Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (Oxford Core Linguistics)

The book is written within the most recent minimalist framework, which is based on "Derivation by Phase" (Chomsky 2001). Upper intermediate undergraduate students on Linguistics or graduate students will find out the book an excellent and updated guide to understand what's going on on Syntax. However, I don't think that this book is easy for students who don't have any background in generative Syntax.  Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (Core Linguistics)

David Adger's book, "Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach" is currently being used for a class on generative syntax that I'm taking. I have mixed feelings about it. From a student's perspective, it's extremely dense because Adger takes so much time motivating the system he's proposing throughout the book. It's almost like a syntactic novel in that sense. Each chapter can't really stand alone because it's slowly building on itself and each chapter motivates something that comes along in the following chapter.However, all of this motivation, while helping to create one logical system, can be a bit awkward or ponderous. It's as if the justifications are so obscure or "illogical" (Thanks Mr. Spock), that, at times, Adger is forcing his system a bit.Not having a background with the earlier incarnations of generative syntax (government & binding, principles & parameters, etc), I can't really comment on how Adger is redefining the processes that were taking place in those systems. But I can say that, given the system that Adger is proposing, his book does a nice job of including plenty of details to clarify (even if the clarifications are a bit obscure) his purpose.

This book is very valuable. Reading this book will prepare you to real syntax arguments. I do recommend this book for anyone who is interested in theoretical syntax.

Adger is very clear in his explanations, and he does a good job making difficult subject matter understandable. There are some typos, but that doesn't stop me from giving the book five stars.

For those who need or want a strong introduction to minimalist syntax, this is an essential book. Simply a must.

I'm taking an introductory syntax course and using this book. The book is too wordy and at the same time overuses abstract concepts that are just introduced mostly without examples which could have made the text understandable. The author refers you to different chapters from the very beginning to understand each concept making you feel overwhelmed. He could just explain things simply, move on and get to other points when it's the right time. The concepts are easily understandable when a teacher explains them to me but this book just makes me feel I'm stupid. I have never found a book this difficult and don't really know why my teacher asked us to purchase this for an introductory course in syntax.

We used this book in my final year undergrad class and I loved it. It's true that there are some annoying typos, but actually fewer than I found in other similar books, like Carnie's. What I really liked was the methodical, step by step, explanations, and far from being terribley (sic) written, I thought the writing was clear and easy to follow (although the subject matter was, it''s true, really hard). I think that this isn't an introductory text, so the blurb on the back which says it is isn't right, but as an introduction to the Minimalist theory, at advanced undergrad level or higher, it's very good.

We used this book as a text for a 400 level undergraduate advanced syntax course this summer (2004). Part of the purpose of the course was to evaluate the suitability of this book as a text (and minimalism as content material) for linguistics majors taking a 200 level syntax class in the future.The book is highly technical, as is any serious linguistics text. According to the description, it is designed for readers with no linguistics background, but we were unable to imagine it being used as a text for any class beneath the level of ours. It probably would be more appropriate for use in a graduate seminar. There is no way it could be used for freshman with no linguistics background, and at the 300 level, English majors would be hung out to dry.Issues? Lots of them made the book's arguments and logic hard to grasp. You're following with difficulty, reading and rereading as a concept is developed, and suddenly you realize one of the definitions you were given at the beginning has been completely changed, with no indication or explanation.The book was full of obscure examples, which raised more questions than it answered at times, because common examples don't fit in the paradigm.Examples of tree structure were very limited, showing only fragments of trees, which made the exercises at the end of the chapter extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming.The last chapter seemed to be written as an afterthought. I think if the author had reread his examples, he would have seen that the verbs he had used as examples in his comparison were in no way functionally equivalent, although he seemed to be under the impression they were.Proofreading would have been helpful, as there were lots of typos, some of which changed the meaning of the text or examples.Some of us ended up wondering the extent to which the problems were with the book, and the extent to which they were with minimalism itself.

Perfect

good

Wenn auch mitlerweile nicht mehr ganz aktuell, empfehle ich jeder Syntax interessierten diese Einführung wärmstens. Sie ist auch nicht nur für das ENglische geeignet, auch für Romanisten liefert dieses Buch eine sehr wertvolle Unterstützung!