in modern syntactic theory." Canadian Journal of Linguistics