36817
Wh Constructions and Grammatical Functions - קונסטרוקציות hw ופונקציות תחביריות

Prof. Yehuda N. Falk

Office 7812
Office Hours Semester B: Wednesdays 14:45-15:30

Year-long 2009-10: Semester B: Sunday 14:30-16:00 Room 2332
MA Course, Linguistics Department, Generative Program

We will examine properties of wh constructions from the perspective of an approach that conceptualizes them as involving the assignment of multiple grammatical functions to a single syntactic element.

Course Outline

    Semester A

  1. Wh Constructions
    1. Properties
    2. Grammatical Functions and Multifunctionality
  2. The Realization Problem and In-Situ Constructions
  3. Locality: Path Phenomena
  4. Islands
    1. Syntax vs. Other Factors
    2. Mixed Analysis
    3. Consequences for In-Situ
  5. Relative Clauses
    1. Traditional Mediated Analysis
    2. Internally Headed Relative Clauses
    3. Unmediated Analysis

    Semester B (approximate/tentative)

  6. LFG Formalization
  7. Empty Categories
    1. Empty Categories and Non-Transformational Syntax
    2. Wanna Contraction: The Empty Category Analysis
    3. Subject Sharing
    4. Lexical Analysis
    5. The Empty Category Analysis Again
  8. Scope Marking ("Partial Movement") Constructions
  9. Other issues as time permits
  10. Movement/Displacement
    1. The Myth of Displacement
    2. Pervasiveness of Displacement

Course requirements

Final project
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 [21 October]
Wh-Constructions [21 October]
Wh and Grammatical Functions [28 October]
"In-Situ" [4 November]
Path Phenomena [11 November]
A Formal Account [21 January]

Announcements

The next LFG conference will be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 18-20 June 2010.

9 November: Note the new room number.

18 January: I just got confirmation from Shulamit that we will be meeting on Sundays in room 2332 in Semester B.

Readings

Assigned 21 October for 28 October: Kaplan, Ronald M. and Annie Zaenen (1989) "Long-Distance Dependencies,Constituent Structure, and Functional Uncertainty." in Mark R. Baltin and Anthony S. Kroch, eds., Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 17-42. Read pp. 17-25 only.

Assigned 28 October for 4 November: Mycock, Louise (2005) "'Wh'-in-Situ in Constituent Questions." in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, ed., Proceedings of the LFG 05 Conference, University of Bergen. Online: CSLI Publications. 313-333.

Assigned 4 November for 11 November

Assigned 18 November for 25 November:

Assigned 25 November for 2 December: Erteschik-Shir, Nomi and Shalom Lappin (1979) "Dominance and the Functional Explanation of Island Phenomena." Theoretical Linguistics 6: 41-86. Read till p. 76

Assigned 2 December for 9 December: Falk, Yehuda (2009) "Islands: A Mixed Analysis." To appear in the proceedings of the LFG09 Conference

Assigned 16 December for 23 December:

Assigned 23 December for 30 December: Excerpts from:

Assigned 30 December for 6 January: Falk (in preparation) "On the Syntactic Analysis of Relative Clauses"

Assigned 7 March for 14 March: