Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.
In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.

美国语言学家乔姆斯基 (Chomsky)著，1957年荷兰海牙摩顿出版公司出版。全书共10章。在此之前，乔姆斯基于1955年写了《语言理论的逻辑结构》，由于种种原因，该书直到1975年才正式出版，《句法结构》可以说是该书的纲要。
《句法结构》是对美国传统的描写语言学的一场革命，其革命性首先表现在乔姆斯基站在理性主义的立场上反对描写语言学的经验主义。
他把语言学看成跟自然科学中的其他科学一样，可以从假设出发，进行推演并形式化。换句话说，非经验主义是可能的。《句法结构》有一半篇幅用于英语语法的形式化。非经验主义和形式化是转换生成语法的首要标志。
把句法关系作为语言结构的中心并以此说明语句的生成是这场革命的又一表现。为了描写和解释语言现象，乔姆斯基在《句法结构》中论证了语法的生成能力，认为应该把语法看成是能生成无限句子的有限规则系统。
它以"核心句"为基础，通过转换规则描写和分析不同句式之间的内在联系。该书分析了以"马尔可夫过程"为基础的通讯理论，认为它只能生成有限状态的语法，而这种"有限状态的语法"不能生成象英语这种语言里含有不连续结构的所有合乎语法的句子。基于此，乔姆斯基提出了转换语法模式，认为它才能生成所有合乎语法的句子而不会生成不合乎语法的句子。转换语法模式由短语结构规则、转换规则、语素音位规则三套规则构成。
短语结构规则有三种：合并、递归、推导式，其基本形式是x→y 。→读作"改写"，这个公式就是将x改写成y。短语结构规则生成的是"核心语符列"，不经过转换直接由这种语符列得出的基本句型叫"核心句"。
转换规则包括：移位、删略、添加。最后运用语素音位规则得出实际说出的句子。这三套规则中，最引人注目的是转换规则，因为短语结构规则和语素音位规则实际上继承了描写语言学的"直接成分分析"和语素音位的分析，转换是一种创新，它使语法具有更强的解释力。
《句法结构》把语义排除在语法之外，这一时期的理论框架不包括语义部分。乔姆斯基认为，语法理论不应该建立在语义的基础上，而应该用某种严格的、客观的方法去代替对于模糊的语义的依赖。不过这一立论在后来的发展中做了重大的修正。
《《句法结构》是转换生成语法第一阶段--古典理论的代表作，它的出版被人们认为是"乔姆斯基革命"开始的标志，也标志着转换生成语法的诞生。

Cook and Newson have written an extremely clear and highly comprehensible introduction to current syntactic theory. This text makes accessible many subtleties of linguistic argumentation, and explains in plain Eenglish the reasoning involved. The second edition greatly improves on the first edition, both in depth and scope, with much new material added and many confusing points clarified. The chapter on the “Minimalist Programme” is the most lucid explication of Chomsky's reccnt writings that I am aware of,Steven Franks, Indiana University .
Chomsky's Universal Crammar introduces both the general concepts of the theory particularly its goals of describing the knowledge of language and of accounting for how it is acquired, and the main areas of syntax such as X-bar theory, movement and government. Like the first edition, it puts the technicalities of the theory in the context of its wider ideas in a manner that makes them accessible to the student. The new edition is based on the current model of syntax that is most widely accepted, incorporating Barriers syntax, functional categories, and Relativized Minimality, and their implications for language acquisition. Further, it provides a sketch of the model in the process of development, the Minimalist Programme, with its attempt to reduce the theory to the minimal essentials.

本书是美国著名语言学家诺姆•乔姆斯基批判美国在冷战前后推行的“美国式民主”的力作。作者指出，美国在冷战前后，分别借口为遏制共产主义和恐怖主义对“民主”的进攻，扶植美国的代理人以独裁或专制方式控制广大发展中国家，以极不民主的方式在全球范围内推行“美国式民主”的价值观，美国才是打着“民主”旗号却行“遏制民主”之实的真正的“恐怖国家”。