LINGUIST 601: Introduction to Transformational Grammar

Fall 2006
Herter 444, TTh 1.00-2.15

Rajesh Bhatt
bhatt@linguist.umass.edu
224 South College, 577-0797
Office Hours: TTh 2.30-4.00 or by appointment


Syllabus

General Themes:
Universal Grammar, Parameters, Features, Constituency, Displacement, Locality, the model of the grammar
Global Questions:
How are linguistic structures built? Where do linguistic principles apply?
Specific Topics:
X-bar theory, Case, Binding, A-movement, A'-movement, and Head Movement

Useful Texts

Requirements

Lectures

• [1-3]: Implicit Knowledge and tests for constituency, Sep. 7, 12, 14
  Reading: Chs. 1 and 4.1 of Aspects by Noam Chomsky (1965).
• [4-5]: Structure Building Operations; Structure within the NP , Sep. 19, 21
  Reading: Sections 1-4 and 6 of Bare Phrase Structure by Noam Chomsky (1995).
• [6-7]: Clause Structure and Subcategorization, Sep. 26, 28
  Reading 1: Subjects Across Categories by Tim Stowell, Linguistic Review (1983).
  Reading 2: A Theory of Floating Quantifiers and Its Corollaries for Constituent Structure by Dominique Sportiche, Linguistic Inquiry:19:425-449 (1988).
  Reading 3: Complement Selection and the Lexicon by Jane Grimshaw, Linguistic Inquiry 10:2:279-326 (1979).
• [8-10]: Elementary Operations, Auxiliaries and do-support, Oct. 3, 5, and 17
  Background Readings:
  Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework by Noam Chomsky, MITOPL 15, 1998.
  Ch. 2 of Morphosyntax: The syntax of verbal inflection by Jonathan Bobaljik, MIT PhD dissertation, 1995.
  Secns. 1-4 and 7.2 of Movement Operations after Syntax by David Embick and Rolf Noyer, Linguistic Inquiry 32:4:555-598, 2001.
• [11-13]: Case, EPP, and A-Movement, Oct. 19, 24 and 26
  Reading 1: Subjects Across Categories by Tim Stowell, Linguistic Review, 2:3:285-312 (1983).
• [14-17]: Ergatives, Middles, Other Unaccusatives, and Unergatives , Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 3, and 7
  Reading 1: Ch. 1 of Unaccusativity by Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav, MIT Press, (1995).
  Reading 2: Part I (pgs. 1-16) of the Introduction of The Unaccusativity Puzzle edited by Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert, OUP (2004).
• [18-21]: Passives, Nov. 9, 10, 14, and 16
  Reading: On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English by David Embick, Linguistic Inquiry, 35:3:355-392, (2004).
• [22-26]: Raising, Control, and ECM, Nov. 17, 22, 28, 30, and Dec. 5
  Reading 1: Movement out of Control by Idan Landau, Linguistic Inquiry, 34:3:471-498, (2003).
  Reading 2: September 2006 special issue of Syntax on Raising and Control.
• [27-28]: Presentations on Raising, Control, and ECM, Dec. 7 and 12

Assignments

• [1]: Report on Ch. 1 and 4.1 of Aspects, assigned Sep. 7, due Sep. 14
• [2]: Applying Constituency Tests, assigned Sep. 14, due Sep. 21
• [3]: Exercise on the Argument/Adjunct Distinction, assigned Sep. 21, due Sep. 28
• [4]: Exercise on concealed questions and null complement anaphora, assigned Sep. 28, due Oct. 5
• [5]: Exercise on Floating Quantifiers, assigned Oct. 5, due Oct. 19
• [6]: Exercise on do-support and verb movement, assigned Oct. 19, due Oct. 26
• [7]: Exercise on CPs and Case, assigned Oct. 26, due Nov. 2
• [8]: Exercise on Unaccusatives in Hebrew and Italian, assigned Nov. 3, due Nov. 10
• [9]: Exercise on The Direct Object Restriction, assigned Nov. 10, due Nov. 17
• [10]: Exercise on Passives Crosslinguistically, assigned Nov. 17, due Nov. 28
• [11]: Exercise on Control, Case, and Agreement, assigned Nov. 30, due Dec. 12
• [12]: Exercise on the Complex Passive in Danish, assigned Dec. 5, due Dec. 12