Reviewed by Dennis Ryan, Raleigh, NC

Andrew Radford’s Analysing English sentences: A minimalist approach relies on the findings of Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist program (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), but also on a host of linguists whose publications support or take issue with Chomsky, to make a convincing case for deep-structure syntax. R explains key aspects of Chomsky’s program (e.g. universal grammar and the language faculty, better known as the innateness hypothesis). Although the book’s complexity increases with each chapter, the new information is contextualized well by reference to what was presented in prior chapters.

Ch. 1, ‘Grammar’ (1–38), briefly examines explanations of English syntax offered by traditional grammarians, then by Chomsky. Traditional grammar is taxonomic and descriptive whereas Chomsky’s transformational grammar is cognitive, characterized by investigations of mental states, its ultimate goal being to provide linguists with a theory of universal language use while keeping the grammatical apparatus at a minimum—therefore, minimalist. Ch. 2, ‘Structure’ (39–91), describes how words are combined into phrases and sentences by binary merger operations, visually represented by tree diagrams that manifest the constituent structure of corresponding verbal expressions. Ch. 3, ‘Null constituents’ (92–142), discusses sentence formations that contain unspoken constituents (words or phrases) that nonetheless make an important contribution to the syntax and semantics of a sentence.

Ch. 4, ‘Head movement’ (143–82), looks at merger operations that underlie the movement of modern English auxiliary verbs and earlier Elizabethan English main verbs. Ch. 5, ‘Wh-movement’ (183–237), continues to look at head movement, but this time the movement of wh-questions and wh-clauses into the specifier position of complementizer phrases, the sentence position normally occupied by clauses beginning with that, for, and if. Ch. 6, ‘A-movement’ (238–80), examines the syntax of subjects that R had previously treated as non-moving, entrenched in the specifier/subject position of the sentence or clause.

In Ch. 7, ‘Agreement, case and A-movement’ (281–323), R takes a closer look at the syntax of subject-predicate agreement in Chomsky’s minimalist terms, including probe/goal and c-command, and how agreement dictates nominative case assignment. Ch. 8, ‘Split projections’ (324–78), takes its title from R’s contention that various projections (a head word and its complement) can split into various sub-projections, and that evidence suggests verb phrases can be subdivided into lexical verb and light verb projections. Finally, Ch. 9, ‘Phases’ (379–438), reviews Chomsky’s arguments that syntactic structures are built up in phases.

R has put together a well-organized textbook for teachers and students that focuses on specific topics, with summaries, extensive bibliographies, and workbook sections and model answers to exercises at the end of each chapter. Ironically, in calling for a minimal grammar, R has compiled a formidable lexicon of language operations: his glossary contains roughly 940 minimalist terms, though he incorporates many constructs without a counterpart in traditional grammars. Nevertheless, I note that R must use traditional grammar to explain minimalist grammar and must use the same words in the same language it is trying to analyze, which suggests that the task of fully understanding language is insurmountable. In this context, it is significant that R relies on such words as ’intuition’ and ‘intuitive guesses’, which suggests that some problems of language are better left to the silence within.