Advanced Syntax

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Advanced Syntax posted by member7_php on 2/18/2009

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Advanced Syntax

Spring 2007

Words are the raw materials. Syntax gives the sentence its structure. (Image courtesy of jpstanley.)

Course Description

This course is a continuation of 24.951. This semester the course topics of interest include movement, phrase structure, and the architecture of the grammar.

Recommended Citation

For any use or distribution of these materials, please cite as follows:

Elena Anagnostopoulou and Danny Fox, course materials for 24.952 Advanced Syntax, Spring 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Downloaded on [DD Month YYYY].

Syllabus

Course Overview

This course is a continuation of 24.951. The broad issues of interest this semester include movement, phrase structure, and the architecture of the grammar. By longstanding tradition, this semester focuses more on A-bar phenomena than the Fall course. Inevitably, some important topics are neglected so that others can be covered in more depth.

Prerequisite

24.951

Course Requirements

Readings

As always, we have associated readings with most of the topics covered in the class. Some of the readings will be designated as optional. All other readings are obligatory. Most of the readings are available in the readings section.

Assignments

Assignments will be due once a week on a day we will specify (after coordination with the other advanced classes). In addition, there will be a squib requirement, which you should think of as an extended assignment, not a major project. In the unmarked case, the squib consists of critical discussion of a group of related articles which is relevant to the topics covered in this class. It should contain a clear and self-contained presentation of the main claims and arguments, explain why and how they bear on issues discussed in class, and point out problems, possible amendments, or further extensions and applications. We are of course open to other ideas. The squib is due one week after the last class, no exceptions.

Recommended Citation

For any use or distribution of these materials, please cite as follows:

Calendar

Course schedule.
SES #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1-2	Covert movement and logical form
3-4	Reconstruction and logical form	Homework 1 and 2 due in Ses #3
5-7	Wh-movement: Islands, barriers and successive-cyclicity
8-9	Superiority, probes and goals	Homework 3 due in Ses #8
10-11	Remnant movement, derivations, probes and goals
12-13	Weak islands and relativized minimality	Homework 4 due in Ses #12
14-17	Phases, barriers, and spell-out	Homework 5 due in Ses#16
18-19	Wh-movement: Pied-piping	Homework 6 due in Ses#18
20-22	A vs. A-bar movement and scrambling
23-24	Gapping
25-26	Parasitic gaps	Squib due one week after Ses #26

Readings

This section contains documents that could not be made accessible to screen reader software. A "#" symbol is used to denote such documents.

Course readings.
SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
1-2	Covert movement and logical form	Fox, Danny. "On Logical Form." In Minimalist Syntax. Edited by Randall Hendrick. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 82-123. ISBN: 9780631219415. Johnson, Kyle, and Satoshi Tomioka. "Lowering and Mid-size Clauses." Proceedings of the Tübingen Workshop on Reconstruction, Tübingen, Germany, 1997. Optional Pesetsky, David. Phrasal Movement and Its Kin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780262661669. Reinhart, Tanya. "Wh-in-situ in the Framework of the Minimalist Program." Natural Language Semantics 6, no. 1 (1998): 29-56. Nissenbaum, Jon. "Investigations of Covert Phrase Movement." Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. Appendix of chapter 2.
3-4	Reconstruction and logical form	Fox, Danny. Economy and Semantic Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, chapters 5 and 6. ISBN: 9780262561211. Optional Lechner, Winfried. "Two Kinds of Reconstruction." Studia Linguistica 52, no. 3 (1998): 276-310. Sportiche, Dominique. "Reconstruction, Binding and Scope." Unpublished manuscript, University of California Los Angeles, 2003. Aoun, Joseph, and Abbas Benmamoun. "Minimality, Reconstruction, and PF Movement." Linguistic Inquiry 29, no. 4 (1998): 569-597.
5	Wh-movement: Islands, barriers and successive-cyclicity	Chomsky, Noam. "On Wh-Movement." In Formal Syntax. Edited by Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow, and Adrian Akmajian. New York: Academic Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780121992408.
6-7	Wh-movement: Islands, barriers and successive-cyclicity	Chomsky, N. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 1-16. ISBN: 9780262031189. McCloskey, James. "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, 2002. ISBN: 9780631227335.
8-9	Superiority, probes and goals	Richards, Norvin. "Featural Cyclicity and the Ordering of Multiple Specifiers." In Working Minimalism. Edited by Samuel Epstein and Norbert Hornstein. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 127-158. ISBN: 9780262550321. Boškovic, Željko. "On Multiple Feature-checking: Multiple Wh-Fronting and Multiple Head-movement." In Working Minimalism. Edited by Samuel Epstein and Norbert Hornstein. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 159-187. ISBN: 9780262550321.
10-11	Remnant movement, derivations, probes and goals	Müller, Gereon. "A Constraint on Remnant Movement." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14 (1996): 355-407. Kitahara, Hisatsugu. "Restricting Ambiguous Rule-Application: A Unified Analysis of Movement." In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics #24. Edited by Masatoshi Koizumi and Hiroyuki Ura. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 1994.
12-13	Weak islands and relativized minimality	Rizzi, Luigi. Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780262680615. (Short excerpt.) Starke, Michal. "Move Dissolves into Merge: a Theory of Locality." Doctoral dissertation, Université de Genève, 2001.
14	Phases, barriers, and spell-out	Chomsky, Noam. "Categories and Transformations." In The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, pp. 225-241. ISBN: 9780262531283. ———. "Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework." In Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik. Edited by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998/2000, pp. 106-112. ISBN: 9780262133616. ———. "Derivation by Phase." In Ken Hale: A Life in Language. Edited by Michael Kenstowicz. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999/2001, pp. 1-52. ISBN: 9780262611602.
15-16		Fox, Danny, and David Pesetsky. "Cyclic Linearization of Syntactic Structure." Theoretical Linguistics 31, nos. 1-2 (2005): 1-46. Optional Holmberg, Anders. "Remarks on Holmberg's Generalization." Studia Linguistica 53 (1999): 1-39. Ko, Heejeong. "Asymmetries in Scrambling and Cyclic Linearization." Linguistic Inquiry 28 (2007).
17		Anagnostopoulou, Elena. The Syntax of Ditransitives: Evidence from Clitics. Berlin, Germany: M. de Gruyter, 2002. ISBN: 9783110170283.
18-19	Wh-movement: Pied-piping	Heck, Fabian. "A Theory of Pied-Piping." Doctoral dissertation, University of Tuebingen, 2004. Cable, Seth. "Q-Particles and the Nature of Wh -Fronting." Manuscript, 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
20	A vs. A-bar movement and scrambling	Mahajan, Anoop K. Chapters 1-2 in "The A/A-bar Distinction and Theory." Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990, pp. 7-106.
21-22	A vs. A-bar movement and scrambling	Miyagawa, Shigeru. "A-movement Scrambling and Options without Optionality." In Word Order and Scrambling. Edited by Simin Karimi. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 177-200.
23-24	Gapping	Johnson, Kyle. "Gapping Isn't (VP) Ellipsis." Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2006. Lin, Vivian. "Determiner Sharing." In Proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Edited by R. Billerey and B. D. Lillehaugen. 2000.
25-26	Parasitic gaps	Nissenbaum, Jon. "Investigations of Covert Phrase Movement." Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001.