Reference Resources for Syntax
Simply put, Syntax is the study of grammatical relations between words and other units within the sentence (From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2 ed.)
Below are some key (online) reference works for syntax.
The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax by Call Number: onlinePublication Date: 2017In this timely Handbook, the editors bring together the best of recent international scholarship on historical syntax. Each chapter is focused on a theme rather than an individual language, allowing readers to discover how systematic descriptions of historical data can profitably inform and challenge highly diverse sets of theoretical assumptions.
The Routledge Handbook of Syntax by Call Number: onlinePublication Date: 2014The Routledge Handbook of Syntax presents a comprehensive survey of the major theoretical and empirical advances in the dynamically evolving field of syntax from a variety of perspectives, both within the dominant generative paradigm and between syntacticians working within generative grammar and those working in functionalist and related approaches.
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences by Call Number: onlinePublication Date: 2015Linguistics A section has chapters on Syntax, Valency and Argument Structure, Syntactic Control, and more. Generative Grammar, Movement Theory and Constraints are in Linguistics B section. With lists for further reading. An excellent starting point.
The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax by Call Number: onlinePublication Date: 2013This Bloomsbury Companion is a wide-ranging resource for syntax. It covers fundamental issues, concepts, movements and approaches within the most relevant theoretical perspectives on syntax, encompassing the relationship between syntax and other levels of grammar. This book is a major tool for understanding syntax and its essential assumptions in the broader framework of current linguistic research.
The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax by Call Number: onlinePublication Date: 2013The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition.
New Books on Syntax at UBC Library
Library Subject Headings
UBC Library, like most academic libraries, uses Library of Congress Subject Headings. Books on Syntax can be found in the UBC Library catalogue under these Subject Headings:
- Grammar, Comparative and general - Syntax
- Generative Grammar
- Government-binding theory (Linguistics)
For books on a specific language, use this format (replace 'French' with whichever language you are interested in):
Syntax: Key Journals
Syntax publishes a wide range of articles on the syntax of natural languages and closely related fields. The journal promotes work on formal syntactic theory and theoretically-oriented descriptive work on particular languages and comparative grammar. It also publishes research on the interfaces between syntax and related fields such as semantics, morphology and phonology, as well as theoretical and experimental studies in sentence processing, language acquisition and other areas of psycholinguistics that bear on syntactic theories.
Theoretical Linguistics is an Open Access peer reviewed journal. Each issue contains one long target article about a topic of general linguistic interest, together with several shorter reactions, comments and reflections on it. With this format, the journal aims to stimulate discussion in linguistics and adjacent fields of study, in particular across schools of different theoretical orientations.