Ling M: Topics in Syntactic Theory (advanced!)

Week 1: Secondary Predication (Marcel den Dikken, ELTE Budapest & Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)

This seminar will take a close look at the syntax of secondary predication constructions, including resultatives ("she hammered the metal flat", "she ran the pavement thin"), depictives ("she ate the meat drunk", "she ate the meat raw"), and predications serving as the complement of epistemic verbs ("they consider her smart"). The analytical hypothesis space (incl. complex verbs, small clauses, and Larsonian VP-shell structures) will be surveyed for each of the relevant construction types, from both historical and synchronic theoretical perspectives, and the feasibility of an integrated approach to all secondary predication phenomena will be investigated.

Week 2: Features & Labeling  (Hedde Zeijlstra, University of Göttingen)

Most theories of labeling address the question as to why the merger of two syntactic objects should receive some label and then formulate some labelling algorithm; often this amounts to one of the two syntactic objects, the head, to project (some of) its features. In this lecture series, I reverse this question and wonder why it is not the case that both daughters project their features and I formulate an alternative approach to labelling, based on this question, that integrates minimalist structure building with insights from categorial grammar. The proposal will provide a unified labeling mechanism for complements, specifiers and adjunction and will have repercussions for the nature of roots, c-selection, clauses, and abstract case.

Students will need to have under their belt some introduction to generative syntactic theory.