Introduction to Grammar

This is a brief book on the basics of grammar. It provides an overview of syntax and morphology, two of the central subfields of linguistics, and their interactions. It relies only on widely-accepted notions in theoretical linguistics, such as concatenative morphology, syntax trees, X-bar structures and phrase structure grammars. However, it does not adhere to any particular current theory of grammar. Linguistics is a prerequisite. It is intended to be followed by such books as Morphology, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Government and Binding Theory, and The Minimalist Program.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Syntax
  • Morphology
• Parts of Speech
  • Lexical Categories
  • Functional Categories
• Constituency
  • X-bar Theory
• Grammatical Functions
  • Arguments and Subcategorisation
  • Voice
  • Adjuncts
• Long-Distance Dependencies
  • Relativisation
  • Interrogatives
• Morphological Processes
• Bracketing
• Forms of Adjectives and Nouns
• Forms of Verbs and Adverbs
  • Tense and Aspect
  • Mood and Evidentiality