Syllabus for syntax reading course, Fall 2012

A series of readings in generative syntax.

Every week, one or more readings will be assigned.  Every week, two students
will be charged with leading the discussion of the week's reading.  Students
who are not designated as leaders for that week will write a 1-2 pp. paper
responding to some aspect of the reading (a problem brought up in the reading
itself, a report on one of the articles referred to in the reading, or a
report on some later work that refers to the reading and/or deals with the
same or a related topic).

Readings may vary in different offerings of the course.  The list below
represents the sequence followed in a group independent study which is a
prototype of the proposed course.  (All posted on the course web site,
http://babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/syntax.club.html)

0. Background:

   Chomsky 1957, Syntactic Structures chs. 1-5

   Chomsky 1965, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax ch 3

EXTRA:

   Chomsky 1959, Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior

1. Ross 1967, Constraints on Variables in Syntax, chs. 1, 2, 4, 6.

2. Emonds 1972, A reformulation of certain syntactic transformations

3. Ross 1967, On the cyclic nature of English pronominalization

   Kayne 1971, A pronominalization paradox in French

   Bach 1970, Problominalization

4. Gazdar 1980, Phrase Structure Grammar

5. Pollock 1989, Iatridou 1990

6. Chomsky 1969, Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation

EXTRA:

   Excerpts from Studies Out in Left Field

7. Lasnik & Stowell 1991, Weakest Crossover

   Postal 1993, Remarks on Weak Crossover

8. McCloskey 2011, The Shape of Irish Clauses

9. Hankamer 2011, Auxiliaries and Negation in English

EXTRA:

   Pullum 1982, Syncategorematicity and English Infinitival 'to'