Course Description
Techniques and formalisms for analyzing syntactic phenomena of human languages within the framework of generative grammar. Examples will be drawn from English.
Athena Title
GENERATIVE SYNTAX
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Syntactic theory (originating from Noam Chomsky's 1957 book Syntactic Structures) has several objectives: the first is to develop precise descriptions of aspects of the syntax of various languages, the ways in which specific languages combine words to form sentences. The second is to develop a general theory of syntax, specifying what languages have in common in a given area and how they can vary. This is called the theory of Universal Grammar. The third objective is to provide a thorough introduction to the Minimalist Program which is the most recent outgrowth of the theory of generative grammar. The Minimalist Program first identifies, through careful and insightful analyses, potentially problematic aspects of the GB theory and explores alternative conceptions of grammar involving more natural and less stipulative constraints.
Topical Outline
The choice and sequence of topics will vary from instructor to instructor and semester to semester. The choice of topics will depend on the textbook used and the selected readings. Syntactic theory being in constant evolution, the choice of supplementary readings is not likely to be the same from one semester to the next. A possible series of topics and assignments might resemble this: Merge and Move, the Minimal Link Condition, LF movement, head-to- head movement, DP movement, wh-movement, Raising, Control and Empty Categories.
Syllabus