Course Description
Formal analysis of syntactic phenomena, such as question formation, relative clauses, and topicalization (known as A'-dependencies), as well as the distribution of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns with respect to their antecedents (known as binding or anaphoric relations). Examples are drawn primarily from English.
Athena Title
Advanced Generative Syntax
Prerequisite
LING 8150
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
: The goal of this course is to cover a range of issues that have taken central stage in the Minimalist Program: the basic operations that create phrase structure (via Merge and Move), licensing of grammatical categories (movement and feature checking), economy conditions and restrictions on movement, the nature of phrase structure, the inventory of functional categories, inflectional morphology and the nature of parametric variation.
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: The typology of syntactic positions, clause structure, expletives and verb movement, morphology and word order in Germanic and Romance languages and the (non-)universality of functional categories.
Syllabus