LING610
Syntactic Theory
Fall 2020

<<CHECK this site very frequently. I will be regularly posting reading and HW assignments, and occasional class notes.>>
Student info.    Discussion page.
-Readings for Sept. 1-8:  Syntactic Structures Revisited to page 35; Syntactic Structures to page 33 [Please have these 2 books available for class for the first few meetings]
Handout on 'dependencies'.
-> HW 1, due Tuesday Sept. 15  10:00 AM Maryland time. [Homework revision policy.] [[[pdf submission by e-mail  to Howard is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWn"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW1".]]]
-Readings for Sept. 8:  Week 2 notes; SSR to page 49. HO on equivalent derivations. HO on trees vs. sets
-Readings for Sept. 15: Syntactic Structures to p.40 and 61-69; SSR to p.56.
    OPTIONAL, if you are interested in getting a sense of the formal background of what we have been doing, you might want to skim parts of : Chomsky's Logical Structure of Lingistic Theory (1955, published in 1975). Lasnik and Kupin 1977.
->->HW1 revision (if you choose) due Tuesday Sept. 22. [Homework revision policy.]  [[[pdf submission by e-mail is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWnrev"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW1rev".]]]
-Readings for Sept. 22: SSR to p.105. Syntactic Structures Chapter 7
-Readings for Sept. 29: Continue Sept. 11 readings and add Syntactic Structures Revisited to page 124. Suggested reading: "Aspects of the Theory of Phrase Structure"
-> HW 2 , due Tuesday Oct. 6  10:00 AM Maryland time. [Homework revision policy.] [[[pdf submission by e-mail  to Howard is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWn"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW2".]]]
-'Wish List' theory of transformations.
-Readings for Oct.6
Finish the Syntactic Structures and Syntactic Structures Revisited readings previously assigned.
Syntactic Structures Revisited  to page 165; A Course in GB Syntax  pp.1-5
1 more optional reading Lasnik 1981
>->HW1 revision (if you choose) due Tuesday Oct. 13 [Homework revision policy.]  [[[pdf submission by e-mail is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWnrev"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW2rev".]]]
-Readings for Oct. 13: Finish Oct. 6 readings
 Next topic:  Case Theory and A-Movement
    "Case, Passives, and Government " Handout
-Readings for Oct. 20: Finish "Case, Passives, and Government " Handout
[[Optional readings: Vergnaud's letter to Chomsky and me (giving comments on the ms. of "Filters and Control") inventing Case theory, as published in Freidin and Lasnik, Syntax:
Critical Concepts; a 2008 paper of mine "On the Development of Case Theory".]]
-> HW 3 , due MONDAY Nov. 2 1:00 PM Maryland time. [Note change in day due. I want to give myself a bit  more time to grade them.]
-Readings for Nov. 3: REALLY finish "Case, Passives, and Government " Handout.
->Squib assignment 'Proposal' due Monday Nov. 16; squib due Thursday Dec. 17
Next topic: Binding Theory
-Readings for Nov. 10: Overview of BT handout Sections A-D; Lasnik and Uriagereka  Chap. 2 
>->HW3 revision (if you choose) due Tuesday Nov. 10[Homework revision policy.]  [[[pdf submission by e-mail is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWnrev"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW3rev".]]]
-Readings for Nov. 17: For an overview of the development of BT from LSLT to Minimalism, you might take a look at the HO "Some Milestones in the Development of Binding Theory". Definitely look at pp. 35-37, based on Lasnik (1976), which was the origin of Condition C of BT.
The discussion of the need for semantic rules to augment the binding conditions of LGB sketched on p. 5 of Overview of BT handout is based on Lasnik (1981).
<<Here's the paper I mentioned about the syntax-semantics interface. Pages 1-8 are the directly relevant ones.>>
-> HW 4 , due WEDNESDAY Nov. 25 1:00 PM Maryland time. [Note change in day due. I want to give you a chance to ask last minute questions on Tuesday, and I'll still have time to grade them asThursday is a holiday so no class.]
<<<The final module of the course will be about locality constraints on WH-movement. Its homework will be due Monday December 7, so I can return and discuss them December 10, the last day of class.>>>
   WH-Movement (A-bar Movement) and Bounding Theory - Islands, Subjacency, and refinements of the ECP :
-Readings for Nov. 24:
Subjacency Intro handout
'Brief Overview of Subjacency/Islands 1955- '
Irish successive movement footprints (McCloskey)
Nice handout by Jason Merchant on successive cyclicity
Optional: Rizzi 1982 on WH-islands in Italian; Excerpt from Move Alpha summarizing Barriers framework
-Some notes about Homework 4
-Readings for Dec. 1:
Finish Subjacency Intro handout
Finish 'Brief Overview of Subjacency/Islands 1955- '
ECP handout; ECP Part 2
>->HW4 revision (if you choose) due Friday Dec. 4 [Homework revision policy.]  [[[pdf submission by e-mail is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWnrev"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW4 rev".]]]
-> HW 5 , due Tuesday Dec. 8  10:00 AM Maryland time. [Homework revision policy.] [[[pdf submission by e-mail  to Howard is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWn"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW5".]]]
<<Here's the Epstein Paper on PROarb if you are interested.>>
<<And here's the summary of the Barriers framework in a Move Alpha excerpt.>>
>->HW5 revision (if you choose) due Monday Dec. 14 [Homework revision policy.]  [[[pdf submission by e-mail is required. Name your file "Familyname_HWnrev"; thus, if Howard were submitting this one, it would be "Lasnik_HW5 rev".]]]

Typos in Syntactic Structures Revisited

-p. viii 8 lines from bottom. "Cédric" should read "Cedric".
-p.7 line 5. "the in (6)" should be "man in (6)
-p.43 (121)a. This ex. should read "John says he is tired"
-p.57 (14)b. should be deleted. [And then, of course, (14)c. becomes (14)b].
-p.58 (22). The last symbol on the 1st line of this ex. Should be 'Verb', not 'V'.
-p.76 mid. Lasnik's reply to Vukic should begin "Yes, clearly SAI is ..."
-p.82 3rd line below (87). The end of this line should read "...a do will be ..."  [instead of "a # will be"]
-p.82 1st line below (88). "...a PM that consists of ..." should read "... a PM that contains a string that consaists of ..."
-p.113 (158). The leftmost daughter of S should be C (instead of NP).
-p.116 (163). The SC of Transformation 2 should read  "X1 - X2 - X3 -> r + X1 - X2 - X3"
-p.121 line 7. TK>TM should be TM>TK.
-p.130 4th and 5th lines of 1st full para. Replace "transformational" by "PS".
-p.206. The Warner entry in the References should be  12, 153-172
-p.213 (i.e. the beginning of the list of rules from Syntactic Structures). The last symbol in the SC of T12 Passive should be X1 (instead of X2).
-p.213 Phrase structure rule 3. In the second expansion of NP, the final 'l' should be on the same level as the subscript 'p'.

If you find any more typos, please let me know.

useful links

Lasnik publications 
Chomsky publications
pdf locker