Reviewed by Katrin Hiietam, Manchester, UK

This is a well written and easy-to-follow introductory level textbook for students of English. What sets this publication apart from numerous other textbooks of the same kind is that it offers a formal analysis of English within the head driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) framework. Although this textbook is aimed at readers without any prior knowledge of English or syntactic analysis, it covers a wealth of topics, including agreement, raising, control, auxiliaries, the passive, and relative clauses. However, it does so in a nonintimidating way for complete beginners.

The book starts with a general introduction to the nature of human language and the basics of theoretical analysis—that is, how linguistic rules are discovered and why it is meaningful to study the structure of a language. Then, like any other good text on English syntax, it moves on to cover word structure, followed by phrase structure and the major phrase types.  Finally, syntactic forms, grammatical functions, and semantic roles are discussed, along with the relationship between form and function, syntactic heads, complements, and modifiers (Chs. 1–4).

In the next two chapters (Chs. 5–6), the authors introduce the basic concepts of HPSG and focus on subjects, complements, noun phrases, and agreement. The authors highlight the advantages of using HPSG, as this framework emphasizes the interaction between lexical properties and grammatical components and thus provides a full picture of the English language.

Chs. 7–8 deal with raising, control, and auxiliary constructions. Following that, Chs. 9–12 focus on related constructions, such as the passive and active voice, wh-questions and relative clauses, and, finally, constructions based on long-distance dependencies, such as the so-called ‘easy’ constructions (i.e. extraposition and cleft constructions).

Each chapter ends with exercises related to the topic that range from simple to more elaborate. The aim of this book is to equip students with an understanding of the syntax of English and to develop basic knowledge and skills for analyzing a language within a theoretical framework.

As this textbook is the product of many years of lectures by the authors and has been shaped by the students’ responses, it is a valuable and accessible tool for any teacher of English syntax.

In my opinion, the main advantages of this textbook are, that (i) the authors slowly walk a novice linguist through the maze of grammatical concepts and terminology, thus raising confidence and not curbing the desire to get to know more by overloading the student with excessively heavy technical terminology and content; and (ii) the data used in discussions are descriptive facts of English. If one were to ask whether yet another book on English syntax is necessary, the answer would probably be ‘Why not? As long as the text illustrates that it is possible to think differently (and not be considered in the wrong) about some grammatical phenomenon’.