Linguistics 211GL
Introduction to Syntax and Morphology

Second Semester, 1997
Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney

Lecturer: Christopher Manning
Office: Transient Building, 243B
Phone: 9351-7516
Email: cmanning@mail.usyd.edu.au
Office Hours: To be determined. Or see the sign on the door.

Lecture times: Tue, Wed, Fri 1-2, (13 weeks)
Lecture location: Physics Lecture Theatre 4
Tutorials: one hour per week, times to be determined

Aims

• To introduce basic concepts of syntax and morpho-syntax, considering both functional and formal aspects
• To investigate the ways in which sentences are built up from smaller conceptual elements
• To discuss a variety of syntactic and morphological structures found in the world's languages
• To examine the syntactic structure of a wide range of languages from every part of the world so we can discuss how the syntactic structure of different languages varies
• To help students understand the ideas underlying modern research in structural and generative linguistics
• To develop skills in problem-solving, systematically exploring hypotheses and the scientific method
• To let students develop experience in hands-on collection of linguistic data and discovering the grammatical structure found within a known or unknown language

Who is this course for?

This course is for people who want to understand about the structure of languages -- how do human beings put words into sentences? Do all languages do it the same way or are there differences? Are there differences without limit or do all languages have some things in common in the way they are structured? We will investigate the structures of typologically very different languages, with a view to developing a universally grounded theory of linguistic structure.

The course is intended to be interesting and relevant to people studying any language (ancient or modern), to those interested in the cognitive science fields of philosophy, psychology and computer science, to anthropologists who may one day learn a language in the field, and to anyone who just wants to find out a bit about how human languages work.

Preliminary reading

Really, if you have completed Linguistics 101 satisfactorily, none is required. But if you would like to revise the basics of English syntactic analysis or get ahead, some good things to read are:

J. R. Bernhard, A short guide to traditional grammar, Sydney U.P., pp.1-55.

This is especially useful if you don't know about or have only dim memories of traditional grammatical terms like noun, adjective, and preposition.

Keith Brown and Jim Miller, Syntax: A linguistic introduction to sentence structure, Routledge, Second edition, pp.1-88.

A good general intro to syntactic analysis.

C. L. Baker, English Syntax, MIT Press, Second edition, pp.1-95.

More theoretical and big picture, and English only, but useful.

Work required

• Steady reading on the topics covered in lectures, with more extensive reading on the chosen essay topic
• Problem sets. Syntactic analysis is something that you learn by doing. You will be encouraged to spend a lot of time looking at syntactic problems, and working out the structure of languages. This can be enjoyably done as a communal activity over coffee. Unfortunately, the demands of university assessment require that you also have to do some problems by yourself. There will thus be an alternation between assessed problem sets, which you have to do individually, and unassessed problem sets, which you can do in a group. Note, however, that you have to do the unassessed problem sets, and will be penalized for not handing in a problem set, or handing in something that isn't a presentable attempt at solving the problem.

  Assignment	Handed out	Due in
  Unassessed Ass. 1	Tue, 5 Aug	Tutorials in week 3
  Assessed Ass. 2	Tue, 12 Aug	Thu, 21 Aug
  Unassessed Ass. 3	Tue, 19 Aug	Tutorials in week 5
  Assessed Ass. 4	Tue, 26 Aug	Thu, 4 Sep
  Unassessed Ass. 5	Tue, 2 Sep	Tutorials in week 7
  Assessed Ass. 6	Tue, 9 Sep	Thu, 18 Sep
  Unassessed Ass. 7	Tue, 16 Sep	Tutorials in week 9
  Assessed Ass. 8	Tue, 7 Oct	Thu, 16 Oct
  Unassessed Ass. 9	Tue, 14 Oct	Tutorials in Week 12
  Assessed Ass. 10	Tue, 21 Oct	Thu, 30 Oct

• Essay. About 2000 words of text. The essay is about applying what you have learned in the course to material in some language, and writing a short article about it. They are not intended to be literature review essays, except in so far as you present and critically discuss arguments from different authors. I will give advice later on essay topics.

  	Handed out	Due in
  Essay	Week 3	Thu, 23 Oct

Assessment:

• Best 4 of 5 assessed problem sets at 15% each: 60%
• Essay: 40%

• For each unassessessed problem set not submitted: -5%

You should make every effort to hand in assignments on the due date. If that is impossible for some good reason, I may accept them a few days late. Under no circumstances will assignments be accepted after they have been discussed in tutorials. If something prevents you from handing in work before the first tutorial that discusses a problem, you will either need to skip that problem or see me about a make-up assignment.

Textbook

The textbooks are:

• Andrew Radford. Transformational Grammar: A First Course. Cambridge University Press, 1988. $55 in the bookstore (ouch!)
• Bernard Comrie. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Blackwells, 1981. [not in the bookstore when I went]

Syllabus

1. 29 Jul. Overview of fundamental concepts.
   Basic conceptual elements of language and their range of expression. Word and sentence. Types of word. What is generative syntax? Evidence in linguistics.
   • Radford, Ch. 1
   • [Classic read: Edward Sapir, Language (1921) Chapter 5]
2. 5 Aug. The structure of simple sentences in English.
   Phrase structure: evidence for constituency. Structural ambiguity.
   • Radford, Ch. 2 and 3 (but especially Ch. 2)
3. 12 Aug. Elaborations: The noun phrase.
   • Radford, Ch. 4
   • [C.L. Baker English Syntax Chapters 5, 10.]
4. 19 Aug. The Lexicon. Subcategorization.
   • Radford, Ch. 7
   • [P. Schachter. Part-of-speech systems in Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1]
5. 26 Aug. X-bar theory and English auxiliary and verb phrase structure
   • Radford, Ch. 5
6. 2 Sep. Case, word order and agreement.
   Ergative and active-stative case marking. Core and oblique.
   • Comrie, Ch. 4, 6, and 9.
7. 9 Sep. Semantic roles, and argument structure
   • Comrie, Ch. 3
8. 16 Sep. Grammatical Functions
   • Comrie, Ch. 5
   • [Avery Andrews, The major functions of the noun phrase in Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1]
9. 23 Sep. Raising, control, and sentential complementation.
   • Radford, Ch. 6
10. 7 Oct. Syntactic derivation: Passives, antipassives, dative shift and unaccusatives.
    • [Edward L. Keenan, Passive in the world's languages in Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1]
    • [W. Foley and R. Van Valin, Information packaging in the clause in Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1]
11. 14 Oct. Syntactic derivation: Causatives and applicatives.
    • Comrie, Ch. 8
12. 21 Oct. Clause linkage: subordination, switch reference, and coordination.
    • [Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 2]
    • [W. Foley and R. Van Valin, Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar, Chapters 6 and 7]
13. 28 Oct. Relative clauses and questions.
    • Comrie, Ch. 7
    • [Edward L. Keenan, Relative clauses in Tim Shopen (ed): Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1]