Admission requirements
Some background in syntax is desirable.
Description
Syntactic Agreement
Agreement is one of the central axes around which syntactic research revolves. The presentation of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program in the early 90s has shifted the core of research from module-based filters and parameterized principles to the study of syntactic microvariation, mainly attributed to features on functional heads. Features are crucially involved in agreement, and agreement is linked to other central aspects of syntactic investigation, like Case and null arguments and subjecthood. This course will provide a systematic critical assessment of agreement theories and of empirical findings on agreement, as well as an introduction to the syntactic tools that are necessary to analyze agreement facts. The students will acquire the necessary expertise to be able to understand agreement problems thoroughly and see agreement from more than one perspective.
Course objectives
The aim of the course is to familiarize students with the core concepts of agreement theory. The students will be confronted with case studies of syntactic agreement both in an informative and a challenging way, facing directly many puzzles that have interested linguists working on agreement. They will be led step by step through the solutions proposed for these problems, and invited to assess the extent to which these actually contribute towards solving the problems at issue. In this way, they will learn to “think syntactically” about agreement by doing syntax and they will acquire the necessary tools to perform syntactic research.
Timetable
Check the website of the Linguistics Department for the Lecture Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Lectures
Assessment method
Homework (40%)
Final essay (60%)
Blackboard
YES
Reading list
The reading list will be given at the beginning of the course.
Registration
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply.
After application students can register for courses en exams through via uSis.