Syntax I

This class is a reading-intensive introduction to syntactic theory. Its goal is to familiarise you with the ideas underlying current syntactic research in the "Principles and Parameters" framework, and some of their technical renderings. Throughout, emphasis is put on the ideas rather than the nitty-gritty of the mechanics. The goal being (i) to equip you with knowledge that allows you to acquire the nitty-gritty yourself, and (ii) to allow you to be ready for the fact that the technology changes fairly often, because our understanding of how to implement the general ideas still evolves relatively quickly.

Requirements:

Attendance.
Weekly readings. Almost every week you are required to read (part of) an article. That reading does not summarise the class, but rather constitutes its starting point. It is thus no substitute for attendance.
Problem sets: you will often be given a problem-set to work on between classes. Answers are due on the Tuesday morning following the class.
Writing a squib by the end of the semester.

Part I. Introduction.

[10 Sept. 2001] General Picture: the language organ, the acquisition paradox, interfaces, minimalist methodology, constituency and the basics of phrase-structure, overview of the main buildling blocks of current theories. Required background reading: extracts of an interview with Noam Chomsky.

What is meant by background reading is that:

the class will not be structured around it. It however discusses issues which are relevant to the topic, often in an illuminating way.
a portion of the class will be devoted to discussing your questions and comments regarding the text. You are therefore expected to read it carefully and note your questions, objections or comments. You might want to read required texts twice, as it might be easier to identify points of persistent unclarity on the second reading. Optimally, your last reading of the text should be not too long before the class, so as to keep the context of your questions freshly in mind

Part II. Fine-grained phrase-structure. The discovery that phrase-structure might be much richer and interpretatively more fine-grained than ever thought plays an increasingly important role in syntactic theory. It offloads much of the work that used to be done by "principles" onto a single statement about the order of elements in the structure. The nature of the structure also provides the backbone for all other principles, often strongly influencing their formulation.

[12 Sept. 2001] Classes cancelled.

[Topic 1 - 19 Sept. 2001] Specifiers and Complements. CP/IP. Negative inversion, head-movement.

[Topic 2 - 26 Sept., 03 Oct. 2001] I-to-C and failure thereof. Split-IP. Labelling and the Mirror Principle. Required reading: J-Y. Pollock (1989) "Verb-movement, UG, and the structure of IP", Linguistic Inquiry 20:365. Read sections 1-3 carefully, and section 4 more lightly.

[Topic 3 - 10 Oct. 2001] Consequences on the relationship between morphology and syntax. Required reading: Mark Baker (1985) "The Mirror Principle", Linguistic Inquiry 16:373. Read 1--4 (ie. up to p.400)

Optional: more on the rich-infl hypothesis. Mystery of the absence of V-mv in Slavic:

Vikner, Sten. 1997. 'V°-to-I° movement and inflection for person in all tenses', in Liliane Haegeman (ed.). The New Comparative Syntax, Longman, London, pp. 189-213.
Jonathan Bobaljik (2001) The Rich Agreement Hypothesis in Review

[Topic 4 - 17 Oct 01] Refining CP: topic, focus. Required reading: Luigi Rizzi (1997) "The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery", in Haegeman (ed) "Elements of Grammar". pp 281-304 (ie. §1-§7).
Possible refinements: clause-type particles, V2, embedded V2, infinitival complementisers

[Topic 5 - skipped (read only)] Refining the lower parts: VP-shells, split-VP, "little V". Required reading: R. Larson (1988) "On the double object construction", Linguistic Inquiry 19:335. Read §1-§3.1 (inclusive) and §7.

Part III. Subjects. A large amount of our syntactic knowledge builds on the fact that "subjects are special". This is true wrt. their position in the clause-structure, wrt. their movement (EPP, raising, passives, middles), wrt. their (lack of) relation to thematic roles and interpretation (expletives, quirky subjects, psych-verbs), their optionality in some languages (null-subjects), their categorial restrictions, etc.

[Topic 1 - 24 Oct 2001] The phrase-structure of Subjects. Required reading: McCloskey (1997) "Subjects", in Haegeman (ed) "Elements of Grammar", p. 197.

[Topic 2 - 31 Oct 2001] Thematically special subjects: passives, ergatives, middles, raising, quirky case, psych-verbs. Required reading: Belletti and Rizzi (1988) "Psych-verbs and Theta-Theory". Linguistic Inquiry 19:1-34. Read up to p. 312.

[Topic 3 - 7 Nov 2001] EPP and expletives. Attraction versus need-to-move. Cross-linguistic variation of expletive constructions and morpholgy.

[Topic 4 - 14 Nov 2001] Null Subjects. Principles and Parameters, and the history of syntactic theory. What null subjects and expletive constructions show us about them. Required reading: Rizzi (1990).

Part IV. A glance at Coreference

[Topic 1 - 21 Nov 2001] Binding Theory. Morphology and Binding. Reading: Reuland and Everaert, Deconstructing Binding" in Baltin a\nd Collins, pp. 634-669.

Part IV. Movement and Locality. While something like movement (dislocation) seems to exist in natural languages, this operation is heavily restricted. Search for the principles that restrict it - or for a formulation the movement operation that automatically yields those restrictions - has been the cornerstone of research between roughly 1970 and 1990 (and still plays a central role, though focus has moved towards phrase-structure and features).

[Topic 1 - 28 Nov 2001] Relativised Minimality. Introduction to quantificational movment. Unification of three types of movements. Unification of various quantificational islands. Required reading: Rizzi (1999) Relativised Minimality effects.

[Topic 2 - 5 Dec 2001] Unexpected Island effects: extraction out of weak islands and strong islands. Other types of movements: covert movement, P-stranding, remnant movement. Kayne's 'remnant everywhere'.