Syntactic Structures

By Noam Chomsky,

Book cover of Syntactic Structures

Book description

Noam Chomsky's first book on syntactic structures is one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological theory is understood by experts…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why read it?

1 author picked Syntactic Structures as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In the history of science, fields of studies have evolved from empirical to principled. In linguistics, field linguists had understood the need to construct grammars of languages they encountered. Noam Chomsky understood the need to place grammars into a mathematical hierarchy of formalisms, showing through brilliant counter-examples which grammatical constructs could be handled by each formalism. For example, Chomsky showed that finite state automata model noun phrases beautifully but fail with if-then sentences. He showed that context-free grammars handle if-then, but fail at passive constructions. The book offered a new way to think about language.

From Dennis' list on to help you to think logically.

Want books like Syntactic Structures?

Our community of 11,000+ authors has personally recommended 57 books like Syntactic Structures.

Browse books like Syntactic Structures

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in linguistics, grammar, and language?

Linguistics 40 books
Grammar 15 books
Language 89 books