Ian Roberts is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori, Pavia. In 2007 he became an Ordinary Fellow of the British Academy, and between 2019 and 2022 was the Chair of the Linguistics and Philology Section of the British Academy. He has published eight monographs and three textbooks, and has edited several collections of articles.

• Preface; 1. Goals and basic assumptions; 2. Hierarchy I: phrase structure and grammatical functions; 3. Hierarchy II: c-command, head-movement and locality; 4. Hierarchy & categories I: refining the structure of the clause and the VP; 5. Hierarchy & categories II: the structure of nominals; 6. Case and the nature of infinitives; 7. Features, case and agreement; 8. Hierarchy and linear order; 9. The origins of hierarchy: bare phrase structure; 10. Wh-movement: unbounded dependencies, islands, subjacency and barriers; 11. Covert movement, copy theory and reconstruction; 12. Phases and phase impenetrability; 13. Types of locality: phases and relativised minimality; 14. The syntax of silence I: ellipsis; 15. The syntax of silence II: empty pronouns; 16. Wrapping up: parameters, features and futures.

'In this elegantly written book, Ian Roberts shows students how universal hierarchical syntactic structure can be motivated and explores how the properties of that structure constrain the ways that syntactic relations work. With clarity, originality and precision, the book takes students to an advanced understanding of contemporary Minimalist syntax.' David Adger, Queen Mary University of London