Bookreview: Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction, 2nd Edition

an OK textbook

Written by Sag, Wasow and Bender
Written in English
ISBN 978-1575864006

If you actually want to learn syntactic theory this is a good book. However, it's main focus would be for machine use. The methods presented are typical "paper and pencil" methods but are quite similar to the LKB language. You will, however, not learn anything about algorithms by reading this book.

The language is compact and dull and the use of footnotes is extreme. It's amazing that it actually is possible to put that many footnotes in a single book. The examples are plentiful and because of the huge font often span over a large number of pages. This makes it quite hard to keep track of where one is at times.

Be aware that the price of this book varies a lot, and it's worth while shopping around. The quality is very bad. The pages start falling out after reading only the first chapter. It's probably worth while investing in the hardback version.