Pavel Caha

Nanosyntax:
An advanced introduction.

Abstract

The course provides an introduction to a theory of the interface called Nanosyntax. Two main features of the theory are: 1) a fine grained syntactic decomposition and 2) a post-syntactic spell-out procedure based on phrasal lexicalization. The course covers both the ‘ideology’ and ‘technology’: what are the new tools, how and when to use them, and why it is interesting to pursue this line of research.

Schedule

Day 1: Phrasal spell-­out introduced

  • Contents: How does phrasal spell-­out work? What are its advantages?
  • Reading: STARKE 2009, 2011; CAHA 2009 CH.2, TARALDSEN 2009 (MCCAWLEY 1968) 

Day 2: *A-­B-­A

  • Contents: Syncretism as a new diagnostic in linguistics   
  • READING: CAHA 2009 CH.1, PANTCHEVA 2010, TARALDSEN 2010 (BOBALJIK 2012 CH. 2,  VANGSNES 2013)

Day 3: Spell-­out driven movement 

  • Contents: Phrasal spell-­out as a movement trigger
  • READING: CAHA 2010, PANTCHEVA 2011 CH.7 (CINQUE 2005)

Day 4: Diagnosing sub-­morphemic structure: ellipsis, concord 

 
  • Contents: Is there really syntactic structure inside morphemes? How can we tell?  
  • READING: CAHA 2013 (CAHA IN PRESS) 

Day 5: Beyond *A-­B-­A

  • Contents: Complex morphological systems
  • READING: CAHA AND PANTCHEVA 2012 (CAHA 2012) 

References

All links go to open access sources; brackets indicate where these may differ  slightly from the official version

  • Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2012. Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion,  superlatives, and the structure of words. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.   (http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/papers/ucm201107.pdf)   
  • Caha, Pavel. 2009. The Nanosyntax of Case. Ph.D. thesis, CASTL, University of  Tromsø.  http://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/2203/thesis.pdf?sequence=1   
  • Caha, Pavel. 2010. The parameters of case marking and spell out driven  movement. Linguistic variation yearbook 2010 10: 33–78.  (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001026)  
  • Caha, Pavel. 2012. GEN.SG=NOM.PL: a mystery solved? Ms, CASTL, Tromsø.  http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001722    
  • Caha, Pavel. 2013. Czech numerals and no bundling. Ms, CASTL, Tromsø.  http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001723
  • Caha, Pavel. In press. Explaining the structure of case paradigms through the  mechanisms of Nanosyntax. NLLT. (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001720)
  • Caha, Pavel and Marina Pantcheva. 2012. Tools in Nanosyntax. Talk at CASTL  Decennium, Tromso.    http://ansatte.uit.no/marina.pantcheva/pres/conf/Caha­‐Pantcheva‐toolsHO.pdf   
  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s universal 20 and its exceptions.  Linguistic Inquiry 36: 315–332.  http://lear.unive.it/bitstream/10278/91/1/Greenberg-­‐LI.pdf   
  • McCawley, James D. 1968. Lexical insertion in a transformational grammar  without Deep Structure. In Papers from the fourth regional meeting of the  Chicago Linguistic Society, edited by B. J. Darden, C.-­‐J. N. Bailey, and A. Davidson.  University of Chicago, Chicago.   
  • Pantcheva, Marina. 2010. The syntactic structure of locations, goals, and sources.  Linguitics 48: 1043–1081. (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000763)   
  • Pantcheva, Marina. 2011. Decomposing Path. The nanosyntax of directional  expressions. Ph.D. thesis, CASTL, Tromsø. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001351   
  • Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax. A short primer to a new approach to language.  In Nordlyd 36: Special issue on Nanosyntax, edited by Peter Svenonius, Gillian  Ramchand, Michal Starke, and Tarald Taraldsen, pp. 1–6. University of Tromsø,  Tromsø. Available at www.ub.uit.no/munin/nordlyd/.   
  • Starke, Michal. 2011. Towards elegant parameters: Language variation reduces  to the size of lexically stored trees. Transcipt from a talk at Barcelona Workshop  on Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework.   http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001183   
  • Taraldsen, Tarald. 2009. Lexicalizing number and gender in Lunigiana. In  Nordlyd 36: Special issue on Nanosyntax, edited by Peter Svenonius, Gillian  Ramchand, Michal Starke, and Tarald Taraldsen, pp. 113–127. University of  Tromsø, Tromsø. Available at www.ub.uit.no/munin/nordlyd/.    
  • Taraldsen, Tarald. 2010. The nanosyntax of Nguni noun class prefixes and  concords. Lingua 120 6: 1522 – 1548. (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000876 -­‐-­‐  published version differs substantially)
  • Vangsnes, Øystein. 2013. Syncretism and functional expansion in Germanic wh-­‐ expressions. Language Sciences 36: 47‒65.