Syllabus: MaS Seminar (Fall 2024)(Collins and Kayne)(Revised Final Version)

 Syllabus MaS Seminar (Fall 2024)

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.

The A'-Quadrangle: From Ewe Dialects to UG (Selikem Gotah)

 Selikem Gotah's doctoral dissertation on Ewe syntax.

https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/008408

Abstract:

"This dissertation argues for an Ā-quadrangle, which unifies the treatment of wh-questions and relative clauses, following extant proposals for the cross-linguistic analysis of wh-questions (Cable 2007, 2010). The Ā-quadrangle makes a case for a subsystem of Universal Grammar. Exploring some Ā-phenomena in Ewe through the lens of micro-comparative syntax (Kayne 1996, 2005), the dissertation argues that the core elements in the syntax of wh-questions and relative clauses in three dialects of Ewe are related to one another in a principled way, where elements relatively farther away from wh-words and relativized DPs, i.e. focus markers and the relative particle, are the outer elements and those closer to them, i.e. the wh-particle ka and relative pronouns, are the inner elements of the Ā-quadrangle. It is demonstrated that the relation between the inner and outer elements of the quadrangle and wh-words and relativized DPs in the derivation of wh-questions and relative clauses is mediated by the Agree and EPP feature mechanisms (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001), where the outer elements are goals attracted by C heads to the left periphery. It is argued that focus movement, which is integral to wh-questions, and relativization involve the projection of a FocP and RelP within the extended projection of focused categories and relativized elements, where the focus and relative heads form a constituent with the focused categories and the relativized elements. The resulting larger constituent is attracted to the specifier of CP. The current proposal allows for interposition of focus markers and relative particles internal to the moved constituent. The proposal is empirically superior to the existing analysis of argument focus in Ewe (Badan & Buell 2012), which adopts Aboh's (2004) account for deriving focus movement in Gungbe, a sister Gbe language. Crucially, the dissertation postulates a principle of UG according to which Ā-movement entails an outer element, like FOC and REL, which is the goal for agreement with C. This outer element determines pied-piping. This principle holds for all I-languages. Languages that lack an overt outer element like FOC and REL have null outer elements."

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

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.  

Syllabus

Smuggling and Labeling Theory (version 2)

 Smuggling and Labeling Theory

Andreas Blümel, Humboldt-Universität Berlin / University of Göttingen

Chris Collins, New York University

August 17, 2024

Abstract: This paper draws a deep connection between smuggling (Collins 2005) and labeling (Collins 2002, Chomsky 2013, 2015), showing that the movement of the smuggler in a smuggling derivation can be triggered by the labeling algorithm. 

Keywords: passive, smuggling, labeling algorithm

Smuggling and Labeling Theory (version 2)

Also posted on Lingbuzz:

https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/008353?_s=lz2tSpW9lsIV7tra&_k=iCveR3gWzID1_l82

Congratulations to Selikem Gotah on successful dissertation defense!

Congratulations to Selikem Gotah for passing his NYU doctoral dissertation defense "The A'-Quadrangle: From Ewe Dialects to UG"! I attach a screenshot. Lots of interesting Ewe dialect data, with very important theoretical implications for A'-movement (e.g., extending the Cable/Sulemana system to relativization and arguing against the Rizzi/Aboh analysis of focus particles).

Principles of Argument Structure (Sharing Discount Codes)

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Inversion and the Nominal Linker in Kua

Abstract: The linker in Kua relates modifiers (demonstratives, adjectives, possessors, relative clauses) to the head noun in the DP. I propose that the linker is the head of an LkP projection where NP moves into Spec LkP giving rise to an inverted word order. 

Keywords: linker, inversion, concord

Inversion and the Nominal Linker in Kua