[PLing] Blockseminar Mark Hale 16.04.-30.04

[David Goldstein]

Dear all,

This is just a reminder that Mark Hale will be offering a block seminar 
on syntax between 16 and 30 April. The location and times of the 
sessions are available on the Vorlesungsverzeichnis. Below you will find 
an outline of the structure of the course.

Best,
David Goldstein



I. Preliminaries
     I.A. The Very Big Picture: why are we doing this?
     I.B. Why science? What obligations does adoption of a scientific 
stance impose upon us?
     I.C. How is Indo-European linguistics doing so far?
             A: badly. The example of phonology (which we claim to 
understand better).

II. Core Assumptions About Syntax (seem necessary for ANY comprehensive 
syntactic analysis)
     II.A. clauses are COMPOSED by a computational system in the mind
     II.B. Three 'layers' of 'syntax-relevant' (as opposed to open-class 
lexical) meaning:
         II.B.1. CORE PREDICATION: who did what to whom? (argument 
structure, the VP domain)
         II.B.2. 'GLUE' BETWEEN SUBJECT AND PREDICATE: under what 
modality does the predication hold?
                     (tense, aspect, mood, negation, etc., the IP domain)
         II.B.3. 'GLUE' BETWEEN CLAUSE AND DISCOURSE CONTEXT: how does 
this predication relate to
                     the broader discourse context (information 
structure, the CP domain)
     II.C. Accessability of the various layers to analysis
         II.C.1. semantically: CORE easiest, then MODALITY, then 
DISCOURSE
         II.C.2. structurally: DISCOURSE easiest, then MODALITY, then 
CORE
         II.C.3. lessons for our approach

III. Vedic Syntax
     III.A. Phonology-Syntax Interface
         III.A.1. It's nature, how it is (computationally) established
         III.A.2. Sources of evidence in dead languages
         III.A.3. The Vedic data
     III.B. WH-movement, fronting-operations, etc.
     III.C. Clitics, especially Wackernagel's Law
     III.D. Putting it all together

IV. Attic Syntax seen against the backdrop of what we've learned so far
     IV.A. WH-movement and clause structure
     IV.B. Clitics

V. Conclusions