"Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction" is unlike any other introductory textbook on the market, marking a return to 'generative grammar' in its original sense. Emphasizing the prediction and evaluation of grammatical hypothesis, the integration of syntactic hypotheses with matters of syntactic analysis, and problem solving, this textbook is considered to be "the best available introduction to unification-based syntactic theory." This "elegant" textbook focuses on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. This volume begins by exploring the inadequacy of context-free phrase structure grammars, motivating the introduction of feature structures, types, and type constraints as ways of expressing linguistic generalizations. Step by step, the student is led to discover a grammar that covers the core areas of English syntax that have been central to syntactic theory in the last quarter century, including: complementation, control, 'raising' constructions, passives, the auxiliary system, and the analysis of long distance dependency constructions.