Learning Outcomes
The students acquire a specialized knowledge and expertise on on of the most dominant syntactic theories-Minimalism (Chomsky 1995). They enlarge their knowledge on syntactic theory. They learn to think and question critically. They learn how to make empirically based generalizations. They get familiar with the comparative method.
Course Content (Syllabus)
The generative model as an explanatory tool of the internalized language faculty. The concept of economy and 'minimalism'. Interfaces. From X'-Theory to Merge. The role of morphosyntactic features in the make-up of the clause structure and Movement. Interpretable and uninterpretable features. Thematic roles as selection features. The syntactic relation Agree. Phase agreement.
Keywords
Minimalism, Economy, Merge(r), Features, Movement, Theta roles, Lexicon