1 - Introduction

Summary

This introductory chapter of the book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides aim, structure and what is and is not included in the book. The book is designed to be a handbook in the truest sense of the term and the primary focus is the theory of generative syntax. The book is divided into six major parts and rich in empirical detail covering a broad range of different phenomena from a wide variety of the world's languages. In early generative grammar, statements enable anyone to synthesize or predict utterances in the language resurfaced as the phrase-structure (PS) rules that codified the well-formed underlying syntactic representations. With the introduction of the X-bar Theory of phrase structure, linear order was no longer automatically built into the phrase-structure component. Finally the book looks at linguistic variation, language development, and language production and processing, respectively.