Reading

There is no set text for this module. However students will find the following three
books particularly useful. As the library has limited numbers of copies, you may wish
to buy a copy to share with classmates:

1. Börjars, K. and Burridge, K. (2001). Introducing English grammar. London:

Arnold. (descriptive approach)
2. O'Grady, W.D., Dobrovolsky, M., Katamba, F. (1997). Contemporary
linguistics: an introduction. London: Longman. (The ‘Syntax’ chapter is a
particularly good introduction to the generative approach)
3. Croft, W. and Cruse, D.A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
(see part III, ‘Cognitive approaches to grammatical form’). (Available via
ebrary)

Additionally, students are expected to draw on a range of primary and secondary

sources. Some initial references are below:

Aarts, B. (2001). English syntax and argumentation. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan. (generative approach)
Burton-Roberts, N. (1997). Analysing sentences: an introduction to English syntax
(second edition). London: Longman. (descriptive approach)
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument
structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (construction grammar approach)
Goldberg, A. (2006). Constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language.
Oxford: OUP. (construction grammar approach)
Radford, A. (2004). English syntax: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. (generative approach)
Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding syntax. London: Arnold. (descriptive
approach)

Some further references:

Sells, P. (1987). Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories: an introduction to

government-binding theory, generalised phrase-structure grammar, and lexical-
functional grammar. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
(goes into some quite advanced detail, but introductory sections may be useful
- look at government-binding theory, which is similar to the generative
approach we have taken in class)

Moravscik, E.A. (2006). An introduction to syntactic theory. London: Continuum.

(Useful for a general overview of why syntactic approaches differ, and the
questions that all theories are trying to answer. Full text available online
via Google Books.)

I also recommend having a look at the materials on Blackboard under 'Web links' -
there is a recommended link for