Reviewed by András Kertész, University of Debrecen

The work under review is the third revised and enlarged edition of a successful textbook that has been widely used for over a decade. Besides a series of corrections, the current edition includes a new chapter on grammatical indeterminacy, terminological changes, new case studies, and the reorganization of some of the chapters.

The author adopts the syntactic framework of generative grammar as elaborated by Noam Chomsky. The central idea of the textbook is that the application of this framework to English syntax is associated with an explicit emphasis on the techniques of syntactic argumentation. The fifteen chapters of the book are divided into four parts.

Part 1, ‘Function and form’, is devoted to the introduction of basic notions and methods of analysis. Bas Aarts discusses grammatical functions such as subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, adjunct, word classes, and phrasal categories. The last chapter of Part 1 examines the interface between function and form. In regard to the methods of analysis, trees and labeled bracketing are also exemplified.

In Part 2, ‘Elaboration’, A deepens the application of the conceptual and methodological framework outlined in the previous section. Thematic roles, X-bar syntax, clause structure, and movement are discussed. At this point, the reader may have acquired enough experience to reflect methodologically on the concepts that have been introduced thus far.

Part 3 of the book is devoted to ‘Argumentation’. Its aim is to make explicit the methodology of the hypothesis-falsification approach as used in syntax. To begin with, the author motivates this methodology by an instructive example. In subsequent chapters, methodological principles such as economy of description, elegance of description, and independent justification are discussed. In illustrating these principles, constituency tests are carried out. Dummy elements and idiom chunks as well as equi and raising predicates are further mentioned.

Building on the methodological foundations of syntactic argumentation that have been introduced, Part 4, ‘Applications’, presents a series of case studies. The case studies show how decisions between conflicting analyses can be made, how evidence may be used to support or to falsify hypotheses, and how provisional solutions of problems in turn raise new problems. The topics discussed include noun phrase structure (e.g. a lot of books and a giant of a man) as well as verb complementation, subordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.

The book is a pedagogic masterpiece for several reasons. First, the chapters are didactically well-structured in that beside the main text, they include a list of key concepts, a series of exercises, and recommendations for further reading. Second, in the main text, new concepts and methods of analysis are systematically introduced. Finally, conscious reflection on the technique of syntactic argumentation is a highly effective means to introduce the student to the practice of problem solving in syntax.