The investigation of English syntax and the development of a theory of generative transformational grammar began 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 3160
Non-Traditional Format
This version of the course will be taught as writing intensive, which means that the course will include substantial and ongoing writing assignments that a) relate clearly to course learning; b) teach the communication values of a discipline—for example, its practices of argument, evidence, credibility, and format; and c) prepare students for further writing in their academic work, in graduate school, and in professional life. The written assignments will result in a significant and diverse body of written work (the equivalent of 6000 words or 25 pages) and the instructor (and/or the teaching assistant assigned to the course) will be closely involved in student writing, providing opportunities for feedback and substantive revision.
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. The X-bar schema applied to Prepositional Phrases, Noun Phrases, and Adjective Phrases: Universal attachment of different types of modifiers in complement vs. adjunct vs. specifier position
2. Coordinate Structures as a diagnostic for X-bar constituency
3. Nominal structure including possessor and quantifiers: The DP-hypothesis
4. Wh-movement and Subject-Aux Inversion: the CP-domain and different kinds of Cs (a feature-based C-Family flowchart)
5. Complement vs. relative-clause CPs and what the latter have in common with Wh-questions
6. Topicalization / Focus-movement
7. Local A-movement vs. apparently unbounded A'-movement
8. Clausal subjects and A'-movement
9. Tense, subject-verb agreement, auxiliaries, sentence-medial adverbs, and negation: The functional structure above VP
10. Cross-linguistic evidence for the locality of A'-movement: Island effects
11. A'-movement out of since, before, and after-clauses: adjunct islands
12. Wh-islands vs. subject and adjunct islands
13. VP-ellipsis: Movement vs. deletion operations
14. A-movement phenomena in X-bar Theory: Unaccusative, passive, unergative, transitive, and ditransitive constructions
15. Semantic/thematic ("theta") roles and the VP-internal Subject Hypothesis
16. Infinitive constructions: Raising vs. Control
17. Different kinds of empty categories in nonfinite relative clauses
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
