Topics in comparative syntax, predication, information structure, Minimalism and Biolinguistics
This seminar will centre around a few topical areas from the agenda of contemporary linguistic research stemming from Generative Grammar. First, the diversity of world’s languages calls for a systematic comparison of their syntaxes with a view to a set of constraints imposed by Universal Grammar and defining a possible human language. We will view these mental constraints as the “hidden texture of language” (Moro 2016) and look at a range of selected syntactic parameters of difference, both in terms of micro- and macroparameters. Next, we will scrutinize Predication, one of the fundamental relations in syntax, understood as the nexus between Subject and Predicate. In this context, we will look at the structure of small clauses and copular sentences and elaborate on the theory of Linkers and Relators (den Dikken 2006). We will further consider the linkage of Predication with Information Structure, i.e. syntactic anchoring of the notions of Focus and Topic. The benchmark for syntactic analyses will be Minimalism, a research program dedicated to parsimony and elegance. We will devote some time to considering the landmarks of minimalist inquiry such as Merge, Agree and Phases and then discuss some recent advancements in minimalist theorizing such as Chomsky et al. (2019) and Kayne (2018). Last but not least, we will briefly discuss the agenda of Biolinguistics, which raises the questions of the emergence of the human language, its evolutionary vs. non-evolutionary origin and its genetic underpinnings.- Teacher: Przemysław Tajsner