Whamit!

Join us on Monday for Phonology Circle! Please note the new location: 32-D461.

Speaker: Andrew Nevins
Date: Monday, Sept 28
Location: 32-D461
Title: Encoding and decoding in the whistled phonology of Antia, Greece

This is intended to be a discussion about the phonetics and phonology of whistled languages, and participants are invited to read the attached paper by Annie Rialland on the topic as a starting point. I will also present some production data from words and non-words collected in Antia, the results of perception tasks with both whistlers and non-whistling Greek speakers, and offer some ideas about the encoding mechanism used in this surrogate speech system.

Recommended reading: Rialland (2005) Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages

Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:

Speaker: Ivy Sichel
Time: Thurs 10/1, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461

Title: Economy and the Interpretation of Pronominals

Natural languages use pronominal material for a variety of purposes which extend beyond the ordinary use of pronouns to denote independent theta-roles. In some of these other uses, pronominal material appears to double another DP, including, for example, resumptive pronouns and agreement. The talk addresses how these forms are interpreted, and in particular whether the pronominal form allows reconstruction of its associated DP. The central claim is that form alone does not determine interpretation, and that the existence of alternatives does to a significant extent. The first part of the talk demonstrates this for resumptive pronouns and focuses on a correlation between interpretation and extraction. In non-island contexts, Hebrew has optional and obligatory resumptive pronouns. Optional resumptives block reconstruction of the RC head and also block extraction from the RC; obligatory resumptives allow reconstruction and also allow extraction, exactly like traces. I argue that (1) The possibility for reconstruction depends on the structure of the RC, and in particular the division into Matching and Raising RCs (Bhatt 2002; Sauerland 2004; Hulsey & Sauerland 2006), and (2) that the structure associated with reconstruction is best realized with a trace and is realized with a pronoun only if no trace alternative is available. The second part of the talk extends the alternatives-based analysis to agreement in Palestinian Arabic (PA). PA exhibits an alternation between full-Agr and no-Agr, and clauses with full-Agr lack inverse scope readings, analyzed as absence of reconstruction. This is related to the availability of an alternative structure in which agreement is absent, the surface position of the subject is low and its scope is fixed at that position.

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra: All Blues
With vocalists Jerry Edwards and Grace Hughes
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 8:00 pm, one show only
Scullers Jazz Club
Doubletree Guest Suites, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA
Admission: $18 Reservations and information: 617-562-4111 or

The celebrated Aardvark Jazz Orchestra will open its 37th season at Scullers with a show of All Blues, from Miles and Duke to Mingus and Basie to boogie and funk originals by Aardvark founder/music director Mark Harvey. The band will salute the 50th anniversaries of two seminal albums: Kind of Blue (playing a new arrangement of the iconic Miles Davis piece All Blues) and Mingus Ah Um(performing Pork Pie Hat, the Mingus tribute to Lester Young), with other tunes including Ellington’s Tell Me It’s the Truth, the Count Basie classic Everyday I Have the Blues, and originals by Mark Harvey (Flat Earth Boogie, Blues for D.C., Scamology, and 110 Blues — celebrating Ellington’s 110th birthday).

[Thanks to Jay Keyser, who plays the trombone in Aardvark!]

The Syntax-Semantics Reading Group is meeting for two special sessions on Monday, September 21, to hear practice talks for Sinn und Bedeutung:

Who: Jacopo Romoli
When: 11:30AM
Where: 32-D461
Title: Towards a Structural Account of Conservativity

Abstract can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage.

Who: Patrick Grosz & Pritty Patel-Grosz
When: 3:30PM
Where: 56-191
Title: The Typology of Pronouns: Two Types of Anaphora Resolution

Abstract can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage.

If you are interested in presenting your work or someone else’s work in the Syntax-Semantics Reading Group, there are still some slots available for this semester - please check the group’s webpage.

Join us for this week’s Ling-Lunch talk:

Speaker: Kirill Shklovsky
Title: Person-Case Effects in Tseltal
Time: Thurs 9/24, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461

Person-Case Constraint (PCC) is a restriction on the nature of the direct object argument in the presence of an indirect object: in many languages, the the direct object in a ditransitive construction can only be third person (Bonet, 1991). Tseltal, a Mayan language of southern Mexico, exhibits PCC restrictions not only in with ditransitive verbs but also in a construction involving non-finite complement embedded under an intransitive verb. Curiously, the restriction is not in effect when the same non-finite complement is embedded under a transitive verb. In this talk I will show that the phenomenon can be accounted for using theories of PCC in Béjar and Rezac (2003) and Anagnostopoulou (2003) in combination with inherent case theory of ergative case (Woolford (1997), Legate (2008)). This should provide support for the idea that ergative is inherent case in Tseltal. The rest of this talk will deal with case-assignment and agreement in non-finite complement clauses.

Please join us for a special session of the syntax-semantics reading group on Friday, 9/25.

Who: Chris Collins (NYU)
When: 1:00-2:30PM
Where: 32-144

Title: A formalization of Minimalist Syntax

The goal of this formalization is to give a precise, formal account of certain fundamental notions in minimalist syntax, leading up to the definition of a convergent derivation. We would like this formalization to be useful to minimalist syntacticians in evaluating their own proposals (both conceptually and empirically), and comparing their proposals to others.

The talk is joint work with Ed Stabler.

Speaker: Martina Wiltschko (University of British Columbia)
Title: The composition of INFL: An exploration of tense, tenseless languages and tenseless constructions.
Time: Friday, September 25, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141

In this paper we argue that the functional category TENSE, sometimes viewed as the head of the clause can be decomposed. It consists of the universal functional category INFL and language specific features of temporal content: [past] and [present]. Thus, the functional category TENSE is not a primitive category of UG, but INFL is. Specifically, we argue that INFL has a universal function, namely anchoring, but that the substantive content associated with it is language specific or can be lacking alltogether.

We present three arguments for this view:

i) Arguments from language variation. We show that in some languages INFL exists without features of temporal content. Instead, in Halkomelem INFL is associated with substantive features of spatial content. In Blackfoot, INFL is associated with substantive features relating the participants of the event to those of the utterance (Ritter & Wiltschko, in press). This much establishes that the category INFL exists independent of its substantive content, at least at the initial state.

ii) Arguments from tenseless constructions. The independence of INFL from its substantive content is further supported by the existence of constructions where INFL appears without temporal content – even in a language which otherwise appears to be a tensed language: Infinitives and imperatives. This much establishes that INFL exists without substantive content even within a given language. The proposal correctly predicts that in contexts where INFL is used without substantive content the difference between English, Halkomelem and Blackfoot vanishes.

iii) Arguments from nominal licensing. Finally, we show that the licensing of nominal arguments varies with the substantive content associated with INFL. In languages with temporal features, nominal arguments are licensed via dependent marking (structural case), while in languages with spatial or participant features, nominal arguments are licensed via head-marking. This indirectly supports Pesetsky & Torrego’s 2001 idea according to which structural case reduces to tense features on D. However, since tense is not a primitive category in our analysis, we argue that case reduces instead to the substantive features that make up tense: [present = NOMINATIVE] and [past = ACCUSATIVE].

We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our proposal for our understanding of functional categories.

The fall meeting of the phonology workshop UMMM will take place on Sunday, Nov 1, at UMass Amherst (which happens to coincide with Daylight Savings Time, giving you an extra hour to recover from Halloween). A schedule and further details will be forthcoming as the date gets closer.

Phonology Circle will not meet this week, but will meet every Monday for the remainder of the semester. Here is the tentative schedule of presentations:

Phonology Circle resumes its weekly meetings on Monday with an organizational meeting, and a brief presentation by Peter Graff on what he has learned about a local MIT resource, the Behavioral Research Lab.

Time: Mon 9/14, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

If you cannot make it to the meeting, but wish to present some time this semester, please contact Adam to request a slot.

Language acquisition, variation and change
24.921, Fall 2009
Michel DeGraff and Ken Wexler

There’s a long and strong tradition, going back to at least the Neo-Grammarians, of attempting to explain language change via the processes of language acquisition. Yet, in each of the relevant sub-disciplines of linguistic theory, historical linguistics and language-acquisition research there are several competing hypotheses that enlist incompatible assumptions about the nature of grammar and variation.

The purpose of this seminar is to discuss the most up-to-date approaches in the study of language acquisition and language change, as well as linguistic theory, toward providing the best possible framework for the connection among the corresponding empirical domains. We understand “language change” broadly—-to include diachronic syntax (in the history, say, of English) alongside the creation of “new” languages (in the history of, say, Haitian Creole). We’ll examine all of these diachronic patterns as examples of the human linguistic capacity coming to terms with varying input in the linguistic ecology. Thus, processes of first- and second-language acquisition, and the differences between the two, should be crucial to understanding language-change phenomena. The results of our discussion should contribute to our understanding of the nature of language in the human mind and the conditions and limits whereby language can vary.

The first couple of lectures will discuss central issues in, and a sample of models from, the study of historical change and language acquisition, including:

• the relationship between language contact and language change;
• whether language change is ever possible in absence of language contact;
• the nature of “creolization”;
• the relationship between first- and second-language acquisition and language change;
• whether the language acquirer comes equipped with a set of “cues” that enable parameters to be set.

Then we’ll turn to particular domains of language variation related to basic parameters of clause and nominal structure, possibly including the following issues:

• Does the language have V-to-I? Yes: French / No: Haitian Creole
• Does the language have (non-residual) V-to-C? Yes: German / No: English
• Is a (phonetically overt) copula required for non-verbal predication? Yes: English / No: Haitian Creole
• Distribution and interpretation of determiners

For each of these domains we’ll look for evidence in comparative syntax, historical change, and language acquisition.

We expect the seminar to be of interest to colleagues interested in:

• linguistic theory;
• first- and second-language acquisition;
• language change/creation;
• the relationship between language and larger issues of cognition.

There are two more incoming first-year students who have sent us brief introductions this week.

Jorie Koster-Moeller is from Corrales, New Mexico. She got her BA from Pomona College, and is currently doing a joint program through the linguistics department and the brain and cognitive science department. She’s particularly interested in semantics, both formal and experimental, and psycholinguistics. She also enjoys most anything mountain-related, such as backpacking and rockclimbing.

Edwin Martin Howard apologises that you’ve had to wait a whole week to hear about him, but he was out of email contact last weekend whilst enjoying a break in the wilds of rural Quebec - the Canadian province that he now also, in addition to his native Scotland, calls home. During his time in Montreal, he has become a proficient French speaker, and he completed a BA in Linguistics at McGill, writing an honours thesis on the semantics of superlatives and NPI licensing. The best thing that’s ever happened to him was the birth of his son, just over a year ago.

Patrick Grosz and Pritty Patel-Grosz are going to present their work on pronominal anaphora next week, which they will also present at Sinn und Bedeutung 14. For the title and abstract of their presentation see below. Note that this is not a 30-minute practice talk, but intended to be a longer, more interactive presentation where comments, discussion and feedback are encouraged throughout.

DATE: Monday, September 21, 2009
TIME: 3:30-5PM
ROOM: to be announced
TITLE: The Typology of Pronouns: Two Types of Anaphora Resolution
ABSTRACT: can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage

This will be a special session of the LF Reading Group (Syntax-Semantics Reading Group).

The yearly meeting of the Northeast Computational Phonology circle will take place this year at MIT.

Title: NECPhon 3
Date: Oct 24, 2009
Location: 32-D461

Details of the event, including the precise time and schedule of talks, will be announced as the date gets closer. In the meantime, save the date, and if you may be interested in presenting, please contact Adam Albright.

This is a periodic reminder that if you ever use the phonetics lab space or equipment, you should subscribe to the phonlab e-mail list: (it’s extremely low volume)

http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/phonlab

In addition, if you are not sure about the correct way to do something in the lab, please just ask someone who knows. (This includes signing up for times to reserve the booth, recording to a file, adjusting the levels or switch mics, adjusting the fitting of the head-mounted microphone, and so on). Finally, if you know of others who use the lab but who might not be on one of the ling lists, such as RA’s/UROPs, class participants, and so on, please forward this to them, and be sure they know where to look for instructions/training, and who to go to for help.

Speaker: Keith R. Kluender, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Title: Speech perception as efficient coding
Time: Friday, 18 September, 4pm
Place: Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002

Fundamental principles that govern all perception, from transduction to cortex, are shaping our understanding of perception of speech and other familiar sounds. Here, ecological and sensorineural considerations are proposed in support of an information-theoretical approach to speech perception. Optimization of information transmission and efficient coding are emphasized in explanations of classic characteristics of speech perception, including: perceptual resilience to signal degradation; variability across changes in listening environment, rate, and talker; categorical perception; and, word segmentation. Experimental findings will be used to illustrate how a series of like processes operate upon the acoustic signal with increasing levels of sophistication on the way from waveforms to words. Common to these processes are ways that perceptual systems absorb predictable characteristics of the soundscape, from temporally local (adaptation) to extended periods (learning), and sensitivity to new information is enhanced. [Supported by NIDCD]

For more info: http://mit.edu/bcs/newsevents/colloquia.shtml

Claire attended the first-ever African Linguistics Summer School, held in Accra, Ghana, in late July/early August. The school, modeled on the EGG school, brought together more than 60 students who work on African languages. Among the organizers of the school were MIT alumnus Chris Collins and 2008 visiting professor Enoch Aboh. Planning is underway for a second ALS in Benin in 2011.

The Syntax-Semantics Reading Group, also known as the LF Reading
Group, is still looking for presenters. If you would like to discuss
your research or present stimulating work done by others, please let
Tue or Luka know. The group’s first meeting is scheduled for:

Monday, Sept 21, 11.30AM
Location: 32-D461

For more information, please visit the group’s website.

Come join us for this week’s Ling-Lunch talk:

Speaker: Patrick Grosz
Title: Grading Modality: A New Approach to Modal Concord and its Relatives
Time: Thurs 9/17, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461

Abstract can be found here

Visiting Students (5)

Aysa Arylova: PhD student at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Aysa is investigating the morphosyntactic realization of syntactic dependency as a function of the structure building operation Merge. Her work will include an extensive typological survey and the development of a formal analysis.

Micha Breakstone: PhD student at Hebrew University, Israel. Micha is fascinated by “Universal Degrees.” Different assumptions regarding the nature of degree processing (e.g., universal density) have led him to exciting speculations about how the linguistic module in the mind/brain may interact with other cognitive modules, as well as with pragmatic knowledge about the world.

Marcus Lunguinho: PhD Student at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Marcus’s research focuses on “Auxiliary Verbs and the Theory of Grammar,” and the following two areas in particular: 1) the defective morphological paradigms of certain auxiliaries; 2) the syntax of the non-finite domains selected by auxiliary verbs.

Dimitris Michelioudakis: PhD student at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Dimitris’s current research is on the syntactic status of Inherent (“Dative”) Case in different diachronic and diatopic varieties of Greek.

Coppe van Urk: MA student at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Coppe’s research mainly concerns issues in modern generative syntax, specifically in the area of Control.

Visiting Scholars (3)

Manchun Dai: Professor at the National Research Center for Foreign Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. Professor Dai’s interests revolve around Second Language Acquisition and Syntax.

Jeongah Kim, Researcher at the Institute of Language and Information Studies at Yonsei University, Korea. Professor Kim’s research interests are in phonetics, phonology, morphology and the phonology-phonetics interface. She is interested in recent developments in phonology, including Optimality Theory, Correspondence Theory and Sympathy Theory.

Anna Roussou: Associate Professor at the University of Patras, Greece. Professor Roussou’s main research interests are in syntax (Greek, comparative, diachronic) and its interfaces with morphology/lexicon and semantics.

[Thanks, Michel!]

In late-July/early-August, Omer taught at the Eastern(-European) Generative Grammar summer school, better known as “the EGG”, in Pozna? (Poland). He taught two courses: “Intro to Syntax” and “Agreement and its failures”. Materials for these courses are still available on his website.

Later in August, he spent a couple of days at NYU working with Anna Szabolcsi and Julia Horvath (who was visiting from Israel) on the phenomenon of overt (nominative) controlees in infinitival clauses in Hungarian and, it turns out, other languages as well (something that looks a little bit like “backwards control”, but probably isn’t). This work is scheduled to resume in early November.

The Philosopher’s Annual has listed two articles of MIT authors among the top ten best philosophy articles in 2008:

• Kai von Fintel (MIT) & Anthony S. Gillies (Rutgers), “CIA Leaks”
• Agustín Rayo (MIT), “Vague Representation”

24.981 Topics in computational phonology and morphology
M 2:30-5:00pm, plus lab sessions to be determined
Location: TBA

Description:

Computational modeling can usefully inform many aspects of phonological theory. Implementing a theory provides a more rigorous test of its applicability to different data sets, and requires a greater degree of formal precision than is found in purely expository presentations. By training learning models on realistic training samples, we can test whether a posited analysis can actually be discovered from representative data, and we can observe what proportion of the data is actually accounted for by that analysis. Modeling also provides a direct means of testing whether a proposed formal device facilitates the discovery of generalizations, or whether it hampers learning by greatly increasing the size of the search space. In the most interesting cases, computational modeling uncovers facts about the language that would have been difficult to discover by eye, and forces us to ask which facts are treated as linguistically significant by speakers.

This class is intended to serve two distinct functions:

• We will discuss recent theoretical work informed by computational implementations, and tools for modeling phonological knowledge of various kinds. Special attention will be paid to the relation between formal learning models and empirical data concerning phonological acquisition.
• The class also functions as a practical introduction to some scripting techniques, allowing those who have no programming background to gain some hands-on experience with modeling. No previous programming experience is assumed or required.

Topics will include: (subject to revision)

• Statistical “baseline” models (n-gram models, exemplar models)
• Algorithms for constraint ranking and weighting
• Algorithms for constraint discovery
• Integrating learned and innate constraints
• Learning in the midst of variation and exceptions, and discovery of gradient patterns

Requirements: readings and small regular problem sets, final project+presentation.

24.956 Seminar on Topics in East Asian Linguistics
T 10-1, 66-156 (when meeting at MIT, including the first class on 9/15)
C-T James Huang, Shigeru Miyagawa

We will take up some recent studies of East Asian syntax that have important theoretical relevance.

Issues include:

• agreement/topic/focus
• NP structure: the status of classifiers, plurality, and no/de, etc.
• ellipsis and null arguments in clauses and nominals
• comparatives
• intervention effects
• Case alternation

While the focus will be on Chinese and Japanese, we will make an attempt to bring in data and analysis from Korean whenever possible. Students are expected to do one class presentation and a final paper. We will alternate the meeting location between Harvard and MIT. See Calendar for the location of each class.

With the beginning of the new semester, the Syntax-Semantics Reading Group gears up again.

• Presentations: Although we have turned into a practice talks group in the last couple of years, we again hope to turn the tide a little bit and have some presentations this semester in which actual reading is required from the participants. There are already two such meetings planned: McCloskey prep & Bobaljik prep. We are also planning to have some discussions of readings relevant for the upcoming NELS talks. We will also have an occasional invited speaker.

If there are papers that you would like to see discussed, please let us know. Also contact Tue and Luka if you have any other suggestions for the group or, naturally, if you want to give a practice talk.

• Suggested time: Mondays 3.30PM; the room will be announced. Let us know if you have planned to attend but can’t make it at that time.
• Website: it will be updated once the scheduling is settled

See you soon!
Your LFRG organizers

Phonology Circle will resume its fall schedule next Monday, 9/14, at 5pm in 32-831. If you cannot make this meeting, but would like to reserve a slot for the fall semester, please contact Adam.

See you there!

Several of the incoming first year students have sent us brief introductions.

mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) grew up in Minnesota and is thus actively looking forward to the Boston winter. While at the University  of Chicago he worked on the syntax/semantics of Mandarin comparatives.  Since then, he’s lived in Taiwan and Japan, most recently working for  Mozilla.

Hadas Kotek grew up in a small town in northern Israel. Hadas reports: “My name literally means myrtle and is a shortened version of Hadassah, the Hebrew name of the biblical queen Esther. I did a BA in linguistics at Tel-Aviv university, then studied the first year of my MA at the Humboldt university in Berlin and the second year back at Tel-Aviv university. My previous work focused mainly on formal semantics and its interface with syntax. At present I am planning to continue working in these same areas.”

Junya Nomura reports: “I’m from Japan. My main interst is in syntax. I’ve studied especially Japanese syntax, but I’m planing to study other East Asian languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Khmer, too. Apart from linguistics, I like sports, especially basketball and baseball, and shogi (Japanese chess).”

Daeyoung Sohn reports: “I am from South Korea. I have an MA in linguistics, and BAs in international relations study and English. I am interested mainly in Syntax and also have interest in Semantics. ”

Yusuke Imanishi reports: “I was born and grew up in Nara, Japan. The city is not as famous and large as cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Nevertheless, it is filled with nature preserves, forests and temples/shrines!! We also have a big Buddha, which reaches the height of approx. 50m. I completed my MA in Linguistics at Osaka University in Spring 2009. My thesis proposes that dative subjects in the Standard Japanese and some Japanese dialects are structurally Case-assigned, opposed to traditional analyses. I also extended empirical coverage to other languages and attempted to devise a unified account of dative subject constructions. My research interests include syntactic theory and comparative syntax based on a macro/micro-parametric approach. I’m also interested in the interfaces of phonology and semantics with syntax. 

Iain Giblin is from Australia. He reports: “My academic background is in music, but I’ve had a long interest in linguistics and in my postgraduate music studies I sought to apply generative models of language to music. I’m also interested in the philosophical questions that arise from the generative approach. I’m looking forward to the program here at MIT and learning all the techniques of modern linguistic theory so I won’t commit myself to one domain just yet. I still like to noodle around on the guitar and Boston is a great guitar town.”

Stay tuned for intros to the rest of the incoming class.

24.993*: Topics in Syntax
Leftward, Rightward, Overt, Covert: Rules of Linearization
Danny Fox, David Pesetsky
Time: Wednesdays 10-1
Place: 32-D461 (but first class will meet in a different room; look for e-mail)

*Note about the subject number: This class was announced as 24.956, but since that same number is being used by Shigeru Miyagawa and Jim Huang for their seminar, we will be teaching ours under 24.993. If you register for the class, please register for the new number, 24.993. This class will satisfy any requirements that mention 24.956.

TOPIC

On the surface, syntactic movement appears to raise two independent questions for the phonology:

1. Leftward vs. rightward movement: How is the moved element ordered relative to the constituent with which it has just merged — to its left or to its right?
2. Overt vs. covert movement: Which of the two positions occupied by a moved constituent is relevant for its ordering — its new position or its old position (the trace)?

In this class, we will investigate the possibility that these two questions are closely connected. In particular, we will argue that when a moved element is ordered to the right of the constituent with which it has just merged, the result is covert movement. More generally, we will argue that the answer to question 1 for each instance of movement determines the answer to question 2.

We further propose that the answer to question 1 itself might be predictable from Rules of Linearization that are not specific to movement, but order the constituents of the language more generally. That is, the direction of particular movement operations in a given language may be predictable from other basic word order facts of the language.

Among the topics relevant to this investigation are:

• (a) Extraposition: Why do extraposed modifiers appear on the right, and why does this type of extraposition appear to influence scope?
• (b) Scrambling and scope rigidity: Why do OV languages generally allow scrambling but disallow inverse scope in the absence of scrambling?
• (c) Parasitic gaps: Why does covert A-bar movement license parasitic gaps only in very restricted configurations?
• (d) Righthand subject phenomena: Why do certain types of fronting, including Locative Inversion and wh-movement, allow or require an otherwise preverbal subject to appear on the right in many languages?
• (e) Object shift and quantifier movement in Scandinavian languages: Why is Object Shift subject to a requirement of order preservation (Holmberg’s generalization) and Quantifier Movement subject to a seemingly opposite constraint?

Particular attention will be devoted to the implications of our ideas for the timing of linearization—in particular, for the Cyclic Linearization proposal of Fox & Pesetsky (2005).

PLAN FOR THE COURSE

Part 1: We will begin by sketching our proposals and conjectures over the first few weeks. This presentation will leave many questions open, and will certainly yield many unsolved problems.

Part 2: After this, we will back up and spend the middle portion of the class investigating many of the topics raised in the first part in greater depth. The discussion of these topics will be along the lines of other syntax classes in which such topics are discussed, and will not necessarily be limited to questions that are relevant to our proposals in any obvious way.

Topics will include those listed above, but will also include discussion of other recent work on linearization and movement — especially some extremely interesting discoveries recently reported by Biberauer, Holmberg and Roberts (and colleagues).

Part 3: We hope to be able to return to part 1 (re-teaching it, in fact) in light of what we have learned from part 2 and earlier discussion.

REQUIREMENTS

• Reading assignments throughout the semester.
• In part 1, we will give some small problems and questions to be investigated.
• For part 2, students will be asked to collaborate with us and with each other on the presentation of particular topics.
• Finally, there will be a squib or short paper on some topic related to the class. This squib could reflect questions you have asked, investigations you have conducted, or scathing attacks on our proposals. It is up to you!

ASSIGNMENT FOR THE FIRST CLASS

Read the paper and handout on extraposition by Fox & Nissenbaum. Many of you have seen this material in 24.952 (or discovered some of it for yourself in a problem set from that class). This work will be our starting point for the topics discussed in this class.

There will be a class website on Stellar, to which subsequent readings will be posted.

24.960 Syntactic Models
Pesetsky

Time: Tuesdays 2-5
Place: 32-D461
Website: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/fa09/24.960/

The course has twin goals:

First, it gives a quick introduction to at least two “frameworks” for syntactic research that compete with the Government-Binding/Minimalist tradition in the current syntax world: HPSG and Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). We work speedily through much of the HPSG textbook by Sag, Wasow and Bender, and also look at the LFG textbook by Bresnan.

Next, the class turns historical, tracing the development of generative syntax from Syntactic Structures (1957) up to the early 1980s, when HPSG and LFG first separated themselves off from the research program that became GB/LSLT. An overarching theme of the course is the issue of derivational vs. representational views of syntax — a theme that offers some surprising observations about who said what at various points in the history of the field, but also gives the course a focus relevant to the most current work.

You can get a good sense of what the class will be like from its old Stellar pages: >http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/sp07/24.960/ and http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/fa03/24.960/. I plan to follow essentially the same structure, but I will work extra hard to make room for the book by Jackendoff and Culicover, which I did not end up teaching the last two (!) times I announced it and still want very much to.

The requirements are:

1. regular attendance and participation
2. problem sets in the first half of the class, and
3. three class presentations or co-presentations (depending on numbers): of an HPSG paper, an LFG paper, and a paper from the period of generative semantics/interpretive semantics debates

No paper! (A major attraction in the past.)

Many students have reported finding this class both fun and enlightening (and not just because there is no required paper). Ask some of your predecessors for their reviews.

The most important book to order right now is the following one:

• Sag, Wasow and Bender “Syntactic Theory” (e.g., here or here)

…and please start reading it. It will be great if you come to the first class already somewhat prepared. This book is intended as an introduction to syntax for undergraduates, so you will find the early chapters go quickly. But the syntax it introduces is HPSG, so fairly soon you will be learning new things.

The books we will be using later in the semester are:

• Bresnan “Lexical-Functional Grammar”
  [Out of print in paperback, but ">available used. I will, however, post relevant parts to Stellar, so we can make do even if you don’t get the book.]
• Chomsky “Syntactic Structures” (e.g., or here)
• Culicover and Jackendoff “Simpler Syntax” (e.g., here or here)

Other readings (papers and excerpts from books) will be downloadable from the Stellar website for the class.

Hope to see you there!

24.979 Topics in Syntax & Semantics
von Fintel, Iatridou
MW 1:30-3
66-160

“Without glue, what do we do?”

The theme of our seminar is the question of how meanings are put together when there seems to be a lack of explicit marking of how things fit together. One famous example (seminally studied by Stump) is the variety of meanings a free adjunct can take on:

(1) Having long arms, John can reach the ceiling.
(2) Standing on a chair, John can reach the ceiling.

We will talk about the syntax & semantics of such adjuncts, of parentheticals, of free relatives, of appositive relatives, of conjunction, of concessives, of conditionals, and of paratactic coordinations. The reading list will evolve over the course of the semester, since this is a topic that is mostly new to us. We will be learning with you as we go along.

In a departure from our usual seminar format, we are meeting twice a week in more bite-sized chunks of time. To make this format be productive, preparatory reading will be even more important than usual.

Apart from keeping up with the reading and participating vigorously in the seminar discussions, which is an expectation for all seminar participants, registered students will write a term paper that is at least tangentially related to the topic(s) of the seminar. Early consultation about the term papers is advised.

For the first meeting on Wednesday September 9 at 1:30pm in Room 66-160, the preparatory reading is a (not completely randomly chosen) article on the meaning of conjunction:

Txurruka, Isabel Gómez. 2003. The natural language conjunction and. Linguistics and Philosophy 26(3). 255–285. doi:10.1023/A:1024117423963.

Everybody who intends to attend the seminar should read this article beforehand and think of questions and comments about it for the seminar discussion.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 9/8, is Registration Day. Whamit!, the MIT Linguistics Department Newsletter appears every Monday during the semester. The editorial staff consists of Adam Albright, Kai von Fintel, Claire Halpert (who’s taking over as student editor from Jonah Katz), and David Pesetsky. To submit items for inclusion in Whamit! please send an email to whamit@mit.edu by Sunday 4pm before the next Whamit appears. At the beginning of the semester, we’re particularly interested in news about what happened during the break.

Four MIT linguistics faculty members taught at the LSA Institute in Berkeley this summer:

• Adam Albright taught “Morphological innovation and change”
• Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou taught “Morphology, syntax, and semantics of modals”
• Donca Steriade taught “Correspondence and the phonological lexicon”

Donca also gave the Edward Sapir Lecture on “Units of representation for linguistic rhythm”. In addition, third-year grad student Peter Graff attended the institute on a LSA Summer Institute Fellowship.

For the last three years, the route from Boston to Bellingham WA to Diné Bikéyah (Navajoland) to Boston has come to define Wayne O’Neil’s summers.

During the summer now ending, Wayne taught a three-week course on Navajo phonology at the summer workshop of the Navajo Language Academy (6-24 July). Nearly all of the twenty or so 2009 workshop participants were Navajo teachers of the language and fluent speakers of Navajo.

NLA’s summer workshops are held annually at various Diné Bikéyah venues — NLA 2009 being located at Diné College near the high desert, intersection of Indian Roads 12 and 64 (Tsaile AZ, pop. about 1000).

The course was based on Ken Hale and Lorraine Honie’s unpublished Introduction to the sound system of Navajo (no date [1972?]), as revised and expanded by Wayne during spring 2009. Since returning from his NLA work, Wayne has continued to revise and expand the Hale-Honie ms., with a view toward making it available through the NLA.

(Hale and Honie’s ms. can be found at http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tfernal1/nla/halearch/halearch.htm, from which there is also a link to NLA’s home page. As for Lorraine Honie [Navajo], she was briefly a graduate student in this department in the early 1970s; she is now at Rough Rock Community School, Rough Rock AZ.)

Immediately prior to working at Diné College, Wayne participated in the third annual Western Washington University Linguistics in Education workshop (WWULiE-2009) in Bellingham WA.

Norvin spent three weeks teaching introductory syntax in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition, and Culture (NYI).

He also spent a weekend teaching and learning Wampanoag at the third annual Wôpanâak immersion camp (at which only Wampanoag is spoken).

And he went to Budapest for the Minimalist Approaches to Syntactic Locality (MASL) conference, where he gave a talk about Improper Movement and tough-movement

His other project over the summer was finishing his book, Uttering Trees, which is scheduled to come out as an LI Monograph in 2010.