160243 VO Syntax of a Specific Language (2007W)

Syntax einer Einzelsprache: The syntax and morphology of Romance verbs:
Merging late in syntax and in PF

The syntax and morphology of verbs in Romance, with comparative reference to English. Suitable for 2nd year students, with advanced aspects however brought in rather quickly. Some acquaintance with (not full knowledge of) French or some Romance language is highly desirable.

Weeks 1-2: General combinatorial principles for categories and levels of Merge.
Van Riemsdijk's Categorial Identity Thesis for functional categories.
Conditions that permit Late Lexical Insertion on a domain, both in narrow syntax and in PF.
Deriving flat structures: interaction of Late Insertion and Chomsky's Extension Condition.
Empirical tests for the existence or non-existence of phrasal structure.

Weeks 3-5: Deep vs. Late Syntactic vs. PF Merge of free verbal morphemes in Romance.
Romance restructuring verbs and causative constructions; their similarities.
Review of properties using the extensive literature (Kayne, Rizzi, Burzio).
Advantages of flat structures for faire à and faire par.
The avoir/ être auxiliaries and their properties (Napoli, Abeillé and Godard).

Weeks 6-7: Romance revelations: the syntax of subjects in flat structures
A generalized definition of Subject for both articulated and flat structures.

Week 8: PF merge of free verbal morphemes in English.
Realization in non-canonical positions, here of V in I; Alternative Realization (AR).
Examples: English do-support and its finite be paradigm. Non-existence of "V-raising."

Weeks 9-10: Late and PF Merge of bound morpheme heads, hosted by V.
PF-insertion and properties of present participles in Spanish and Enlgish (-ndo vs. -ing).
3 types of analytic passives based on the bound passive morpheme -en, V___.
Explaining the contrasting properties of verbal and adjectival passives (of Wasow, 1977)

Weeks 11-12: Polyfunctional Morphology of the passive participle.
How and why the 3 levels for Merge correspond exactly to 3 types of analytic passives.
Deep and late syntactic insertion = adjectival passives. PF insertion = verbal passives.
Passive participles as alternatively realized ?-features of objects.
Some consequences for agreement in active past participles.

Week 13-14: PF Merge of (bound) Romance clitics (non-heads) on V hosts.
The "Syntacticon" of grammatical lexical entries and their characteristic properties.
Syntactic addressing of closed class items vs. phonological addressing of open class items.
Paradigms as single vocabulary items; parentheses and brace notations.
Detailed analysis of French subject and object clitics in terms of Alternative Realization.

Week 15: Review and Overview: Implications for the Design of Formal Grammar.
Implication: "Small Clause" structures, never integrated into category theory and don't exist. Nor is there need for a "Voice Phrase."
Implication: Syntactic structures obey uniform principles, but synonymous trees don't necessarily "look alike" graphically, because of ways the simple principles of UG interact.
Implication: Much work needs to be done on which (and how) morphological paradigms appear in the lexicon as single entries.
Implication: Alternative Realization, which determines distributions of bound morphemes, has a role throughout clausal and/or local syntax. It is thus a principle of Syntactic UG, rather than in some special "Morphological Structure" component.