LINGUIST 401Introduction to SyntaxFall 2004, Dickinson 209, TTh 1.00-2.15http://people.umass.edu/bhatt/401-s05/Rajesh Bhatt222 South CollegeOffice Hours: TTh 2.15-3.30 or by appointment5-6832, [email protected]:What syntactic properties are shared by all natural languages? What syntacticproperties distinguish them? What do we know when we know a language?What are syntactic properties? How do we construct a theory of syntax? Thiscourse aims to equip students with the ability to address these questions in a pre-cise and informed way. The topics include those that are central to a proper un-derstanding of syntax: phrase structure, movement, grammatical relations, case,complementation, anaphora, and long-distance movement.Implicit knowledge, grammaticality, and related issuesConstituencyCategoriesSyntactic treesX-bar theoryCase and NP-Movement– Passivization– Raising and Control– Exceptional Case Marking– ExpletivesBinding TheoryWh-MovementHead MovementPrerequisites:Linguist 201 (Introduction to Linguistics) or the consent of the instructorRequirements:participation in class, in e-mail, or during my office hours (10regular homework assignments (roughly one a week) (60two take-home exams, the first assigned on March 3 and due on March 10and the second assigned on May 5 and due on May 12.Some Policies:You are welcome to work together on the regular assignments, but jointassignments are not allowed. Please list the namesof everyone you workedwith at the top of each assignment.You cannot work together on the exams.The assignments and exams will address only material that we covered inclass (and appropriate extensions of it). So active andengaged participationin the class meetings is essential to your success on them.I will drop your lowest regular-assignment grade (even if it is a 0), on thecondition that you participate in one of the experiments being run by UMass Lin-guistics researchers this semester. These experiments typically involve speak-ing, writing, or listening.Late assignments willonly be accepted in the caseof medical or other emer-gencies.I will make the lecture slides available online on the website and occasionallydistribute short, compulsory reading assignments. In addition to these, there is arequired text.Required Text:Syntax: A Generative Introduction, Andrew Carnie, Blackwell Publishing, 2002.(ISBN 0-631-22544-7) (ordered at Amherst Books, 8 Main St.