The syntax of words

This monograph examines complex words -- compounds and those involving derivational and inflectional affixation -- from a syntactic standpoint that encompasses both the structure of words and the system of rules for generating that structure.The author contends that the syntax of words and the more familiar syntax involving relations among words must be defined by two discrete sets of principles in the grammar, but nevertheless that word structure has the same general formal properties as the larger syntactic structure and is generated by the same sort of rule system.This investigation of word structure and rule systems is based for the most part on the word syntax of English and related languages. One of its major conclusions is that English word structure can be "properly characterized solely in terms of a context-free grammar." Selkirk points out that the Semitic languages, for example, must be characterized in terms of a more elaborate schema. -- Back cover.