Natural Language and Universal Grammar: Essays in Linguistic Theory, Vol. 1 Book

The Mexican university where I used to teach wanted me to follow an inappropriate syllabus and use grossly outdated textbooks for an introductory course on English morphology. So I went online and found this gem on Amazon and designed my own course around it. I think it went pretty well, and my students seemed to think so, too. Of course, I let the main campus believe I was following their joke of a plan to the letter. After I resigned, the professor that took over from me went with the course I created and appropriated my materials, including my exams.

At only 160 pages, the entire book could be covered in the allotted 16 weeks, and the readings and exercises didn't overburden the students, though the latter was the least of my concerns. Even though they all spoke English as a second language, they had no problem understanding the concepts - even the more intricate ones. Carstairs-McCarthy cuts to the chase, and his style of writing lacks the soporific impenetrability of typical classroom tomes.

My only qualm was that there is only one version of the book, and it includes the answers to the exercises, so I had to give the students copies of all of the pages save the answers, which put me in violation of several international laws, I'm sure. Then, because the campus is about a mile from the US border and many of the students have USPS post office boxes, at least one student ordered a bona fide copy, and thereby gained access to all of the answers. Any talk of honor was moot because that bunch were some plagiarizing fools, and the university did little to discourage it.