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LINGUIST 218: Seminar on Morphological Theories

Word formation and the lexicon: empirical generalizations and theoretical approaches. Lexicalist and Distributed Morphology. How words are built and interpreted: constituency and headedness, morpheme order and scope, the mirror principle, bracketing paradoxes, the hierarchy of functional categories. Paradigms, blocking, gaps, periphrasis, syncretism. Locality, head movement vs. selection, constraints on allomorphy, incorporation, polysynthesis, cliticization and prosodic re-ordering phenomena.

Last offered: Spring 2014

LINGUIST 219: Frequency and the Grammar of Alternations

Variationist, and psycholinguistic studies of how syntactic alternations (for example, the English dative, genitive, and passive) develop in time and space.

Last offered: Autumn 2010

LINGUIST 221A: Foundations of English Grammar

A systematic introduction to the formal analysis of English grammar using the framework of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG). Topics: feature structure modeling, lexical and phrasal organization in terms of type hierarchies and constraint inheritance, clausal types, patterns of complementation, the auxiliary system, extraction dependencies, wh-constructions, and the syntax-semantics interface.

LINGUIST 221B: Studies in Universal Grammar

Focus is on grammatical analysis of individual languages. Builds directly on the theoretical foundations presented in 221A. Topics vary each year.

| Repeatable for credit

LINGUIST 222A: Foundations of Syntactic Theory I

The roles of the verb and the lexicon in the determination of sentence syntax and their treatment in modern grammatical theories. Empirical underpinnings of core phenomena, including the argument/adjunct distinction, argument structure and argument realization, control and raising, operations on argument structure and grammatical function changing rules. Motivations for a lexicalist approach rooted in principles of lexical expression and subcategorization satisfaction. Prerequisite: 120 or permission of instructor.

Terms: Aut | Units: 3-4

Instructors: Gribanov, V. (PI)

LINGUIST 222B: Foundations of Syntactic Theory II

The nature of unbounded dependency constructions such as constituent questions, topicalization, relative clauses, and clefts, among others. Topics include A-bar movement, constraints on extraction, successive cyclicity, as well as variation in the way unbounded dependencies are established crosslinguistically. Prerequisite: 222A.

Terms: Win | Units: 3-4

Instructors: Harizanov, B. (PI)

LINGUIST 222C: Foundations of Syntactic Theory III - Topics

This course introduces contemporary approaches to syntactic theory. Focus is on a few central topics of current interest such as ellipsis, binding, locality, movement, case and agreement, among others. Prerequisites: Linguist 222B or permission of the instructor.

Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4

Instructors: Gribanov, V. (PI) ; Harizanov, B. (PI)

LINGUIST 223: Introduction to Minimalist Syntax

Introduces the basics of Minimalist architecture and structure-building operations, with attention to the communication of syntax with the phonological and semantic interfaces. Topics include phrase structure, locality and phases, phrasal and head movement, functional categories, and features. A previous graduate-level syntax course, or permission of the instructor required.

Last offered: Spring 2013

LINGUIST 224: Introduction to Lexical Function Grammar (LINGUIST 124)

Presentation of a formal model of grammar designed to allow precise, computationally tractable descriptions of cross-linguistic variation in syntactic structure. Concentration on the formal properties of the model, its flexibility in teasing out language specific and possibly universal characteristics of natural languages and the place of syntax as a component within a larger linguistic architecture. Prerequisite: 120 or consent of instructor

Last offered: Spring 2011

LINGUIST 224A: From Text to Natural Reasoning

To reason about textual information we rely extensively on extra-linguistic information but the syntactic structure and lexical items used also play a role in guiding us to conclusions. In by now traditional semantic practice the contributions of those are treated in model theoretic terms. But formulas of first or higher order logic do not come with effective procedures for the reasoning that is required to draw inferences or answer questions given some natural language input. Natural Reasoning is a cover term we use for a family of proof-theoretic formal approaches that are currently used by computational linguists. The course will give an overview of proof-theoretic logic as applied to natural language, discuss some of the computational systems that incorporate this view (Stanford's NatLog, Bar Ilan's Biutee, Parc's Bridge) and conclude with a critical view of the linguistic generalizations that underlie these approaches and means to improve them or mitigate their shortcomings. The examples of natural reasoning will mainly be in the domain of monotonicity reasoning and reasoning about the factuality of events.