Foundations of Syntactic Theory II

Catalog description

The second course in the graduate-level sequence in syntax. The course focuses on the properties of movement and its place in the overall architecture of grammar. We will be concerned with the nature of unbounded dependency constructions such as constituent questions, topicalization, relative clauses, clefts, and others. Some of the specific themes include A-bar movement, locality and constraints on extraction, successive cyclicity, as well as crosslinguistic variation in the way unbounded dependencies are established. The practical aim of this course is to further develop a solid conceptual, analytical and empirical basis for research in syntax; this includes the honing of syntactic argumentation skills, which is accomplished through written work and in-class discussion.