Topics in Minimalist Syntax (Master S2 Class)

Basic information

Description

The aim of this class is to reflect on a number of problems that have been central to the developing of recent syntactic theories and are still matter of great debate.
In the first part of the course, we shall focus on three such problems: the role of features in driving syntactic derivations, the status of word order, reduced structures.
In the second part, we shall collectively choose another theoretical problem and set a collective research addressing it from various points of views. Each student shall present its contribution a) in an abstract that will be peer reviewed in class; b) in an oral presentation that shall be discussed; c) in a joint final paper. On the problem to be discussed, we shall take a theoretical and an empirical/experimental stance, including 1) a survey and assessment of the theoretical proposals that have been made and their problems; 2) an exploration of their cross linguistic validity; 3) the setting of some experimental guidelines on how to progress on the relevant issue.

Prerequisites

The course is conceived as a natural prosecution of the S1 course Syntax, and it thus presupposes good mastery of the basics of Minimalist syntactic theory and analytical tools.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

  • Write an academic abstract, a short academic paper on a theoretical problem and present and discuss it orally.
  • Have a good knowledge of the major debates in contemporary theoretical syntax, the issues at stake, their methodological options, their typological coverage.
  • Participate in collaborative research with good mastery of the tenets of fair anonymous constructive reviewing.