Here is the syllabus for my graduate Syntax II course, Spring 2017. I would be happy to receive feedback, or talk about it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/egq8pt0i8npvpyr/Syllabus%20Spring%202017.pdf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/egq8pt0i8npvpyr/Syllabus%20Spring%202017.pdf?dl=0
Syllabus Syntax
II (Syntactic Theory and Analysis)
LING-GA
2310
Spring 2017
Instructor: Professor
Chris Collins
Office: 10
Washington Place, Room 411
Phone: 28763
Time: T/TH 12:30
- 1:45pm
Place: 10 Washington
Place, Room 103
Office Hours: by appointment
Course Description:
Syntax I and II
together form a comprehensive introduction to syntactic theory,
in the framework of Principles and Parameters and Minimalism.
Syntax I is concerned
with phrase structure, argument
structure (unaccusatives, unergatives, transitives, double object constructions, psych-verbs), Case and
agreement (Agree), A-movement (passives, raising
constructions), head movement,
binding and control.
Syntax II will cover
A’-movement, the left periphery,
differences between A- and A’-movement, weak and strong crossover, remnant movement, successive cyclic
movement, general constraints on movement (minimalist conception of
phases, relativized minimality), that-trace
effects, the adjunct/argument asymmetry, covert movement (QR, Wh-in
situ) and multiple wh-questions.
Emphasis will
be on reading the primary literature and writing a research paper.
Course Requirements
Readings
I have carefully planned the
syllabus so that you have at most one reading per class, and sometimes only one
reading per week. I have also indicated additional optional readings for people
who want to continue looking into the topic. Since the number of assigned
readings is few, you should plan read the assigned papers before class and be
ready to discuss them in class.
Problem Sets
There will be short problem sets in
the first half of the semester. Problem sets will be assigned on Thursday and
due the following Thursday. You may discuss the homework problems together, but
the actual written work must be your own.
Small Group Presentation
Each student will be in a small
group of two that will be responsible for presenting one paper during the
semester. In your presentation, you should summarize the main data and
arguments of the paper. In addition, you should think of discussion questions,
connections to other readings, and if possible, additional data that bears on
the proposals in the paper. You should arrange to see me the week before your
presentation to show me your handout and discuss any questions you have about
the material.
Individual Meeting
In the beginning of the semester
(around the third week), each student will meet with me to discuss their paper
topic. What area do you find interesting? Have you already identified some
problem or data that you want to work on?
Paper Proposal
Halfway through the semester, you
will submit a paper proposal for your final paper. The proposal should be
around 3 pages (double-spaced) long. It should include a statement of the
topic, some data (just a few sentences), a brief sketch of an analysis, a plan
for working on the topic and a few references that you plan to study. Paper
proposals will be distributed to the whole class, and one of your colleagues
will be in charge of providing written feedback on your proposal. We will spend
one or two class periods discussing the proposals.
Final Presentation
Students will present their papers
during the last week of class. Each presentation should last around 15 minutes,
with an additional 5 minutes for discussion.
Final Paper
A significant focus
of the course is the final paper, which should be around 15 pages (double
spaced) long. Your aim should be to write a paper that will provide a solid
foundation for future work (e.g., a syntax qualifying paper, a conference
presentation or a published article). We will work on it throughout the
semester.
Grading
Assignments 40%
Small Group Presentation 10%
Paper Proposal/Commentary 10%
Final Presentation 10%
Final Paper 30%
Course Materials
You are not required to purchase any materials for this class. All readings will be posted to Dropbox. For people who need background
reading, the following textbook is recommended:
Dominique Sportiche, Hilda Koopman
and Ed Stabler. 2014. An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory.
This
book is available online through NYU. It is also available at a reasonable
price on Amazon.com.
Schedule:
The schedule may be revised. The
dates may change. Topics and readings may be dropped and/or added depending on
our progress and the interest of the students.
Week 1: Jan.
24, 26
Tuesday: Syllabus,
Outline of Minimalist Syntax,
A Brief History of Generative
Grammar.
Thursday: Merge
and Remnant Movement
Reading:
Muller, Gereon. 1998. Incomplete
Category Fronting. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. [chapter 1]
Optional:
Collins, Chris and Edward Stabler. 2013. A Formalization of
Minimalist Syntax. Syntax.
Week 2: Jan.
31, Feb. 2
Tuesday: A vs.
A’-Movement
Thursday: A vs.
A’-Movement (cont.)
Homework 1: Assigned Feb. 2, due Feb. 9
Optional:
Culicover,
Peter. 2001. Parasitic Gaps: A History. In Culicover and
Postal
(eds.), Parastic Gaps. MIT Press,
Cambridge.
Lasnik,
Howard and Tim Stowell. 1991. Weakest Crossover. Linguistic Inquiry 22.4,
687-720.
Obata, Miki and Samuel David
Epstein. 2011. Feature-Splitting, Internal Merge:
Improper Movement, Intervention, and the A/A’ Distinction. Syntax 14.2, 122-147.
Takahashi, Shoichi and
Sarah Hulsey. 2009. Wholesale Late Merger: Beyond the A/A’ Distinction. Linguistic Inquiry 40, pgs. 387-426.
[This article accounts for
Condition C reconstruction effects in A and A’ movement in terms of Late
Merger.]
Barss, Andrew. 2001.
Syntactic Reconstruction Effects. In Mark Baltin and Chris Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic
Theory. Blackwell.
Week 3: Feb.
7, 9
Tuesday: Islands: Background
Thursday: Islands: Successive Cyclic Movement
[Possible
student presentation: McCloskey 2002]
Homework 2: Assigned Feb. 9, due Feb. 16
Readings:
ISAT [chapter 10: Wh-Questions: Wh-Movement and Locality]
McCloskey, James. 2002. Resumption,
Successive Cyclicicty, and the Locality of
Operations. In Derivation and
Explanation in the Minimalist Program. Edited by
Samuel Epstein and Daniel Seeley. Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.
Optional:
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. On Wh-Movement. In Peter Culicover,
Thomas Wasow and Adrian Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax, 71-132. Academic Press,
New York.
Collins, Chris. 1994. Economy of Derivation and the
Generalized Proper Binding Condition. Linguistic
Inquiry 25.1, 45-61. [This paper gives an example of a reflex of successive
cyclic movement in Ewe.]
McCloskey, James. 2000. Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in
an Irish English. Linguistic Inquiry
31, 57-84.
van Urk, Coppe and Norvin Richards. 2015. Two Components of
Long Distance Extraction: Successive Cyclicity in Dinka. Linguistic Inquiry 46, 113-155.
Week 4: Feb. 14,
16
Tuesday: Pied-Piping
[Possible
student presentation: Cable 2013]
Thursday: That-Trace
[Possible
Student Presentation: Pesetsky 2016]
Readings:
Cable, Seth. 2013. Pied-Piping: Introducing Two Recent
Approaches. Language and Linguistic Compass 6, pgs. 816-832.
Pesetsky, David. 2016.
Complementizer-trace effects. Ms., MIT.
Optional:
Sobin, Nicholas. 1987. The
Variable Status of Comp-Trace Phenomena. Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory 5, pgs. 33-60.
Week 5: Feb. 21,
23
Tuesday: Anti-Locality
[Possible
student presentation: Erlewine 2016]
Thursday: Anti-Locality (cont.)
Homework 3: Assigned Feb. 23, due March 2
Reading:
Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka. 2016. Anti-locality and
optimality in Kaqchikel Agent Focus. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34:
429-479.
Week 6: Feb.
28, Mar. 2
Tuesday: Islands: Asymmetries
(Adjunct/Argument
asymmetry)
Thursday: Islands:
Asymmetries (cont.)
(anti-pronominal
contexts)
Homework 4: Assigned March 2, due March
9
Readings:
Rizzi, Luigi. 2001. Relativized Minimality Effects. In Mark
Baltin and Chris Collins (eds.), The
Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 89-110. Blackwell, Oxford.
Postal, Paul. 1998. Three
Investigations of Extraction. MIT Press, Cambridge. [Chapter 2, Chapter 3
[section 3.2.2], Appendix A: Mistaking Selective Islands for Non-islands]
Optional:
Collins, Chris. 1991. Why and How Come. MIT Working Papers
in Linguistics 15, 31-45.
Rizzi,
Luigi. 1990. Relativized Minimality. MIT Press, Cambridge.
Ross, John Robert. 1984. Inner Islands. In Claudia Brugman
and Monica McCaulay (eds.), Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, California.
Week 7: Mar. 7,
9
Tuesday: Left
Periphery: Basics
[Possible
Student Presentation: Haegeman 2012:
chapter 1]
Thursday: Left
Periphery: Overt Top and Foc Heads
[Possible Student Presentation: Aboh 2004: chapters 7,8]
Readings:
Haegeman, Liliane. 2012. Adverbial
Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and the Composition of the Left Periphery.
The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 8. Oxford Uuniversity Press,
Oxford. [read chapter 1: Background: The
Articulated Structure of the Left Periphery.]
Aboh, Enoch. 2004. The Morphosyntax of Complement-Head
Sequences. Oxford
University Press. [chapter 7: Focus
and Wh Constructions, chapter 8: Argument Topics
and Yes-No Questions]
Optional:
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The Fine
Structure of the Left Periphery. In Haegeman, Liliane (ed.),
Elements of Grammar,
281-337. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Due: Paper Proposals
Note: Send your proposal to the other students in the class.
Be ready for discussion on Monday, March 21.
Week 8: Mar.
14, 16 [Spring Break]
Week 9: Mar.
21, 23
Tuesday: Discuss
Paper Proposals.
Thursday: Discuss Paper Proposals (cont.)
Reading: Each student is required to read all
the proposals by the other students.
Due: Each student is required to provide written feedback to one
other student on their proposal before March 21 (e-mailed by March 20th at the
latest). The written comments should be 1-2 pages (double spaced).
Week 10: Mar. 28,
30
Tuesday: Quantifier
Raising: Basics
Thursday: Quantifier
Raising (cont.)
Reading:
May, Robert. 1977. Grammar of Quantification. Doctoral
Dissertation, MIT [Chapter 1]
Fox, Danny. 2003. On
Logical Form. In Randall Hendrick (ed.), Minimalist
Syntax, 82-123. Blackwell,
MA. (http://web.mit.edu/fox/www/LFnewer.pdf)
Optional:
Kayne, Richard. 1998. Overt vs. Covert Movement. Syntax 1.2, 128-191.
Week 11: April
4,6
Tuesday: Quantifier Raising
[Possible Student
Presentation: Beghelli and Stowell 1997]
Thursday: Quantifier
Raising: Locality
[Possible
Student Presentation: Breuning 2001]
Readings:
Beghelli, Filippo and Tim Stowell. 1997. Distributivity and
Negation: The Syntax of Each and Every. In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.), Ways of Taking Scope, 71-107.
Breuning, Benjamin. 2001. QR Obeys Superiority: ACD and
Frozen Scope. Linguistic Inquiry 32,:
233-273.
Week 12: April 11,
13
Tuesday: Wh-in-Situ:
Overview
Thursday: Wh-in-Situ:
Richards 2001
[Possible Student Presentation:
Richards 2001, chapters 1 and 2]
Reading:
Richards, Norvin. 2001. Movement
in Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford. [chapter 1: Introduction,
chapter 2: Subjacency Forever, chapter 3: Featural Cyclicity and the Ordering
of Multiple Specifiers].
Optional:
Huang, James. 1982. Move Wh in a Language without
Wh-Movement. The Linguistic Review 1,
369-416.
Watanabe, Akira. 2001. Wh-in-Situ Languages. In Mark Baltin
and Chris Collins (eds.), The Handbook of
Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 203-225. Blackwell.
Week 13: April
18, 20
Tuesday: Wh-in-Situ: Pesetsky 2000
Thursday: Wh-in-Situ (cont.)
Reading:
Pesetsky, David. 2000. Phrasal
Movement and its Kin. MIT Press, Cambridge. [selected sections]
Week 14: April 25,
27
Tuesday: Scope
Freezing with Negated Quantifiers
Thursday: Scope Freezing
with Negated Quantifiers
Readings:
Collins, Chris. 2015. Not even. Natural Language Semantics.
Week 15: May 2,
4
Tuesday: Final
Presentations
Thursday: Final Presentations
Due: Final
paper is due on Friday, May 6th.
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