24.956  Topics in Syntax: Syntactic Categories

Spring 2004

Instructor: David Pesetsky

Seminar:  M10-1  (E39 seminar room)        

Information: 

The topic of this seminar will be the properties that distinguish and cross-classify the syntactic categories, especially N, V and A ¿ as well as the properties of subtypes of these categories. The theme of the class will be an attempt to discover laws that inexorably link the complementation and modification properties of these categories to other aspects of their nature.

We will ask and perhaps even begin to answer questions such as: Is it an accident that nouns in languages like English do not allow accusative case-marked DP complementation? Is it an accident that verbs do? Why do adjectives allow a fuller range of complement types than nouns, while simultaneously sharing with nouns the property of "not assigning case"? Is it an accident that verbal passives differ from adjectival passives along such semantic dimensions as stativity?

Announcements

Updated website 
I have updated the schedule and readings to reflect recent changes and the class I missed.

Announced on 04 April 2004  9:01  a.m. by David Pesetsky