Syntax

The course presents an introduction to the scientific approach to language and syntax.

It shall focus on the three key properties that characterise natural languages, i.e., recursion, hierarchy, and displacement. For each of them, issues concerning invariants and variation, possible cognitive explanations and theoretical modelling will be addressed and discussed.                

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:           

• perform simplex and more complex syntactic analyses (tree diagrams) in core linguistic phenomena
• compare and assess major hypotheses and models concerning word order variation, displacement and hierarchy
• formulate and operationalise a research question on theoretical syntax

The course is conceived as an introduction and shall be able to accommodate both motivated beginners, and students with some knowledge of syntactic analyses. The training sessions will be organised progressively, so that the two groups of students should be able to get a training appropriate to their level/needs.