HS Optimal syntax

Course Outline

date topic materials/assignments 03/40/07 Introduction, motivations, administrative details podcast 10/04/07 Some Generative foundations: Procrastinate/Last Resort 17/04/07 Constraint hierarchies and grammaticality; 1st paper due 24/04/07 Markedness and faithfulness podcast 08/05/07 Constraint interaction; 2nd paper due Grimshaw, J. (2006). Location Specific Constraints in Matrix and Subordinate Clauses. ms, Rutgers University. podcast 15/05/07 Towards an Optimal typology – Crosslinguistic constraints and English Bresnan, J., Deo, A. & Sharma, D. (2006). Typology in Variation: A Probabilistic Approach to be and n’t in the Survey of English Dialects. ms, Rutgers University. podcast 22/05/07 Prosody and Optimality; 3rd paper due podcast 29/05/07 Language change – the view from Optimality podcast 05/06/07 Correspondence, theory and application; 4th paper due 12/06/07 Syntactic effects of movement 19/06/07 Syntactic effects of control; 5th paper due podcast 26/06/07 Radical ungrammaticality podcast 03/07/07 Evolutionary linguistics – Optimal cues; 6th paper due podcast 10/07/07 Wrapup podcast

Talk plan | Semesterapparat | APA format guidelines | Course slides

Course syllabus (selection)
Anderson, S. R. & Lightfoot, D. W. (2002). The language organ. Cambridge: CUP.
Archangeli, D. B. & Langedoen, D. T. (Eds.) (1997). Optimality theory. An overview. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dekkers, J. & van der Leeuw, F. (Eds.) (2000). Optimality theory. Phonology, syntax, and acquisition. Oxford: OUP.
Fanselow, G. (Ed.) (2002). Resolving conflicts in grammars. Optimality theory in syntax, morphology, and phonology. Hamburg: Buske.
Hermans, B. & van Oostendorp, M. (Eds.) (1999). The derivational residue in phonological optimality theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kager, R. (1999). Optimality theory. Cambridge: CUP.
McMahon, A. M. S. (2000). Change, chance, and optimality. Oxford: OUP.
Newmeyer, F. (2005). Possible and probable languages. A Generative perspective on linguistic typology. Oxford: OUP.
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (2004) [1993]. Optimality theory. Constraint interaction in Generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
Smolensky, P. & Legendre, G. (2006) The harmonic mind. From neural computation to optimality-theoretic grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2006.
Steedman, M. (2000). The syntactic process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stepanov, A. (Ed.) (2004). Minimality effects in syntax. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.