Surface Syntax of English

Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt to describe the syntax of Contemporary English exclusively in terms of dependencies (most American works on the subject being in terms of phrase structure, or constituency). The three main features of it are: (1) a fully formal presentation, (2) a reasonably complete coverage of English surface syntax, and (3) an exposition oriented towards human readers (rather than computers). The book can be recommended for several categories of readers: specialists in English syntax, linguists interested in general and theoretical syntax, computational linguists, researchers in related fields (including psychology and artificial intelligence) concerned with automatic processing (both synthesis and analysis) of English texts.