Assuming no prior grammatical knowledge, Understanding Syntax explains and illustrates the major concepts, categories and terminology involved in the study of cross-linguistic syntax. Taking a theory-neutral and descriptive viewpoint throughout, this book:
Understanding Syntax is an essential textbook for students studying the description of language, cross-linguistic syntax, language typology, and linguistic fieldwork.
- introduces syntactic typology, syntactic description and the major typological categories found in the languages of the world;
- clarifies with examples grammatical constructions and relationships between words in a clause, including word classes and their syntactic properties; grammatical relations such as subject and object; case and agreement processes; passives; questions and relative clauses;
- features in-text and chapter-end exercises to extend the reader's knowledge of syntactic concepts and argumentation, drawing on data from over 100 languages;
- highlights the principles involved in writing a brief syntactic sketch of language.
Understanding Syntax is an essential textbook for students studying the description of language, cross-linguistic syntax, language typology, and linguistic fieldwork.
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