-Readings for Oct. 11
Start "Case and Passives" Handout
-Readings for Oct. 18
Continue
"Case and Passives" Handout
A Course in GB Syntax pp.1-20
-Readings for Oct. 25
Finish "Case and Passives" Handout
[Here's the Vergnaud letter inventing Case theory, as recently published in Freidin and Lasnik, Syntax: Critical Concepts.]
-> HW 3 , due Tuesday Nov. 1
-Readings for Nov. 1 - Nov. 8
Binding Theory:
-Lasnik and Uriagereka Chap. 2
-Chomsky (1995) Chap. 1, 1.4.2 (pp. 92-110) [You might find it
useful in the next couple of weeks to read this whole chapter.]
-Lasnik, H. 1994. "Noam
Chomsky on Anaphora"
-Handout summarizing the development
of binding theory 1973-1986
(-> HW3 revision due Nov. 8, if you elect the option to re-do. See HW revision policy.)
->Squib assignment 'Proposal' due Nov. 29; squib due Dec. 19
-> HW 4 , due Tuesday Nov. 22
-Readings for Nov. 15: Finish the Binding Theory stuff
-Readings for Nov. 22-Dec. 6
WH-Movement and Bounding Theory:
Subjacency handout
Lasnik and Saito 1992 Move Alpha pp.70-75
ECP handout
'Brief Overview of Subjacency/Islands'
Lasnik and Uriagereka Chap. 4
Handout on Superiority and Relativized Minimality
((CourseEvalUM Submissions Open Now Through December 14: Evaluation site ))
[Here's Sobin's paper on Comp-trace effects.]
->HW 5, due Thursday Dec. 8
-Readings for Dec. 13
Handout on Superiority and Relativized Minimality
Lasnik (2006) "Minimalism"
[And, not required at all, but if you are interested: My paper on formal and functional approaches to locality.]
->Squib due Dec. 19 BY E-MAIL
->Extra credit HW due Mon. Dec. 19 BY E-MAIL (I won't be on campus) : Make up a question about syntax and answer it (Up to 6 points)
Tuesday 2:00-5:00
1108B MMH
Thursday 11:00-12:00
1108B MMH
1106 Marie Mount Hall
<lasnik [AT] UMD [DOT] edu>
(301) 405-4929
Office hours:
Monday evenings
Tuesday mornings
Wednesday mornings & afternoons until 3:00
Thursday afternoons (until 4:00)
Subject matter
-The nature and source of syntactic knowledge
-Formalization of the infinitude of language
-Formalization of phrase structure
-Properties of syntactic transformations
-Syntactic information and lexical information
-The following phenomena will be examined in detail:
-English verbal morphology; main verbs vs. auxiliary verbs; development of
theories of these phenomena over the years, driven by considerations of explanatory adequacy. "Head movement"
-'Passive' and related phenomena, where an expression occurs in subject position
but is 'understood' in another.
("John was arrested") "A-movement"
-Relationship between these phenomena and (abstract) nominal morphology. "Case
theory"
-WH-movement and related phenomena ("Who did you see?") "A'-movement"
-Referential dependence, coreference, non-coreference. "Binding Theory"
-Locality constraints on A'-movement: islands; Subjacency; ECP
-Chomsky 1957 Syntactic Structures
Walter de Gruyter 978-3110172799
-Lasnik (with Depiante and Stepanov) 2000 Syntactic Structures Revisited
MIT Press 978-0-262-62133-5 [See below for compilation
of typo corrections]
-Chomsky 1995 The Minimalist Program (chapters 1 (and 2))
MIT Press 978-0262531283
-Chomsky 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chapter 1 and other
selected portions)
MIT Press 978-0-262-53007-1
-Chomsky 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding (selected portions)
Walter de Gruyter 978-3110141313
-Lasnik and Uriagereka 1988 A Course in GB Syntax (selected portions)
MIT Press 978-0-262-62060-4[[Now out of print; I
will make the book available in the department pdf locker.]]
-Lasnik 1999 Minimalist Analysis (selected portions) Blackwell 978-0631210948