Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of British Columbia/Linguistics (Fall 2014)/Course description

Syntax is the branch of linguistics that deals with the structure of sentences. Syntax, understood as the (implicit) knowledge that a speaker has of the sentence structure of their language, is a core component of the human language faculty. It interfaces with all aspects of grammar, and ultimately human cognition. Words are the building blocks of syntax; consequently, syntax and word-level processes (morphology) go hand-in-hand. Syntax is shaped by, and shapes, semantics: lexical meaning constrains syntactic structure, and syntactic structure in turn constrains rules of semantic composition. Syntax also shapes phonology, as the output of syntax is the input for rules of phonological interpretation. We will therefore be concerned with: (i) what the study of sentence structure reveals about the organization of the grammar (understood as a form of cognition); (ii) how syntax interfaces with other components of the grammar (especially, phonology, morphology, and semantics).

Goals and objectives of the course
This course has two primary learning outcomes: (i) using hypothesis-testing to identify syntactic relations; (ii) contributing to knowledge dissemination by collaboratively developing a Wikipedia entry.

1. Using hypothesis-testing to identify syntactic relations
The course will focus on detecting and modelling syntactic relations.

Detecting syntactic relations (“What’s out there?”) Modeling syntactic relations ("How do linguists model what's out there?")
 * Categories: How do linguists detect the syntactic atoms of language?
 * Constituents: How do linguists detect the structure of a sentence?
 * Selection: How do linguists detect the dependency relations that hold between constituents?
 * Storage: How is information about syntactic atoms is encapsulated in the lexicon?
 * Computation: How are syntactic atoms assembled into complex units via recursive structure-building?
 * Representation: How do syntactic atoms generate labelled trees?

2. Contribute to knowledge dissemination
Students collaboratively develop a Wikipedia entry in one of the following four themes:
 * Theme A: Conceptual Foundations: Bootstrapping; Grammaticality; Locality; Performance
 * Theme B: Nominal Syntax: Adjectival noun; Inalienable possession; Equative; Nominal
 * Theme C: Verbal Syntax: Lexical semantics; Head parameter; Subject parameter; Theta criterion
 * Theme D: Binding Theory: Bound variable pronoun; Logical Form; Logophoricity; PRO

Goals and objectives of the Wikipedia research projects
Your participation in a group-based research project that creates a Wikipedia entry on a topic related to syntax provides you with the opportunity to master conceptual, technical, and organizational skills. The conceptual skill set involves familiarizing yourself with a research area and planning out the content of a Wikipedia Entry. The technical skill set includes writing, editing, layout, HTML mark-up and the “back door” of Wikipedia. The organizational skill set includes working in a group, cooperating with other group members, and coordinating group activities.

Anticipated benefits: what you'll gain
RM Dechaine (talk) 01:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Your work will be viewed by a global audience. Your work is useful, it isn’t just graded and forgotten. You can add a marketable skill to your résumé. It's “cool”; : you can show off your work to family and friends. You can get feedback from the broader world. You can experience an alternative learning environment. (adapted from https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Reasons_to_use_Wikipedia)

Learning outcomes: what you’ll learn
RM Dechaine (talk) 01:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You’ll improve your ability to read and understand technical material. You'll become media literate: you’ll be better able to identify bias and partisanship and recognize whether an information source is credible or not. In contrast to assignments that require you to persuade the reader, or to argue in favor or against a particular position, you’ll learn critical thinking because you'll have to present material from a neutral point of view. In the course of developing an encyclopedic summary article, you’ll learn expository writing. You’ll collaborate with other students to develop a high quality encyclopedic article. You might find a community of practice: a group of people within the Wikipedia community to work and learn with. You’ll learn how to conduct a literature review and summarize appropriate sources for your topic. You’ll learn essential skills of online etiquette, which allows you to interact with people that you might never meet in person. you’ll learn simple basics of the Wiki markup language (a form of computer programming or coding), as well as the mechanics of working with wikis. You’ll learn the basics of copyrights, free licenses, and copy lefts. You'll become an digital and online citizen: you’ll participate in a large-scale knowledge project as peers, and become familiar with the challenges of navigating a digital online environment. (adapted from https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Reasons_to_use_Wikipedia)

Challenges: what you’ll find challenging
RM Dechaine (talk) 02:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You’ll find the Wikipedia project more demanding than traditional assignments because your research and writing will be in the public sphere and you’ll need to master Wikipedia rules and writing norms. Planning ahead: Because it takes time to coordinate the project with your group members, you’ll need to plan ahead well in advance. (The Milestones guide you through this process in a step-by-step fashion.) You’ll have less flexibility in pacing your work, since some critical elements involve getting feedback from peers, the instructor, and the TA, and this feedback won’t be effective if it is rushed or if it is put off. (Again, the Milestones will guide you through this process.) Each student receives a unique grade, based on their individual contribution to the article, their peer reviews, and their self-assessment.

Instructor
Rose-Marie Déchaine

Teaching Assistant
Sihwei Chen

Campus ambassadors
To be announced.

Group A

 * Group A1
 * Group A2
 * Group A3
 * Group A4

Group B

 * Group B1
 * Group B2
 * Group B3
 * Group B4

Group C

 * Group C1
 * Group C2
 * Group C3
 * Group C4

Group D

 * Group D1
 * Group D2
 * Group D3
 * Group D4

Theme A: Conceptual Foundations

 * A1 Bootstrapping: The mechanism of "bootstrapping" is in play when children acquire a first language (L1 acquisition). It is intended to account for how children move from the initial state (S0) to a final state (S1) to acquire knowledge of L1. Different types of bootstrapping have been argued to be possible, including prosodic bootstrapping, syntactic bootstrapping, semantic bootstrapping, and pragmatic bootstrapping.


 * A2 Grammaticality: A major claim of modern linguistics is that a grammar of a language (L) can be defined as the set of all and only the well-formed sentences of L. A sentence that is well-formed is "grammatical"; a sentence that is ill-formed is "ungrammatical". Grammaticality judgements are based on a method of introspective judgment, where fluent speakers are asked to assess whether a particular string is "grammatical" or "ungrammatical".


 * A3 Locality: A key aspect of the study of sentence structure (syntax) is the recognition that elements that combine with each other depend on one another, and that this dependency is "local" in some way. A consequence of this view is that dependencies that involve elements that are apparently non-local — called "non-local dependencies" or "long-distance dependencies" — are in fact local. The apparent non-locality arises from the application of "movement transformations" that displace (i.e. "move") elements from one position to another in a sentence.


 * A4 Performance: Dating back to de Saussure, there is widespread accepting of the idea that language involves a system of knowledge (called "langue" by de Saussure, and called "competence" by Chomsky) yoked together with the ability to overtly manifest that knowledge (called "parole" by de Saussure, and called "performance" by Chomsky. More recently, in the context of biolinguistics, the langue/parole, competence/performance dichotomy has also been discussed in terms of the contrast between I-language and E-language.

Theme B: Nominal Syntax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjectival_noun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjectival_noun_(noun)
 * B1 Adjectival noun: Traditional grammar recognizes three major parts of speech: Verb, Noun, and Adjective. In Generative Grammar, four major lexical categories are recognized, as defined by the binary features [±V] and [±N]. Accordingly, verbs (V) are [+V,-N], nouns (N) are [-V,+N], adjectives (A) are [+V,+N], and adpositions (P, which includes prepositions and postpositions) are defined as [-V,-N]. In many languages, elements that function as "adjectives" have nominal properties (e.g., they inflect for number, gender, and case); this is taken to support the view that the category A is a combination of [+V] and [+N]. On this view, one expects that nouns and adjectives will sometimes show similar distributional patterns, as they are both [+N]. In this context, the possibility of "adjectival nouns" — nouns which show adjective-like properties, and adjectives which show noun-like properties — becomes especially interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalienable_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienability_(linguistics)
 * B2 Inalienable possession: In all human languages, nouns can be divided into classes according to the criteria of possession. On the one hand, some nouns refer to entities that may, but need not be, possessed (e.g., cat, book); these are called "alienable nouns". On the other hand, some nouns refer to entities that are necessarily possessed; this includes body parts (e.g., head, leg), kinship terms (e.g., mother, sister), as well as part-whole relations (e.g., top, side). This class of nouns are called "inalienable nouns" because they are not independent of their possessor; in other words, they cannot be alienated. In the grammar of human languages, inalienable possession is associated with a cluster of morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties.


 * B3 Equative: An "equative" construction involves two terms (x and y) that are in identity relation with each other such that 'x = y'. Syntactically, equatives involve the equation of DP or CP; this yields three possibilities: (i) 'DP1 = DP2' (e.g., Lucy is the president., What Lucy told Emily is the truth.); (ii) 'DP = CP' (e.g., The truth is that Lucy won the election.); (iii) 'CP = DP' (e.g., That Lucy won the election is the truth.. In many languages, equatives involve special morphology (e.g., a special form of the copula), special syntax (e.g., different word oder restrictions), or special semantics (e.g., presuppositions).


 * B4 Nominal: While many languages have three major word-classes (verb, noun, and adjectives), some languages only have two, namely verbal and nominal, with the latter subsuming the contrast between "noun" and "adjective". One way of understanding such systems is to posit two privative features [V] and [N], with "verbals" being [V], and "nominals" (which include nouns and adjectives) being [N]. Nominals are a common feature of Australian and Bantu languages.

Theme C: Verbal Syntax

 * C1 Lexical semantics: The investigation of word-level meaning, called "lexical semantics", focuses on: (i) the classification and decomposition of word meaning (e.g., event types (state/event), object types (count/mass)); (ii) cross-linguistic similarities and differences in lexical semantic structure (e.g., manner of motion, causation, mass denotations); (iii) the relation of word meaning to syntax.


 * C2 Head-directionality parameter: The "head-directionality parameter" classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (i.e., the head precedes its dependents) or head-final (i.e., the head follows its dependents). While some languages are consistently head-initial or head-final, other languages show a mixture of properties. A controversial claim, advocated by Richard Kayne, is that human languages are universally head-initial, and that any departure from this on the surface is attributable to independently motivated movement operations.


 * C3 Subject side parameter:The "subject side parameter" classifies languages according to whether the subject comes first (e.g., SOV, SVO) or last (e.g., OVS, VOS) in the sentence. In X-bar theory, it is related to whether the Specifier precedes or follows the Head. Accordingly, subject-first order (SOV, SVO) is Specifier-Head order, where the subject is the specifier, and the verb is the head. Conversely, subject-last order (OVS, VOS) is Head-Specifier order. This approach to word order predicts that "subject-medial" orders (e.g. VSO, OSV) cannot be base-generated, and so must involve movement (displacement) to the left periphery of the clause. Thus, VSO is argued to derive from subject-initial SVO, plus a displacement of V to the beginning of the sentence. And OSV is argued to derived from subject-initial SOV, plus a displacement of O to the beginning of the sentence.


 * C4 Theta criterion: The "Theta Criterion" legislates the relation between lexical meaning and syntactic structure, and ensures that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the number of semantic roles (also called theta roles) that a predicate introduces and the number of arguments (DPs) that are associated with those roles. Adopting the Theta Criterion forces one to recognize the existence of: (i) "implicit arguments" (i.e., DPs with no phonological content), in the form of pro ("small pro") and PRO ("big PRO"); (ii) "cognate objects" (e.g., Lucy smiled a big smile.)

Theme D: Binding Theory

 * D1 Bound variable pronoun: A "bound variable pronoun" is a pronoun that has as its antecedent a quantified noun phrase such as everyone, every ballerina, someone, some ballerina, no one, or no ballerina. By virtue of being bound by a quantificational antecedent, the pronoun is interpreted as a variable, and its semantic value is determined by a contextually determined assignment function. For example, in the example Every ballerina respects her choreographer., the interpretation of the pronoun her is not fixed. Rather, in a context where there are four ballerinas (Abigail, Bessie, Carla, and Daniela), then this sentence is true if, for each assignment of a ballerina, it is true that that ballerina admires her choreographer (i.e., 'Abigail respects Abigail's choreographer';  'Bessie respects Bessie's choreographer';  'Carla respects Carla's choreographer';  'Daniela respects Daniela's choreographer'. Bound variable pronouns are subject to a number of morphological, syntactic, and semantic constraints and have played a central role in the development of syntactic and semantic theories of anaphora.


 * D2 Logical Form: is a level of syntactic representation where certain types of semantic ambiguities are resolved. This includes disambiguation of quantifier scope, as well as other types of abstract movement relating to head-movement, A-movement, and A-bar-movement (e.g., reconstruction of wh-movement). There is a continued debate about whether "LF-movement" is conceptually necessary, and if it is, under what conditions it applies.


 * D3 Logophoricity: A "logophor" is a special type of pronoun that typically occurs with reported speech (i.e., in the complement clause of the propositional attitude verb 'say') and that is obligatorily co-referential with the subject of the main clause. It is common in languages of West Africa, and has also been argued to exist in English, where certain uses of reflexive pronouns (himself, herself, themselves) are logophoric. Logophoric pronouns are subject to a variety of syntactic restrictions that are not well-understood.


 * D4 PRO: PRO, also called "big PRO", is a phonologically null pronoun whose existence is motivated by the behaviour of non-finite clauses. It has played a central role in the development of modern syntactic theory, dating back to its introduction in Government and Binding Theory, and its subsequent integration in the Minimalist Program. More recently, some linguists, most especially Norbert Hornstein, have argue that PRO is not conceptually necessary.

RM Dechaine (talk) 19:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC) RM Dechaine (talk) 18:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

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