Readings

Books

We will be drawing on material from two textbooks in this course, both of which are available at the campus bookstore. Liliane Haegeman's Introduction to Government and Binding Theory provides a clear and detailed presentation of many of the important theoretical proposals in the GB tradition in the 1980s and early 1990s. It focuses on introducing technical concepts, and focuses primarily on English. Ian Roberts' recent book Comparative Syntax focuses more on the characterization of cross-linguistic differences in the principles and parameters approach, but with less detail on technical issues. Thus, the two books complement one another nicely.

  1. Roberts, Ian. 1997. Comparative Syntax. London: Arnold.
  2. Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Articles, Chapters, etc.

In addition to reading material from the two textbooks, you will also read a number of articles or chapters from the primary syntax literature. Some of these have been chosen because they are classic papers in the field, others because they provide a particularly interesting idea or dataset that bears on issues that we will be discussing in clsss. The list given below is provisional. One copy of the articles will be made available in the Syntax II mailbox in the linguistics department mailroom. You should make a copy for yourself and return it promptly to the mailbox.

In addition to these readings, I will distribute handouts in class on a fairly regular basis, containing examples and arguments from a wide variety of languages and sources.

  1. Baker, M. 1988. Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. University of Chicago Press. [selections]
  2. Baker, M. 1991. On some subject/object non-asymmetries in Mohawk. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 9, 537-576.
  3. Baker, M. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford University Press. [selections]
  4. Baker, M., K. Johnson & I. Roberts. 1989. Passive Arguments Raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 219-251.
  5. Cole, Peter & Gabriella Hermon. 1998. The Typology of Wh-movement: Wh-movement in Malay. Syntax 1, 221-258.
  6. Cole, Peter, Gabriella Hermon & Cher-Leng Lee. 2000. Long-distance Reflexives in Two Chinese Dialects. in press, Cole, Hermon & Huang (eds.) Long Distance Reflexives. San Diego: Academic Press.
  7. Demirdache, Hamida. 1998. Condition C. In Atomism and Binding.
  8. Fox, Danny. 1999. Reconstruction, binding theory, and the interpretation of chains. Linguistic Inquiry, 30, 157-196.
  9. Iatridou, Sabine. 1990. About Agr(P). Linguistic Inquiry, 21, 551-577.
  10. Kenstowicz, M. 1989. The Null Subject Parameter in Modern Arabic Dialects. In O. Jaeggli & K. Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp.263-275.
  11. Lasnik, H. & M. Saito. 1991. On the Subject of Infinitives. In L. Dobrin, L. Nichols & R. Rodriguez (eds.), CLS 27. Part 1: The General Session. University of Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
  12. Lidz, Jeff. 2000. Condition R. in press, Linguistic Inquiry.
  13. Manzini, R. 1992. Locality. MIT Press. [selections]
  14. Marantz, A. 1994. A Reader's Guide to the Minimalist Program. In G. Webelhuth (ed), Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.351-382.
  15. Phillips, Colin. 1998. Linear Order and Constituency. to appear in Linguistic Inquiry.
  16. Pollock, J.-Y. 1989. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of Inflection. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365-424.
  17. Reinhart, Tanya & Eric Reuland. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry 24, 657-720.
  18. Richards, Norvin. 1998. The Principle of Minimal Compliance. Linguistic Inquiry, 29, 599-629.
  19. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. [selections]
  20. Saito, Mamoru. 1992. Long-distance scrambling in Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 1, 69-118.
  21. Saito, Mamoru & Hajime Hoji. 1983. Weak crossover and move-alpha in Japanese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1, 245-259.