Course Description
The investigation of English syntax and the development of a
theory of generative transformational grammar begun in Generative
Syntax. Course expands the range of constructions covered (now
including Wh-questions and relative clauses) and focuses on a
universal phrase structure system called X-bar Theory rather
than language-specific rules.
Athena Title
Advanced Generative Syntax
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in LING 3160W
Prerequisite
LING 3150 or LING 3150W
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- Students will precisely describe syntactic patterns in English as well as other languages and capture them in X-bar Theory, a phrase structure system that is more fine-grained and can capture universalities better than the Rewrite Rules in Generative Syntax.
- Students will use coordination as a diagnostic, formalize X-bar rules that capture the semantic modification relationships between the head of the phrase and its modifiers (complements vs. adjuncts) and draw tree diagrams illustrating these rules.
- Students will use so-called Island effects to diagnose Wh-movement in questions and relative clauses as well as other apparently unbounded movements like topicalization as types of A’-movement.
- Students will recognize and formalize the fact that rearrangements of phrasal constituents happening for discourse-related reasons (A’-bar movement) can cross finite clause-boundaries, while those happening for inflection-related reasons (A-movement) cannot.
- Students will collaborate with classmates to discuss, propose, and present problem-set solutions, both in class and when working on homework assignments outside of class.
- Students will present solutions to problem-sets in individually composed write-ups consisting of essay-style, coherent prose, arguing for the claims being made by supporting them with convincing evidence.
Topical Outline
- 1. Syntax as a science: applying the scientific method by observing data patterns, making hypotheses as to the rules underlying these patterns, and systematically testing these hypotheses
2. Grammaticality: distinguishing syntactic vs. semantic well-formedness
3. Diagnosing constituency (the formation of sub-sentential semantic groupings of words into phrases)
4. Tree-diagrams as illustrations of how phrase-structure rules generate phrases and sentences
5. The components of Generative grammar: mental lexicon, phrase structure rules, and transformations; deriving the surface of a sentence from its deep structure
6. Instances of recursion in phrase structure rules to capture the infinite number of grammatical expressions with the help of a finite set of rules
7. Structural ambiguity and how phrase structure rules capture it
8. Lexical entries and the lexical restrictions words come with (e.g., transitive vs. intransitive verbs)
9. Form rules capturing inflection (the syntax-morphology interface)
10. The phrase structure of Indonesian, including sentences with non-verbal predicates
11. English vs. Indonesian verbal and adjectival modifiers
12. Word order in English and Indonesian vs. Turkish and Japanese
13. Transformation rules, e.g., yes/no-questions, negation, topicalization, and passivization, and their ordering
14. Main vs. embedded clauses and finite vs. nonfinite clauses
15. French, Irish, and German word order
16. X-bar Theory: a more elaborate phrase-structure system to account for arguments vs. adjuncts and language universals
