LING 611   Spring 2014
Issues in Syntax

FROM FEB 11 THROUGH FEB 25, CLASS WILL MEET 2:15-5:15

Basic ideas of Minimalism and some of their antecedents
-Readings for 1/28: Lasnik TiCS "The Minimalist Program in Syntax"; MA 1.1; UM 1, 2.1, 2.2; L&U 1; Hornstein The Minimalist Project Ch. 1; Chomsky "Three Factors in Language Design" pp.1-11; handout on history of some minimalist concepts.
Towards a Minimalist account of (English) verbal morphology
-Readings for 2/4: Chomsky 1995, Ch. 1 (Suggested, for an overview of GB in its final stages); Chomsky 1995, Ch. 2; Chomsky 1995 Ch. 3, pp. 195-199; Lasnik 1995 "Verbal Morphology: Syntactic Structures Meets the Minimalist Program" (or the excepts in B&L pp. 263-277); L&U pp. 61-79. Here's a handout summarizing much of the material.
Basic architectural issues, especially as concern levels of representation
-Readings for 2/11: Chomsky 1995, Ch. 3; UM Ch. 2; HO on Condition A 'reconstruction'; HO on Condition C 'reconstruction'.
→ HW 1 Due Tuesday 2/25
-Readings for 2/18: Continue 2/11 readings.
-Readings for 2/25: Finish 2/11 readings; Lasnik and Saito "On the Subject of Infinitives"; Lasnik "Lectures on Minimalist Syntax" pp. 26-41.
→ HW 2 Due Tuesday 3/4
-Readings for 3/4-11: Finish 2/25 readings
→ Revision of HW 1 Due 3/11 [if you elect to re-do]
-3/25: More discussion of Case; "Raising to object", Raising of objects, and the question of whether this is overt or covert; Government? [The readings for these are the previous weeks' readings.]
       The Relativized Minimality problem of subject raising and object shift and Chomsky's equidistance solution. HO on 'Shortest Move and Equidistance'. [For this last, a refresher on some basic elements of set theory, especially properties of relations in a set, might be helpful. Here's a link to a nice UMass HO on 'Properties of Relations'.]
→ Review paper assignment  Due April 16
Strong features, Move and/or Attract, Minimality, Locality
-Readings for 4/1-8: Take another look at Chomsky Ch. 3 pp.167-186; 195-199; Lasnik 1999 "On Feature Strength"; Chomsky Ch. 4 pp. 232-235; 261-267; 297-303; Chomsky "Minimalist Inquiries" pp. 117-126. 106-112.
→ HW 3 Due Tuesday 4/8
Phrase structure under Minimalist assumptions; Phases
-Readings for 4/8: Chomsky Ch. 4 pp. 241-271; Chomsky "Minimalist Inquiries" pp. 106-112, 117-126, 131-139.
→ Squib+ assignment  Proposal due April 28; paper due May 13
Minimalism and Control
Readings for 5/6: Hornstein and Nunes 2012
PF interface concerns
Readings for 5/6:
     Linearization, LCA. etc. Kayne 1994 Ch. 1 ; HO on an LCA revision
     PF level or Multiple Spell-Out? Freidin and Lasnik 2011 "Some Roots of Minimalism" pp. 10-17
     Ellispsis and island repair  Lasnik, H. 2009. Island repair, non-repair and the organization of the grammar; Lasnik 2007 On Ellipsis: The PF Approach to Missing Constituents
      Handout on island violation repair.

Tuesday 2:00-5:00
1108B MMH

Norbert Hornstein and Howard Lasnik, instructors

Useful textbooks and background:
Minimalist Syntax - The Essential Readings Boskovic and Lasnik (B&L); A Course in Minimalist Syntax Lasnik and Uriagereka (L&U); Minimalist Analysis Lasnik (MA); Understanding Minimalism Hornstein, Nunes, Grohmann (UM); Introducing Phase Theory Citko ms.
Additional readings, including many in this bibliography, will be made available.

This course will examine the Minimalist program in syntactic theory, from its inception up to current research. Amng the topics to be discussed will be:
1. Various views of Minimalism
Includes: What the point of the program is; leading ideas; how it compares with earlier approaches; the role of levels of representation.
2. X0-movement, a first view of economy
Includes: Economy of operations, full interpretation, well formed LF objects.
3. MP and Phrase structure.
Includes: Bare Phrase Structure, LCA, Kayne/Chomsky on linearization, multiple Spell-out
4. Government; what happens when one gets rid of it?
Includes: discussion of government in Case, ECP, Binding, Theta, Bounding.
5. Existentials and related matters.
Includes: Agree and FF-movement theories, scope and binding effects.
6. Movement and so on.
Includes: Traces, copies and reconstruction; What is movement? Re-merge vs. Copy theory, Pied-piping = Agree+Match+EPP. Types of movement: Raising, control, Wh-movement, Phrasal vs. head movement, sidewards movement.
7. Conditions on Transformations.
Includes: Economy of derivation: local and not-so-local economy; Greed, Enlightened Self-Interest and Suicidal Greed, etc.; Minimality, shortest move vs. minimal link condition; a Uniformity Condition on Chains?; Superiority; consequences of linearization for analyses of  'island' phenomena.
8. LF
Includes: Arguments for LF representations. What is the status of LF movement? Can standard LF treatments be made compatible with MP?
9. Phases, Labels and related matters.
10. What is to be done about Binding Theory?
11. What is to be done about ellipsis?

Course requirements:

3 sets of HW problems
1 review paper
1 "Squib+"

Useful links
Lasnik publications
pdf locker