This book is a concise historical survey of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. Peter Matthews examines the beginnings of structuralism and analyzes the vital role played in it by the study of sound systems and the problems of how systems change. He discusses theories of the overall structure of a language, the "Chomskyan revolution" in the 1950s, and the structuralist theories of meaning. The book includes exposition, in particular, of the contributions of Saussure, Bloomfield and Chomsky.

This book is a concise historical survey of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. Peter Matthews examines the beginnings of structuralism and analyzes the vital role played in it by the study of sound systems and the problems of how systems change. He discusses theories of the overall structure of a language, the "Chomskyan revolution" in the 1950s, and the structuralist theories of meaning. The book includes exposition, in particular, of the contributions of Saussure, Bloomfield and Chomsky.

Accounts of syntax are usually based on two assumptions: firstly, that a sentence comprises a hierarchy of phrases, forming a 'tree' structure; and secondly, that phrases have 'heads', on which subordinate units depend. These fundamental assumptions are questioned in this critical survey, which argues that neither concept is important as is claimed, and that syntactic relations are in fact far more varied. Drawing on data from English as well as other major European languages, it summarizes earlier accounts of syntactic structure and looks at the different ways in which specific constructions...

Accounts of syntax are usually based on two assumptions: firstly, that a sentence comprises a hierarchy of phrases, forming a 'tree' structure; and secondly, that phrases have 'heads', on which subordinate units depend. These fundamental assumptions are questioned in this critical survey, which argues that neither concept is important as is claimed, and that syntactic relations are in fact far more varied. Drawing on data from English as well as other major European languages, it summarizes earlier accounts of syntactic structure and looks at the different ways in which specific constructions...