What does it mean to be a syntactician?
The vast majority of people are not even aware that being a syntactician is an actual profession. The purpose of this blog post, and a few others that I have planned, is to familiarize the general public with the work that a syntactician does.
Without going into any specific theoretical concepts or principles, I sketch here for a general non-linguist audience the broad outlines of how a syntactician thinks about natural language.
As usual, I post a few of the ideas I have for a seminar in order to get feedback. That is, each of the following topics is a possible topic for my Spring 2026 seminar, and I need to choose one of them. The default is ‘Inversion’, but I could be persuaded to do one of the others, if there is enough interest.
1. Inversion
This course will look at a wide variety of inversion constructions cross-linguistically, including: quotative inversion, locative inversion, inverse copular constructions, subject-object inversion in Bantu, as well as other related constructions. The goal will be to show how these constructions fit into the theory of argument structure and voice of Collins (2024) (‘Principles of Argument Structure’, MIT Press) (see also Storment 2025 ‘Projection (your) Voice: A Theory of Inversion and Defective Circumvention’, Doctoral dissertation, Stony Brook). Students will be given the opportunity to do fieldwork with a consultant during the course of the semester.
2. Foundations of Minimalism
This course will discuss foundational issues in syntactic theory, including the notion of Merge, copies versus repetitions and workspaces. Discussion will focus on Marcolli (2025) (‘Mathematical Structure of Syntactic Merge’, MIT Press) and related papers (e.g., Chomsky et. al. ‘Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis’ CUP). By the end of the semester, students will write papers in the framework of Marcolli (2025), or write papers critiquing that framework.
3. Large Language Models and Generative Syntax
This course will review literature concerning the relationship between Large Language Models and linguistic theory. Some of the topics of interest include: (a) What is the basic architecture of a LLM? (e.g., How are vectors used for lexical representation?) (b) How are LLMs able to produce fluent and natural English text? (c) Can LLMs be taken as a possible theory of the human language faculty? (d) If not, can LLMs contribute anything useful to the study of human language? (d) Can generative syntax contribute anything useful to the creation of LLMs? Students will be expected to do projects directly investigating these issues.
Here are the links to the first three Morphology as Syntax workshops. Hopefully, the fourth will be held soon. Keep your eyes open for announcements:
MaS IV (TBA)
For convenience, I also include a link to Collins and Kayne 2023, which is the philosophical foundation of the MaS workshop series:
Here is an updated version of my CV.
Please let me know if you need any of the papers listed there.
How do you write a syllabus for the introduction to syntax at the graduate level (Syntax I, II)? This blog post poses some basic questions, and provides some preliminary suggestions, based on my experience in writing such syllabi over the last thirty years. I got my PhD 1993, and have been teaching Syntax I and II regularly ever since.
Although the framework I teach is Minimalism, most of the suggestions I make below could be used for a course based on a different syntactic framework. Most of them could also be used for an introductory course in a different subfield (e.g., phonology, semantics, acquisition, etc.).
Here is a rough draft for my graduate level course Syntax I (Fall 2025) at NYU.
Comments welcome!
Goals:
i. To retire after the age 65 in order to receive Medicare benefits.
ii. To retire by the age of 67 (or earlier) in order to receive NYU retirement package.
Age Year Activity
62 2025-2026 Teaching
63 2026-2027 Teaching
64 2027-2028 Sabbatical Togo (Full Year)
65 2028-2029 Reduced Teaching, NYU Option C
(or Full Teaching, NYU Option A)
66 2029-2030 Reduced Teaching, NYU Option C
(or Full Teaching, NYU Option A)
67 2030-2031 Retirement (location???)
Source:
NYU Tenured Faculty Retirement Program
https://www.nyu.edu/about/leadership-university-administration/office-of-the-president/office-of-the-provost/academic-policies-procedures/tenured-faculty-retirement-program.html
