ABSTRACT
Syntactic theory is concerned to specify what is and what is not possible in a language. How exactly can we do this? The standard answer is with syntactic rules: explicit statements that certain things are or are not possible. This chapter looks at a number of types of rule, starting with phrase structure (PS) rules. It considers the relation between rules and sentences while looking at the reasons for replacing phrase structure rules with two different kinds of rule. The fact that PS rules miss generalizations about linear order is a serious objection to them. The obvious way to avoid this problem is to assume separate immediate dominance and linear precedence statements. The chapter also considers the possibility that we need rules that are somewhat broader in their scope, what we can call non-local conditions on trees and intends to develop an analysis that is compatible with what one knows or assumes about other languages.
