Topics in Minimalist Syntax

The aim of this class is to reflect on a number of problems that have been central to the developing of recent syntactic theories and are still matter of great debate. In the first part of the course, we shall focus on three such problems: islands, the role of features in driving syntactic derivations, adjunction. In the second part, each student will choose one other theoretical problem and shall present it) in an abstract that will be peer reviewed in class; b) in an oral presentation that shall be discussed; c) in a final paper, that will be graded and peer reviewed. On each problem to be discussed, we shall take a theoretical and an empirical/experimental stance, including 1) a survey and assessment of the theoretical proposals that have been made and their problems; 2) an exploration of their cross linguistic validity; 3) the setting of some experimental guidelines on how to progress on the relevant issue.                                         

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

• write an academic abstract, a short academic paper on a theoretical problem and present and discuss it orally;
• have a good knowledge of the major debates in contemporary theoretical syntax, the issues at stake, their methodological options, their typological coverage.
• participate in collaborative research with a good master of the tenets of fair anonymous constructive reviewing

The course is conceived as a natural prosecution of Syntax, and it thus presupposes a good master of the basics of Minimalist syntactic theory and analytical tools