24.946, Linguistic Theory and Japanese Language
Instructor: Shigeru Miyagawa
Fall 2010, Tuesdays, 10 -1 (will end by 12:40 for those traveling to Harvard for Jim Huang’s class on Chinese linguistics at 1:15).
We will look at a variety of issues in linguistic theory from the perspective of Japanese with critical comparisons to other languages. Topics include the following:
- Modularity (causatives, with reference to work on blocking in English, e.g., Embick, Kiparsky)
- Agreement (with comparison to Basque)
- Wh-movement (including work on Fukuoka dialect and sign language)
- Genitive marking on the subject and specification of Phase (comparisons to Turkish, Slavic, and possibly Uyghur)
- Status of argument structure (ditransitives, with reference to work on nominalization in English, e.g., Kayne, Pesetsky)
- Optionality (comparision of QR and scrambling)
- Postposting/Rightward movement (comparisons to Hindi, Turkish, Uyghur)
For reading materials, see the course stellar site: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/fa10/24.946/