Contact Information

Office hours TBA

Course description

This course is a year-long course primarily for undergraduate linguistics majors. We will take four topics in current linguistic research (each in a different field of Linguistics) and pursue them in depth as a supplement to normal coursework in the major. For each topic, the course will consists of a series of weekly readings that the students will present and discuss; as an extension of them, the student will also write a short paper per topic.

Topics

1. Phonology: Stress.
   From now until the end of October.
2. Syntax (and interfaces): Scrambling.
   From November until the end of the Fall semester.

3. Morphology (and interfaces): Case in Ergative vs. Unaccusative languages. [Tentative]
4. Semantics: Tense Logic. [Tentative]

Course Requirements

• Participation / attendance 20%
• Four class presentations (one per topic) 10%
• Four abstracts (1 page long; one per topic) 10%
• Four short papers (5-8 pp. each; one per topic) 60%
  • First paper due on Nov 1
  • Second paper due on Dec 13

Readings for Topic 1 (Tentative)

• Francis Katamba. 1989. An Introduction to Phonology. Chapter 11: "Stress and Intonation."
• Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical Stress Theory. Chapter 2: "Diagnosing Stress Patterns".
• Kager, René. 1989. A Metrical Theory of Stress and Destressing in English and Dutch. Chapter 1: "English word stress: the data and the issues".
• Halle, Morris. 1997. "The stress of English Words 1968-1998", in Linguistic Inquiry.
• Burzio, Luigi. 1994. Principles of English Stress. Selections.