Linguistics 514 - Course Outline - Spring 2000



Linguistics 514

Spring 2008

Instructor: Elly van Gelderen

E-mail: ellyvangelderen@asu.edu

Home page:

Office Hours: TTH and by appointment/e-mail.

Office: 226C - Tel. #: 480 965 2563

Required Text:

The syntax of natural language by Santorini, Beatrice, and Anthony Kroch. 2007



Objectives:

The main objective of this course is to come to understand the nature of syntactic structures. For instance, what are the elements which constitute a sentence and what variation is possible in a sentence. We will discuss issues such as Phrase structure, Binding Theory, Tense/Aspect, Modality, Topic/Focus. We will try to understand the relationship between universal and language specific principles

A second objective is to introduce Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program. Recently, a biolinguistic approach has been reemphasized (Chomsky 2005; 2007) and we will not only discuss what syntax (features, Phrase structure, c-command) is but why it may be that way (demands of other systems).

Evaluation:

4 Homework Assignments @ 20 points each: 80 points

2 In-class exams @ 30 points each 60

Final paper: 60_________

200 points

NB: See schedule below for dates! Students are responsible for the material covered in the book, assigned articles and, the class lectures. Points will be converted into a Grade as follows: 200 - 195: A+, 194 - 187: A, 186 - 180: A-, 179 - 175: B+, 174 - 167: B, 166 - 160: B-, 159 - 155: C+, 154 - 140: C, 139 - 120: D, 119 - 0: E. Students are welcome (and encouraged) to discuss homework assignments with each other, but answers should be their own.

Organization

The classes will be a mixture of lectures, discussions, and syntactic exercises. We may add an optional time period for tree drawing. There are several kinds of preparations and assignments. Students are expected to (a) read the assigned chapters before class as well as attempt the relevant exercises, and to (b) hand in 4 Homework Assignments, sit 2 exams, and write a paper. Students will only be evaluated on the basis of (b). Electronic assignments/papers cannot be accepted.

The final essay should be around 10 pages. The essay should be written in accordance with some Style Sheet. An outline of the paper (of about 2 paragraphs) must be handed in week 7 (even though this must not be thought of as `written in stone'). Paper topics will be provided but the student is free to pick a topic of her/his own choice. Writing one paper for two classes must be discussed with the instructor/s. You are encouraged to hand in a draft before the due date.

Some URLS

videos

- (video on biolinguistics)

- (Chomsky 2007)

- (Jackendoff 2007)

Book series; theses etc

-

-

Glosses and linguistic terms

- (morpheme-by-morpheme glosses)

- (dictionary)

Corpora

- (BNC)

- (ICE)

- (Childes)

- (MICASE)

- (other languages)

Typological

- ethnologue: has data on 6703 languages (paper version is good too: 15th ed.)

- : the homepage of the Association for Linguistic Typology with a really good bibliography by F. Plank!

- There is a project on agreement at: surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/projects/agreement/agreement_bib.html

- on endangered languages: mpi.nl/LAN

- And on tense and aspect at:

utsc.utoronto.ca/~binnick/TENSE

Tentative Schedule - LIN 514

Week: Date: Readings and assignments:

1 15-17 Jan Chap 1

2 22-24 Jan Chap 2

3 29 Jan-31 Jan Chap 3; Homework #1 due (31 Jan); Tree drawing session and embeddings

4 5-7 Feb Chap 4 and review

5 12-14 Feb Exam #1 (12 Feb); e-tools for syntax (14 Feb)

6 19-21 Feb Chap 5

7 26-28 Feb Homework #2 due (28 Feb); chap 6

8 4-6 Mar Chap 7; hand in paper topic (6 March)

9 11-13 Mar BREAK

10 18-20 March Homework #3 (20 March); chap 8

11 25-27 Mar Chap 9

12 1-3 April Chap 11-12 (we’ll skim chap 10); Homework #4 (3 April)

13 8-10 April Review; Exam # 2 (10 April)

14 15-17 April Discussion of HW 4 and Exam 2; Remaining issues; Papers due (17 April)

15 22-24 April brief discussion of papers;

25-26 April: Linguistic Cycles Workshop

16 29 April Discussion of papers ctd; Review of the entire class.

Possible paper topics:

NB: These are ONLY possibilities; you are free to select your own as long as you check with EvG. For references, search the regular catalogue (), LLBA (), Google scholar (), and Lingbuzz (). Notice that the difference in difficulty between textbook and articles may be huge. Come see me with articles you have trouble with.

1. Negation. For instance: Where is it in the tree in English? Compare negation in languages of four different language families. Work on this has been done by Ouhalla, Haegeman, Zanuttini.

2. Auxiliaries. What is their structure? Are tense and aspect universal categories?

3. Verbal complementation. What kinds of clausal complements does a language have (infinitives, subjunctives, etc)? Link the type of verb to its complement. Van Gelderen 2004, Rochette 1988, Givon 2006.

4. The NP and DP. Look at a complicated DP, e.g. in Chinese.

5. Clitics. Take a (Romance or Slavic) language and examine the clitics. Work has been done by Sportiche, Jaeggli, Rizzi (on acquisition), Tomic, etc.

6. Topic and Focus and the split CP. There are languages with a heavy left edge. See if that can be incorporated in a tree. Rochemont & Culicover 1990; Rizzi 1997.

7. Agreement. Asymmetries in agreement depending on word order (Arabic). Object agreement. The status of agreement morphemes in e.g. Navajo. Van Gelderen 1997.

8. Reflexives. Differences between Chinese/Korean etc and English. Different kinds of morphemes (long and short in Romance and Chinese). Reuland, Reinhart.

9. The place of Adverbs. Do they have a fixed position? Cinque 1999.

10. The verb `to be’: existential, location verb, and possessive. Freeze 1992.

11. Imperatives. Van der Wurff 2007.

12. Pronouns. Difference between emphatic and `regular’. Are they in D or are they DP? Ritter, Cardinaletti & Starke.

13. Intransitive verbs. Hale & Keyser 2003; Burzio 1986.

14. The structure of relative clauses in an asymmetric approach. Kayne 1994.

15. Copy and delete. Advantages over traces. Nunes 2004.

16. Is there an order to adjectives? Cinque to appear; Laenzlinger.

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