This seminar will deal with cross-linguistic variation in agreement phenomena, where the features of an argument are tracked by some other element(s) in the clause (e.g. the verb). In particular, we will focus on the kind of factors that shape agreement patterns across languages. We will also consider more typologically unusual agreement phenomena such as hierarchy effects, closest conjunct agreement, non-canonical agreement targets and switch reference. The central goal is to understand how variation in the realization of agreement can shape our assumptions about the core syntactic operation, Agree.
Andrew Murphy -- Autumn 2020
Economy: This course is an advanced graduate seminar in theoretical syntax. Through readings from the primary research literature, we will make as much progress as we possibly can on answering the following questions, among others: Is syntax governed by principles of economy? If so, what kind of economy do they enforce: derivational economy, representational economy, some other kind, or more than one of the above-and why? And, insofar as syntax does exhibit economy effects, are any of them attributable to "third-factor" principles or principles of natural law-ones not specific to language? We will read and discuss in detail approximately one research article per week, and every enrolled student will write a final squib on a syntactic topic of their choice, approved by the instructor (which need not be related to syntactic economy specifically).
Erik Zyman -- Winter 2026
Word order and the syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface: A comparative analysis of Basque, Spanish, and English
The goal of this course is two-fold. On the one hand, it is designed to offer a complete picture of some of the major grammatical properties of Basque, a non Indo-European minority (and typologically isolated) language (around 750 thousand speakers) which is spoken in a small territory, split on both sides of the western border between France and Spain. On the other hand, we will discuss and offer an analysis of a set of specific properties of Basque related to word order and the syntax semantics/pragmatics interface and put them into a broader perspective on the basis of a comparative analysis with other languages, especially Spanish and English. We will focus on three major theoretical issues — focalization, interrogative sentences and negation— as well as the interactions between them. We will present the major phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties exhibited by the structures under analysis, discuss previous approaches in the literature, and offer new alternative analyses.
Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria -- Spring 2021