Analysing Sentences

Book excerpt: This highly successful text has long been considered a standard introduction to the practical analysis of English sentence structure. As in previous editions, key concepts such as constituency, category and function are carefully explained as they are introduced. Tree diagrams are used throughout to help the reader visualise the hierarchical structure of sentences. The final chapter sets the analysis in the context of generative grammar. In this third edition, Analysing Sentences has been thoroughly revised. It has an attractive new layout, more examples, clearer explanations and summaries of major points. A major change concerns the analysis of auxiliary verbs, which has been revised to bring it more in line with current thinking. Clear development from chapter to chapter, together with the author’s accessible style, make this book suitable for readers with no previous experience of sentence analysis. A practical and reader-friendly text, it includes many in-text exercises and end-of-chapter exercises, all with answers, and Further Exercises, making it suitable for self-directed study as well as for taught courses. Noel Burton-Roberts is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. He is the author of The Limits to Debate: a Revised Theory of Semantic Presupposition (CUP 1989), the editor of Phonological Knowledge: Conceptual and Empirical Issues (OUP 2000) and Pragmatics (Palgrave, 2007), and the author of numerous articles on various aspects of linguistics and the English language.