Elements of Structural Syntax

This volume appears now finally in English, sixty years after the death of its author, Lucien Tesnière. It has been translated from the French original into German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and now at long last into English as well. The volume contains a comprehensive approach to the syntax of natural languages, an approach that is foundational for an entire stream in the modern study of syntax and grammar. This stream is known today as dependency grammar (DG). Drawing examples from dozens of languages, many of which he was proficient in, Tesnière presents insightful analyses of numerous phenomena of syntax. Among the highlights are the concepts of valency and head-initial vs. head-final languages. These concepts are now taken for granted by most modern theories of syntax, even by phrase structure grammars, which represent, in a sense, the opposite sort of approach to syntax from what Tesnière was advocating.
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Table of Contents
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List of stemmas | pp. xvii–xxvii
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Translators’ IntroductionSylvain Kahane and Timothy Osborne | pp. xxix–lxxiii
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Foreword | p. lxxv
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Preface to the first original edition | pp. lxxvii–lxxxi
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Preface to the second original edition | pp. lxxxi–lxxxii
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Part 1. The connection
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Preamble | pp. 3–96
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Structure of the simple sentence | pp. 97–189
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Question and negation | pp. 191–237
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Valency | pp. 239–284
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Metataxis | pp. 285–323
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Part 2. Junction
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| pp. 325–362
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Part 3. Transfer
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Introduction | pp. 365–413
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First-degree transfer, simple transfer | pp. 415–481
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First-degree transfer, multiple transfer | pp. 483–550
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Second degree transfer, simple transfer | pp. 551–632
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Second-degree transfer, multiple transfer | pp. 633–644
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Applications | pp. 645–680
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Index of terms | pp. 681–690
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Index of languages | pp. 691–693
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Index of linguists | pp. 695–696
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Index of citations | pp. 697–698
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