Book Review: Elisabeth O. Selkirk, The syntax of words

Abstract

The Syntax of Words provides a new insight into the study of the structure of words and the system for generating that structure. This treatment is a firm departure from the hitherto traditional notion in the study of morphology which considers words as part of a language’s syntax or grammar and not having its own syntax. But as the author argues, the categories involved in word structure are distinct from those of syntactic structure, and that these two types of structures combine in significant ways. This study thus focuses on the word structure rules along with the structures they define. She presents a general theory of word structure which she exemplifies and defends by the application of facts about compounding and affixation. Her analysis centers solely on English.