The work collected in this book represents the results of some intensive
recent work on the syntax of natural languages. The authors' differing
viewpoints have in common the program of revising current conceptions of
syntactic representation so that the role of transformational
derivations is reduced or eliminated. The fact that the papers
cross-refer to each other a good deal, and that authors assuming quite
different fram{: works are aware of each other's results and address
themselves to shared problems, is partly the result of a conference on
the nature of syntactic representation that was held at Brown University
in May 1979 with the express purpose of bringing together different
lines of research in syntax. The papers in this volume mostly arise out
of work that was presented in preliminary form at that conference,
though much rewriting and further research has been done in the interim
period. Two papers are included because although they were not given
even in preliminary form at the conference, it has become clear since
then that they interrelate with the work of the conference so much that
they cannot reasonably be left out: Gerald Gazdar's statement of his
program for phrase structure description of natural language forms the
theoretical basis that is assumed by Maling and Zaenen and by Sag, and
David Dowty's paper represents a bridge between the relational grammar
exemplified here in the papers by Perlmutter and Postal on the one hand
and the Montague-
