44964 - Grammatical Functions

Y. N. Falk
Office 7812
Office Hours: Sundays / Wednesdays 11:30-12:15

Year-long 2005-6 Tuesday 8:30-10 Room 2504
MA Course, English Department, Linguistics Stream

"Grammatical functions" are notions like "subject" and "object". This course will examine the role of grammatical functions in syntactic description and their place in linguistic theory through the investigation of a wide range of constructions (passive, raising, control, wh constructions, predication, etc.).

Course Outline

    Semester A

  1. Passive
    1. Universal Characterization: Grammatical Functions [Perlmutter and Postal 1982 in Perlmutter, Studies in Relational Grammar 1, pp. 3-11]
    2. Grammatical Functions and the Lexicon [Bresnan 1982 in The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, pp. 3-86]
  2. What are Grammatical Functions? [Falk ms Subjects and Universal Grammar: An Explanatory Theory (tentative title)]
  3. Multifunctionality
    1. Functional Control [Kaplan & Bresnan in Bresnan, The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, pp. 220-229]
    2. Long-Distance Dependencies ("Wh movement") [Kaplan & Zaenen in Baltin & Kroch, Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure. pp. 17–42]
  4. Anaphoric Control [Falk 2001 Chapter 5]

    Semester B

  5. Types of Grammatical Functions
    1. Argument vs. Non-Argument; Core vs. Non-Core; Unrestricted vs. Restricted
    2. Lexical Mapping Theory [Bresnan & Moshi]
  6. Clausal Complementation
    1. OBJ
    2. COMP
    3. COMP and OBJ [Dalrymple & Lødrup 2000 in Proceedings of LFG 00 Conference]
    4. OBJ and OBL [Alsina, Mohanan & Mohanan 2005 presented at LFG 05]
    5. Open Argument Functions [Falk 2005 presented at LFG 05]
  7. Subjects [Falk in press Subjects and Universal Grammar: An Explanatory Theory (Cambridge University Press)]

Course requirements

End-of-year short paper
for students taking the course as a seminar: Seminar Paper

Handouts available for downloading in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format

Note: If these don't print correctly on your printer but display properly in Acrobat, try using the "Print as image" option in Acrobat.
Syllabus [corrected version] (1 Nov)
Readings for Semester A (1 Nov)
Chomsky on Grammatical Functions (1 Nov)
Icelandic Passive and Case (15 Nov)
Long-Distance Dependencies (17 Jan)
Readings: Semester B (4 Apr)
Classes of Grammatical Functions (4 Apr)
Complement Clauses as OBJ (23 May)
Complement Clauses as COMP (23 May)

Announcements

1 November: I would like to wish everyone a productive academic year.
15 November: Read Bresnan's passive paper for next time.
6 December: Do the Falk reading for next time!!
27 December: Do the Kaplan-Bresnan reading listed under "Functional Control" for next time.
17 January: Read Kaplan-Zaenen.
25 April: Read Bresnan-Moshi for next time (after Yom HaAtzmaut).
23 May: Read Dalrymple-Lødrup for next time.
30 May: Read Alsina-Mohanan-Mohanan for next time.
13 June: Read Falk for next time.
13 June: Read the following sections of the ms of the forthcoming book Subjects and Universal Grammar: An Explanatory Theory:

The LFG 06 conference will be held in Konstanz, Germany.