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Advanced Syntax - LAN00079M

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• Department: Language and Linguistic Science
• Credit value: 10 credits
• Credit level: M
• Academic year of delivery: 2022-23

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Autumn Term 2022-23
B	Spring Term 2022-23

Module aims

This module aims:

To provide students with an opportunity to discuss cutting edge research in core issues involving the interplay of syntax, semantics, and the lexicon.

To develop the students' ability to deal with higher complexity datasets and develop a theoretically informed understanding of the issues and challenges that they raise.

To support independent research in formal generative syntax and semantics and the interface between them; one or two main themes will be chosen each year eg. nominals and events.

To develop specific research skills linked to abstract theoretical work (i.e. discover the connectedness of seemingly disparate ideas and go beyond binary branching reasoning)

Module learning outcomes

Subject content:

By the end of this module, students will:

• Have a good working knowledge of current minimalist syntactic theory
• Appreciate the two basic types of syntactic principles, namely Economy principles and interface principles
• Establish syntactic generalisations based on different types of data
• Develop an explanatory account of relevant generalisations using th two types of principles mentioned above but focusing more on the syntax/semantics interface
• Evaluate competing explanatory accounts of syntactic generalisations

Academic and graduate skills:

In addition to acquiring subject-specific skills and knowledge, students who finish this module will also be able to:

• argue more convincingly for their position in debates using empirical data
• present themselves better in writing and speech
• critically evaluate research papers based both on their logical structure and empirical grounding

 

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Module feedback

Written feedback on formative assessment 2 weeks after submission.

Indicative reading

The following list of readings is indicative. Other readings may also be added, or substituted.

• Chomsky, N., with Lasnik, H. (1995). The theory of principles and parameters. In Chomsky N. The minimalist programme, pp. 13–127.. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• Ramchand, G., & Reiss, C. (Eds.). (2007). The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces. Oxford University Press.
• Roberts, I. (Ed.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar. Oxford University Press.
• Sauerland, U., & Gärtner, H. M. (Eds.). (2007). Interfaces+ recursion= language?: Chomsky's minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics (Vol. 89). Walter de Gruyter.