LINGUIST 401: Introduction to Syntax

Fall 2005
SOM 129, TTh 9.30-10.45

Rajesh Bhatt
bhatt@linguist.umass.edu
224 South College, 577-0797
Office Hours: TTh 4.00-5.00 or by appointment


Syllabus

Themes
What syntactic properties are shared by all natural languages? What syntactic properties distinguish them? What do we know when we know a language? What are syntactic properties? How do we construct a theory of syntax? This course aims to equip students with the ability to address these questions in a precise and informed way. The topics include those that are central to a proper understanding of syntax: phrase structure, movement, grammatical relations, case, complementation, anaphora, and long-distance movement.

Topics

• Implicit knowledge, grammaticality, and related issues
• Constituency
• Categories
• Syntactic trees
• X-bar theory
• Case and NP-Movement
  • Passivization
  • Raising and Control
  • Exceptional Case Marking
  • Expletives
• Binding Theory
• Wh-Movement
• Head Movement

Prerequisites

Requirements

• participation in class, in e-mail, or during my office hours (10%)
• regular homework assignments (roughly one a week) (60%)
• two take-home exams, the first assigned on October 27 and due on November 1 and the second assigned on December 6 and due on December 13.

Some Policies

• I expect you to participate in class and pay attention. If I notice that you are not paying attention, I will ask you to leave the lecture and not grade your assignment for the week.
• You are welcome to work together on the regular assignments, but joint assignments are not allowed. Please list the names of everyone you worked with at the top of each assignment.
• You cannot work together on the exams.
• The assignments and exams will address only material that we covered in class (and appropriate extensions of it). So active and engaged participation in the class meetings is essential to your success on them.
• I will drop your lowest regular-assignment grade (even if it is a 0), on the condition that you participate in one of the experiments being run by UMass Linguistics researchers this semester. These experiments typically involve speaking, writing, or listening.
• Late assignments will only be accepted in the case of medical or other emergencies.

Readings, Required and Supplementary Texts

I will make the lecture slides available online on the website and occasionally distribute short, compulsory reading assignments. In addition to these, there is a required text:
Syntax: A Generative Introduction, Andrew Carnie, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. (ISBN 0-631-22544-7) (ordered at Amherst Books, 8 Main St. Amherst).

The following are good supplementary resources, things you might study as a way of deepening or broadening your understanding of what syntactic theory is all about:
1. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Note: This is available in the reference section of DuBois Library, call number PE1106 .H74 2002.]
2. McCawley, James D. 1998. The Syntactic Phenomena of English, 2nd ed. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
3. Radford, Andrew, 1988. Transformational Grammar: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Adger, David, 2003, Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Lectures

• [1-2]: Basic Questions, Implicit Knowledge, Sep. 8, 13
  Reading: Ch. 1 of the textbook
• [3-4]: The Atoms: Words and Syntactic Categories, Sep. 15, 20
  Reading: Ch. 2 of the textbook
• [5-7]: Phrase Structure Rules, Trees, and Automata, Sep. 22, 27, 29
  Reading: Ch. 2 of the textbook
• [8-10]: Relations on Trees, Oct. 4, 6, and 11
  Reading: Ch. 3 of the textbook
• [11-13]: Binding Theory, Oct. 13, 18, and 20
  Reading: Ch. 4 of the textbook
• [Oct. 27]: Midterm is handed out
• [14-16]: X-Bar Theory: NPs and VPs, Oct. 25, 27, and Nov. 1
  Reading: Ch. 5 of the textbook
• [17-21]: Clause Structure: TPs and CPs, Nov. 1, 8, 10, 15, 17
  Reading: Ch. 6 of the textbook
• [22-]: Wh-Movement
  Reading: Ch. 11 of the textbook

Assignments

• [1]: Pronominal Coreference, assigned September 15, due in class on September 22
• [2]: Parts of Speech, assigned Sep. 22, due in class on Sep. 29
• [3]: Phrase Structure Rules and Automata, assigned Sep. 29, due in class on Oct. 6
• [4]: Ambiguity and Relations on Trees, Oct. 6, due in class on Oct. 13
• [5]: Binding Theory, assigned Oct. 13, due in class on Oct. 20
• [6]: Binding Theory 2, assigned Oct. 20.
• [MT]: Midterm Exam, assigned Oct. 27, due in class on Nov. 1, Notes on the Midterm
• [7]: X-Bar Theory for NPs, assigned Nov. 3, due in class on Nov. 10
• [8]: X-Bar Theory for VPs and CPs, assigned Nov. 10, due in class on Nov. 17
• [9]: TPs and do-support, assigned Nov. 17, due in class on Nov. 22
• [10]: Wh-Movement, assigned Dec. 1, due in class on Dec. 8
• [FIN]: Final Exam, assigned Dec. 6, due on Dec. 14