Brainstorming: Possible Seminar Topics (Spring 2023)

The following is a list of possible seminar topics for Spring 2023. That is, each item below represents a different seminar topic for the semester.

1.

Bantu Syntax Seminar

The Bantu languages are a family of languages spoken in Africa, including Kiswahili, Setswana, IsiZulu and hundreds of others. In this seminar, we review classical and recent papers on the syntax of Bantu languages. There will be the opportunity for doing fieldwork on a Bantu language for the final paper.

2.

Merge, MERGE and Workspaces.

Recent work on the foundations of minimalism, by Chomsky (2021) and others, has focused on the role of the workspace in syntactic derivations. In this seminar, we will review work on workspaces, starting with Collins and Stabler 2016. We will evaluate Chomsky’s arguments for MERGE over Merge. Other possible topics include labelling and copies versus repetitions.

3.

Morphology as Syntax

Collins and Kayne 2020 propose that “Morphological generalizations are accounted for in terms of syntactic operations and principles. There is no morphological component in UG. There are no post-syntactic morphological operations.” In this seminar, we will go over case studies of various morphological phenomena with the aim of evaluating the MaS framework. We will also make detailed comparison to two other frameworks: Distributed Morphology and Nanosyntax.

4.

Relative Clause Deletion

Collins (2015) (“Relative Clause Deletion”) reports on the phenomena of relative clause deletion. Collins (2018) gives supporting evidence from quantifier domain restriction. The purpose of this seminar is to investigate ellipsis from the point of view of Collins (2015/2018) uncovering many similar cases of ellipsis that have been previously unnoticed and uninvestigated in the ellipsis literature.

5.

A Merge-Based Approach to Argument Structure

Collins (2022) proposes that “The only way to build argument structure is by external Merge.” He works out the consequences of this idea for the analysis of passives, implicit arguments, by-phrases, the dative alternation and voice. The purpose of this seminar is to extend the framework into other domains, particularly middles and unaccusatives.

6.

Language and Thought

This seminar will investigate the relationship between language and thought, starting with remarks on this topic in the writings of Noam Chomsky (both recent and classical). Related topics include the relation of syntax to semantics, literal versus enriched meaning, and the foundations of semantic theory.