This book proposes a new model of syntax, in which all the fundamental units and properties of syntax are rethought.

Cedric Boeckx is Research Professor at ICREA (The Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies) and a member of the Department of Linguistics at Universitat de Barcelona.

Preface; Abbreviations and symbols; 1. Biolinguistic concerns; 2. Syntactic order for free: merge ¿; 3. Trusting in the external systems: descent with modification; 4. Elaborate grammatical structures: how (and where) to deal with variation; 5. Interdisciplinary prospects; Appendix 1. Déjà vu all over again?; Appendix 2. Switching metaphors: from clocks to sandpiles; Appendix 3. More on the loss of syntactic variation; Bibliography; Index.