本书是作者继其1997年所著、由剑桥大学出版社出版的两本教材《句法理论和英语结构》和《句法：最简方案介绍》后出版的又一本有关最简方案的句法学教材。相对来说，《句法：最简方案介绍》的内容高度浓缩，行文节奏较快，要求读者有一定的理论基础，因此适用于语言学专业的高年级本科生和研究生。本书针对的读者则是学习普通语言学的学生，修读过语言学入门的本科生即可使用。因此作者行文时，尽可能使用通俗的语言和形象的比喻来诠释艰涩的术语和抽象概念，这大大增强了本书的可读性。

本书清晰，详尽地介绍了建立在乔姆斯基最简方案理论基础上的一些最新句法理论。作为句法学理论和英语句法教材，本书内容丰富、由浅入深、可读性强，每章结束后都配有练习题供学生深入分析英语短语及名子，书中还提供了一个内容丰富的术语词汇表。即便是对句法理论了解不的读者亦可使用本书。

作者安德鲁·雷德福是埃塞克斯大学教授。他已经在剑桥大学出版社出版了六部句法学专著，并发表了大量句法学和句法学习得方面的文章。

Preface

1 Grammar

 1.1 Overview

 1.2 Traditional grammar

 1.3 Universal Grammar

 1.4 The Language Faculty

 1.5 Principles of Universal Grammar

 1.6 Parameters

 1.7 Parameter-setting

 1.8 Evidence used to set parameters

 1.9 Summary

 Workbook section

2 Words

 2.1 Overview

 2.2 Grammatical categories

 2.3 Categorising words

 2.4 Functional categories

 2.5 Determiners and quantifiers

 2.6 Pronouns

 2.7 Auxiliaries

 2.8 Infinitival to

 2.9 Complementisers

 2.10 Labelled bracketing

 2.11 Grammatical features

 2.12 Summary

 Workbook section

3 Structure

 3.1 Overview

 3.2 Phrases

 3.3 Clauses

 3.4 Specifiers

 3.5 Intermediate and maximal projections

 3.6 Testing structure

 3.7 Syntactic relations

 3.8 Bare phrase structure

 3.9 Summary

 Workbook section

4 Null constituents

 4.1 Overview

 4.2 Null subjects

 4.3 Null auxiliaries

 4.4 Null T in auxiliariless finite clauses

 4.5 Null T in bare infinitive clauses

 4.6 Null C in finite clauses

 4.7 Null C in non-finite clauses

 4.8 Defective clauses

 4.9 Case properties of subjects

 4.10 Null determiners

 4.11 Summary

 Workbook section

5 Head movement

 5.1 Overview

 5.2 T-to-C movement

 5.3 Movement as copying and deletion

 5.4 V-to-T movement

 5.5 Head movement

 5.6 Auxiliary raising

 5.7 Another look at negation

 5.8 DO-support

 5.9 Head movement in nominals

 5.10 Summary

 Workbook section

6 Wh-movement

 6.1 Overview

 6.2 Wh-questions

 6.3 Wh-movement as a copying operation

 6.4 Wh-movement, EPP and the Attract Closest Principle

 6.5 Explaining what moves where

 6.6 Wh-subject questions

 6.7 Pied-piping

 6.8 Yes-no questions

 6.9 Wh-exclamatives

 6.10 Relative clauses

 6.11 That-relatives

 6.12 Summary

 Workbook section

7 A-movement

 7.1 Overview

 7.2 Subjects in Belfast English

 7.3 Quotatives and idioms

 7.4 Argument structure

 7.5 Thematic roles

 7.6 Unaccusative predicates

 7.7 Passive predicates

 7.8 Long-distance passivisation

 7.9 Raising

 7.10 Comparing raising and control predicates

 7.11 Summary

 Workbook section

8 Agreement, case and movement

 8.1 Overview

 8.2 Agreement

 8.3 Feature valuation

 8.4 Uninterpretable features and feature-deletion

 8.5 Expletive it subjects

 8.6 Expletive there subjects

 8.7 Agreement and A-movement

 8.8 EPP in control infinitives

 8.9 EPP in other infinitives

 8.10 Summary

 Workbook section

9 Split projections

 9.1 Overview

 9.2 Split CP: Force, Topic and Focus projections

 9.3 Split CP: Finiteness projection

 9.4 Split VPs: VP shells in ergative structures

 9.5 VP shells in resultative, double-object and object-control structures

 9.6 VP shells in transitive, unergative, unaccusative, raising and locative inversion structures

 9.7 Transitive light verbs and accusative case assignment

 9.8 Evidence for a further projection in transitive verb phrases

 9.9 Extending the shell analysis to nominals

 9.10 Summary

 Workbook section

10 Phases

 10.1 Overview

 10.2 Phases

 10.3 Intransitive and defective clauses

 10.4 Wh-movement through spec-CP

 10.5 Wh-movement through spec-vP in transitive clauses

 10.6 Evidence for successive-cyclic wh-movement through spec-CP

 10.7 Evidence for wh-movement through spec-vP in transitive clauses

 10.8 The role of phases in lexical selection

 10.9 Questions about phases

 10.10 The nature of A-bar movement

 10.11 Summary

 Workbook section

Glossary and list of abbreviations

References

Index