Some Challenging Issues in Teaching Graduate Level Syntax

1. Grad: Does X (a hypothesis) really work? My professor as an undergrad said it does not. I agree with them.

Implication: Everything I learned at previously as an undergraduate (or Masters student) needs to be rigorously and systematically disproven before I will accept anything else.

Response: I call this phenomenon ‘imprinting’. Whatever theory a student first learns, they take that is the right theory. As a graduate student, you should consider what you have already learned to be a preliminary step, not the final word set in stone. It is likely that most things that you have learned will need to be revised or replaced in some way. Try to have an open mind!

2. Grad: I do not agree with those acceptability judgments. So my English is not characterized by the relevant principle. 

Implication: If I do not agree with the data, I am not going to read any papers on the subject, or look into it. And if you bring up that principle again, I will not fail to remind you that my judgments do not conform to it. In my opinion, it is a total waste of time.

Response: Acceptability judgements are complicated. Even if you disagree with them, it is worthwhile finding out what the range of judgments is, and how that range can be accounted for. Nowadays, it is also possible to explore acceptability judgements experimentally.

3. Grad: Is X a consensus point of view? How many people adopt it?

Implication: Please, I just want to know the most popular theory, the one most people accept. That is the one I want to use to write my paper, so I can get abstracts accepted at conferences.

Response: Consensus has nothing to do with truth. If society in general believes the sun revolves around the earth, that does not thereby make it true. For many issues (e.g., obligatory control, head movement, case) there are several approaches, and understanding those approaches is an important part of learning the subject matter, and making scientific progress on the issues.

4. Grad: Do we really need syntax to explain X? It could just be semantics, right?

Implication: Even without formulating any alternative analysis, we should just take it as a null hypothesis that an explanation not involving any syntactic principle is preferable. 

Response: Neither a syntactic nor semantic analysis can be taken as the null hypothesis. Every hypothesis must be argued for with the same rigor. Disentangling alternative analyses can be quite difficult, and takes a lot of effort.

5. Grad: I thought of an interesting idea, but I already see a paper about that topic published in LI. Oh well, somebody has beaten me to it. I will look for a different topic.

Implication: What makes an idea interesting to me is that I thought of it first. If somebody else has also thought of it, I am no longer interested.

Response: Doing research is engaging in a process involving lots of different people looking at topics from different angles. Your contribution to a particular topic might be completely different from what is already out there. You should try to develop your own ideas, even if there are other papers published on the topic.

6. Grad: I just thought of some interesting data. Let me search the internet intensely for a few days (or even weeks) to see if anything interesting has been written on it.

Implication: I need to find a model in the syntax literature, and apply that to my data. That is the way to do research.

Response: You should get used to doing these things on your own, without always having the crutch of somebody else’s analysis. Sit down in front of a blank piece of paper, and write! Of course, at some step in the process of doing research you need to add references, and a discussion of other approaches.