Linguistics 25560/35560. Spring 2006 Jason Merchant University of Chicago
Comparative Germanic syntax
Technical specs: Time: Fridays 3-5:50pm Place: Wieboldt 230 Instructor: Jason Merchant
Office hours: Wednesdays 9-11am or by appointment Office: Classics 305 Tel: (773) (70)2-8523 email: [email protected]
Goals and course description:
This course examines the comparative syntax of the Germanic languages, including German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Yiddish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Faroese, and English. We explore questions of synchronic micro-and macrovariation, as well as the historical development of Germanic, through readings in the primary theoretical literature. Topics and languages may vary depending on participant interests and language expertise.
Prerequisite: Ling 20400/30400 (Syntax I) or consent of the instructor; previous study of another Germanic language (besides English) is desirable, but not required.
Topics by week:
1: 3/31. Basic clause structure, V2, V-to-I: Holmberg and Platzack 2005, Zwart 2005a, Vikner 1995, Alexiadou and Fanselow 2002 [Haeberli 2002b] 2: 4/7. CLS 3: 4/14. Restructuring, possessor datives: Wurmbrand 2005, Lee- Schoenveld 2004 [Guest lecture by Lee-Schoenfeld] 4: 4/21. Case and quirky subjects [expletives]. Zaenen, Maling, Thráinsson 1985, Sigur∂sson 2004 [Vikner 1995 ch. 7] 5: 4/28. Object positions and object shift: Holmberg 1999, Diesing 1997 6: 5/5. Scrambling and remnant topicalization. Müller and Sternefeld 1993, Fanselow 2004, Merchant 1996, Haeberli 2002a 7: 5/12. Complementizer agreement: Zwart 2005b and TBA. 8: 5/19. wh-movement and wh-scope marking. Diesing 2003, Beck and Berman 2000, Lutz et al. 2000 [Introduction] 9: 5/26. Postnominal determiners: Embick and Noyer 2001, Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2005 10: 6/2. Open, discussion of outstanding issues, student research
Coursework: Active participation (reading and discussion) [25%]; presentation of one of the assigned readings or a substitute of your choice (agreed upon with me) to the class (with a handout) [30%]; a final paper [55%].
Evaluation: Your evaluation for this course will be based on the above coursework as well as on class participation.
References:
Alexiadou, Artemis and Gisbert Fanselow. 2002. On the correlation between morphology and syntax: The case of V-to-I. In: Jan- Wouter Zwart and Werner Abraham (eds.), Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Amsterdam, Benjamins. Beck, Sigrid and Stephen Berman. 2000. Wh-Scope Marking: Direct vs. Indirect Dependency. In Uli Lutz, Gereon Müller and Arnim von Stechow (eds.), Wh-scope marking, 17-44. John Benjamins. Diesing, Molly. 1997. Yiddish VP order and the typology of object movement in Germanic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 369-427. Diesing, Molly. 2003. "On the Nature of Multiple Fronting in Yiddish", in Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes Grohman (eds.), Multiple Fronting, John Benjamins, 51-76. Embick, David, and Ralf Noyer (2001) “Movement Operations after Syntax,” Linguistic Inquiry 32:4, 555–595. Fanselow, Gisbert. 2004. Free constituent order: A Minimalist interface account. Ms., U Potsdam. Available from his webpage at Potsdam. Haeberli, Eric. 2002a. Features, categories, and the syntax of A-positions. Kluwer: Dordrecht. Excerpt from ch. 3 “Syntacitc effects of morphological case”, pp. 101-175. Eric Haeberli. 2002b. Inflectional morphology and the loss of V2 in English. In David Lightfoot, ed., Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford University Press. Hankamer, Jorge and Line Mikkelsen. 2005. When movement must be blocked: A reply to Embick and Noyer. Linguistic Inquiry 36(1), 85- 125. Holmberg, Anders. 1999. Remarks on Holmberg’s generalization. Studia Linguistica 53:1-39. Holmberg, Anders and Christer Platzack. 2005. The Scandinavian languages. Ch. 10 of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax, Guglielmo Cinque and Richard Kayne, editors. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford. (ch. 10). Lee-Schoenfeld, Vera. 2005. Beyond coherence: The syntax of opacity in German. PhD thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz.