LINGUIST 401: Introduction to Syntax

Spring 2005
Dickinson 209, TTh 1.00-2.15

Rajesh Bhatt
bhatt@linguist.umass.edu
222 South College, 545-6832
Office Hours: TTh 2.15-3.30 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 March 3 and due on March 10 and the second assigned on May 5 and due on May 12.

Some Policies

• 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]: Basic Questions, Implicit Knowledge, Jan. 27
  Reading: Ch. 1 of the textbook
• [2-4]: Phrase Structure Rules, Feb. 1, 3, 8
  Reading: Ch. 2 of the textbook
• [5]: Syntactic Categories, Feb. 10
• [6-7]: Grammaticality and Constraining Phrase Structure Rules, Feb. 15, 17
• [8-9]: No Class, Feb. 22, 24
• [10]: Snow Day!, Mar. 1
• [11-13]: Tests for Constituency, Mar. 3, 8, 10
• [14-15]: Binding Theory, Mar. 22, 24
  Reading: Ch. 4 of textbook
• [16-18]: X-Bar Theory, Mar. 29, 31, Apr. 5
  Reading: Ch. 5 of textbook
• [19]: Aspects of the syntax of Native American Languages (guest lecture by Adam Werle), Apr. 7

Assignments

• [1]: Grammaticality and Phrase Structure Rules, assigned Feb. 3, due in class on Feb. 10
• [2]: Introducing Constituency, assigned Feb. 10, due in class on Feb. 17
• [3,4]: Enriched Phrase Structure Rules, Project on Native American Languages , assigned Feb. 17, due in class on Mar. 3
• [5]: Applying Constituency Tests, assigned Mar. 3, due in class on Mar. 10
• [MT]: Midterm Exam, assigned Mar. 10, due in class on Mar. 22
• [6]: Binding Theory, assigned Mar. 24, due in class on Mar. 31
• [7]: X-Bar Theory, assigned Apr. 1, due in class on Apr. 12
• [8]: Report on Prof. Werle's lecture, assigned Apr. 7, due in class on Apr. 12
• [9]: The Structure of Clauses, assigned Apr. 17, due in class on Apr. 26
• [10]: Verb Movement and do-support, assigned Apr. 28, due in class on May 5
• [FIN]: Final Exam, assigned May 5, due in class on May 12