Mark Johnson
Spring semester 2008
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:00-10:30am, Sayles Hall 105 (may change)
This course studies the syntax of human languages, i.e., how morphemes and words combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. This topic is central to modern generative linguistics, and our understanding of syntactic structures and processes has dramatically increased over the past few decades. The course itself will focus on the syntactic structures and processes of English, and class discussion and homework will involve studying related structures and processes in English and other languages.
One of the textbooks gives analyses based on HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar), while the other gives analyses in a Principles and Parameters framework. We'll be comparing and contrasting these analyses in this class.
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