Fall 2024 Seminar: Morphology as Syntax (Collins and Kayne, NYU)

Course Description: 

This seminar will develop the program sketched in Collins and Kayne (2023) (MaS or "Morphology as Syntax"). We will attempt to show that pursuing a syntactic approach to various questions that might otherwise be called ‘morphological’ yields deeper insights than could otherwise be achieved.  

The choice of topics will in part be sensitive to the interests of the students.  Some possible topics include (but are not limited to): grammatical gender and noun class, approaches to allomorphy and syncretism not based on late insertion and competition, the non-existence of post-syntactic operations, the non-existence of suppletion, the licensing of empty elements, merge-based approaches to phonology.

Auditors are welcome, but please let us know if you are interested in attending.

Time: M 2-4:45pm

Place: 10 WP 103

Selected References:

Collins, Chris and Richard S. Kayne. 2023. Towards a Theory of Morphology as Syntax. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 44.1. (https://sciendo.com/pl/article/10.2478/scl-2023-0001)

Collins, Chris and Francisco Ordóñez. Spanish usted as an Imposter. Probus 33.2.(https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/prbs-2021-0006/pdf)

Kayne, Richard S. 2008. Expletives, Datives, and the Tension between Morphology and Syntax. In T. Biberauer (ed.) The Limits of Syntactic Variation, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 175-217 (reprinted in Kayne, R.S. (2010) Comparisons and Contrasts, OUP).

Kayne, Richard S. 2010. Toward a Syntactic Reinterpretation of Harris and Halle (2005). In R. Bok-Bennema, B. Kampers-Manhe & B. Hollebrandse (eds.) Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2008, Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Groningen 2008, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 145-170 (reprinted in Kayne, R.S. (2019) Questions of Syntax, Oxford University Press, New York).

Kayne, Richard S. 2017. Antisymmetry and Morphology. Prefixes vs. Suffixes. In C. Mayr and E. Wiliams (eds.) Festschrift für Martin Prinzhorn, Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 82, 145-161 (reprinted in Questions of Syntax).

Kayne, Richard S. 2020. A Note on the Silent GO That Underlies an Instance of Apparent Suppletion in Spanish. Isogloss 6, 1-12. (https://raco.cat/index.php/isogloss/article/view/375390)

Kayne, Richard S. 2024. A More Demanding Approach to Suppletion. In G. Bocci, D. Botteri, C. Manetti and V. Moscati (eds.) Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition, Oxford University Press, New York.