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THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
P.O. Box 23409
Tel: 255-22-2668820/2668992-Ext.2115
Dar Es Salaam
Fax: 255-22-2668759
http://www.out.ac.tz
Direct Line: 022 - 2667255
E-Mail: [email protected]
OLL 233 COURSE OUTLINES 2014/2015
LECTURE 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES
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Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar
Rule formation in language acquisition
o A thought experiment
o Rule-based word formation
o Question formation
More evidence for syntactic structure
o Intuitions about words belonging together
o Structural ambiguity
Universal Grammar
Formal universals
Recursion
Parameters
Generative grammar
Elementary trees and substitution
o Grammaticality
o Grammar versus language
Notes
Exercises and problems
Supplementary
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LECTURE 2: SYNTACTIC CONSTITUENTHOOD
• Tests for constituenthood
o Substitution
o Movement
o Questions and sentence fragments
o It cleft focus
• Some complications
o Mismatches between syntax and prosody
o Phrasal versus lexical constituents
o Verb phrases
• Representing constituenthood
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Node relations
o Verb forms and finiteness in English
LECTURE 3: SOME BASIC LINGUISTIC RELATIONS
• Argumenthood
o Semantic valency
o Transitivity
• Modification
• Predication
o Expletive it
o Aristotelian versus Fregean predicates
o Expletive there
o Some special cases
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Grammatical relations
o Reference and related notions
o Thematic roles
o Verb forms and finiteness in English
LECTURE 4:INTRODUCING THE X' SCHEMA OF PHRASE
STRUCTURE
• The X' schema for elementary trees
o Transitive elementary trees
o The X' schema
o Intransitive elementary trees
o Deriving simple sentences
o Deriving complex sentences
• The adjunct relation
o Modification is different
o The need for an adjunction operation
o A typology of syntactic dependents
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o More on the distinction between complements and adjuncts
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Modals and auxiliary verbs in English
o Reference and related notions
o Thematic roles
LECTURE 5: EXTENDING THE X' SCHEMA
• Noun phrases
o Parallels and differences between noun phrases and sentences
o Noun phrases as DPs
o More on determiners
o Modification and related issues
• Adjective phrases
• Prepositional phrases
• Crosslinguistic variation in headedness
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Nouns
LECTURE 6: THE VERB MOVEMENT PARAMETER
• Verb raising: V movement to I
o The French future tense
o The order of adverbs and verbs in French
• Tense lowering: I movement to V
o The order of adverbs and verbs in English
o Do support in English
• Cues for the acquisition of verb raising
• Verb raising and related issues in the history of English
o The loss of verb raising
o A change in the status of not
o The emergence of do support
o The emergence of modals
o Remnants of verb raising in modern English
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Modals and auxiliary verbs in English
o Node relations
LECTURE 7: VP SHELLS
• Double-object sentences
o The structure of ordinary causative sentences
o Parallels between causative sentences and double-object sentences
o Abstract verb movement
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• Double-complement sentences
o Give and send
o Put
o Persuade
• The causative alternation
o Manner of motion verbs
o Get
• Further issues
o Locality constraints on idioms
o Small clauses revisited
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Thematic roles
LECTURE 8: CASE THEORY
• A first look at case
o The basic purpose of case
o Case government
o Synthetic versus analytic case marking
• Case features
• Case licensing
o Spec-head licensing
o Head-spec licensing
o Head-comp licensing
o Nonstructural conditions on case licensing
o The dative-accusative distinction
• Case agreement (coming eventually...)
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Grammatical relations
LECTURE 9: NONFINITE CLAUSAL COMPLEMENTS
• Selectional restrictions
• Subject control
o Evidence for two clauses
o Deriving subject control sentences
• Raising
o A detour
o Nonthematic subject positions
o Deriving raising sentences
o Tend and occur
o Promise
• Object control
• More nonthematic subjects
o Subject idiom chunks
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o Weather it
o Summary
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
LECTURE 10: PASSIVE
• Characteristics of the passive
• A movement analysis of the passive
o Object idiom chunks
o Analysis
• The passive and nonfinite complementation
• The passive and VP shell constructions
• Exercises and problems
LECTURE 11: WH- MOVEMENT
• Evidence for a movement analysis of questions
o Complementation
o Why a silent complementizer?
o Case checking
o Direct wh- questions
• The island constraints
o The apparent unboundedness of wh- movement
o A typology of islands
• Other instances of wh- movement
o Wh- relative clauses
o That relative clauses
o Doubly marked relative clauses
o Zero relative clauses
o Topicalization
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Questions
LECTURE 12: WH- MOVEMENT: SUBJACENCY AND THE ECP
• Subjacency
o Two possible derivations for long-distance wh- movement
o IP as a barrier to wh- movement
o DP as a barrier to wh- movement
o The coordinate structure constraint revisited
• The Empty Category Principle (ECP)
o Antecedent government
o Lexical government
• Further issues and refinements
o Is subjacency an independent principle?
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o Movement out of ECM complements
o Movement out of DP
• Exercises and problems
• Supplementary material
o Node relations
LECTURE 13: THE VERB-SECOND (V2) PHENOMENON
• V2 in German
o The linear position of the finite verb
o The structural position of the finite verb
o Movement to C as adjunction
o Verb movement to C in declaratives
• V2 in the history of English
o V2 in Middle English
o A remnant of V2 in modern English
• Notes
• Exercises and problems
LECTURE 14: BINDING THEORY: SYNTACTIC CONSTRAINTS ON
THE INTERPRETATION OF NOUN PHRASES
• Coreference and coindexing
• Hellan 1988
o The co-argument condition
o The predication condition
o The tensed IP condition
o Strict vs. non-strict co-arguments
• Extending Hellan's binding theory to English
o The co-argument condition
o The predication condition
o The tensed IP condition
• Chomsky 1981
o Principle A
o Principle B
o Principle C
• Notes
• Exercises and problems (to be added)
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