- Seminar in Syntax: The Syntax-Phonology Interface (graduate, with Arto Anttila) [ description ]
The nature of the syntax-phonology interface. To what extent does syntax influence phonology and in what ways does phonology influence syntax? Topics may include: word order and linearization, second-position effects, prosodic structure and the prosodic hierarchy, sentential stress, ellipsis, focus, allomorphy, among others.
- Seminar in Syntax: Head Movement (graduate) [ description ]
This seminar will focus on a set of issues related to Head Movement as a descriptive and analytical device. We will explore a wide range of phenomena in which Head Movement has been implicated: from those that have to do with morphophonological word formation to those that concern word order differences involving heads. Possible topics include the morphophonological amalgamation of functional and lexical heads, cliticization and incorporation, verb-first and verb-second phenomena, "long" and WH head movement, stylistic fronting, and many others. Our close investigation of these phenomena should lead to a better understanding of the central properties of Head Movement, especially as they pertain to its locality, the order of affixes, the (lack of) correlation between affixation and word order differences, among others.
Throughout, we will be concerned with how the properties of Head Movement should be accounted for theoretically. We will try to evaluate, compare, and improve on various theoretical approaches, with a particular focus on the relation between Head Movement and both phrasal movement and morphophonological word formation. Our investigation will likely bear on at least a couple of central questions in syntax. One concerns what the atoms of syntax are and how they correspond to morphophonological words -- in particular, what is the role of Head Movement in generating apparent mismatches between syntax and morphophonology? Another question concerns the fundamental but still mysterious notion of the extended projection and its relevance to word formation and Head Movement.
- Structure of Slavic (graduate, with Vera Gribanova) [ description ]
Central topics in the syntax, morphology, and phonology of Slavic languages and how they bear on current theoretical debates.
- Foundations of Syntactic Theory III (graduate, with Vera Gribanova) [ description ]
This course introduces contemporary approaches to syntactic theory. Focus is on a few central topics of current interest such as ellipsis, binding, locality, movement, case and agreement, among others.
- Foundations of Syntactic Theory II (graduate) [ description ]
The second course in the two-quarter graduate-level sequence in syntax. The course focuses on the nature of unbounded dependency constructions such as constituent questions, topicalization, relative clauses, clefts, among others. Some of the themes of the course include A-bar movement, constraints on extraction, successive cyclicity, as well as variation in the way unbounded dependencies are established crosslinguistically. The practical aim of this course is to further develop a solid conceptual, analytical and empirical basis for research in syntax; this includes the honing of syntactic argumentation skills, which is accomplished through written work and in-class discussion.
- Winter 2020
- Winter 2018
- Winter 2017
- Winter 2016
- Spring 2015
- Research Workshop (graduate)
- Crosslinguistic Syntax (undergraduate) [ description ]
This course is a data-driven introduction to the study of syntax and to the approach of syntax known as generative grammar. Generative grammar seeks to explain what constitutes the human capacity to acquire and use language, and has thus significantly affected not only the field of linguistics, but all fields touching cognitive science (e.g., psychology, philosophy, computer science, etc.).
In this course, we will explore how languages are systematically alike in their basic sentence structure and the ways in which they are systematically different. Our approach will be to construct a partial formal theory of sentence structure -- i.e., a grammar -- which attempts to model what a native speaker needs to know (not necessarily consciously) in order to be able to speak their language.
This course achieves its goals through regular homework assignments and discussion in class and section. Throughout, students will be directly involved in the analysis of natural language data as well as the construction and evaluation of syntactic theories. We will draw on data from a diverse array of the world's languages, including but not limited to English.
- Fall 2019
- Spring 2018
- Fall 2016
- Spring 2016
- Winter 2015
- Linguistic Diversity and Universals: The Principles of Language Structure (intro sem)