Syntax: A Generative Introduction (Introducing Linguistics),   ISBN:9781405133845

Customer Rating: 

The book is actually really clear and explanatory. It was in good condition. One needs to follow every words and every example provided in order to fully understand the concepts explained. It's a great textbook for undergraduate class of grammar as well as graduate one.

Customer Rating: 

Carnie does a good job of explaining the theories of syntax, but even on the fourth printing of the second edition there are still many typos and inconsistencies. The third edition (coming soon) should resolve many of these problems.

Customer Rating: 

the topic itself is a bit hard to understand but he does a good job. the diagrams are plentious and well done. key words are in bold and are defined, making them easy to find later. the chapters are broken up and well organized with examples and boxes summarizing and clarifying concisely the main points. bolded words and their definitions are given again in a list at the end of each chapter, with further readings on this topic, followed by problem sets. a very Chomsky and generative grammar based explanation of syntax. most of the examples are in english but some other languages are included, mostly later in the book

Customer Rating: 

This book is an excellent introduction into some of the more in-depth ideas about syntax theory. The explanations are clear and the writing is accessible even to a beginning linguist. The exercises in the book encourage the student to think in an analytical fashion, which I find crucial to doing well in the subject.
To those among us who didn't enjoy the book, perhaps you should have taken a few linguistics courses before attempting generative syntax.

Customer Rating: 

I don't know what book Joo Y. Chung (see review below) was reading, but it wasn't the same book that I read. Carnie's textbook is a very accessible text that avoids technical jargon (not "snobbily dumbed down" as Chung asserts) and I think the argumentation is entirely straightforward. For example in chapter 5, Carnie shows how the X-bar theory follows directly from the evidence of replacement operations. The motivations are totally clear and obvious, nothing is an "edict from on high" (ok, in some of the later chapters, Carnie doesn't immediately explain somethings, but he always gets back to it later (e.g. in chapter 6 there is no explanation of why we have specifiers, but Carnie is totally up front about it, and the book returns to it in later chapters. Sometimes I didn't understand the motivations for things until I tried the problem sets, but overall I think everything was pretty clearly laid out.) I've taken two Syntax classes, one taught with Adger's book and one taught with Carnie's and Carnie's wins hands down. In fact, this book was far clearer than my professor ever was in his lectures. I wish there was some more detailed and more advanced material in the book, but other wise I think it's the best linguistics textbook that I've (been forced to) read.