The Syntax of Verbal Inflection

Course overview

This course focuses on the syntax of the inflectional phrase in English and it is connected to “Modals at the syntax-semantics interface”. The issues of interest include: the structure of the inflectional phrase, the status and behaviour of the auxiliary verbs be, have and do.

 Syllabus

1. The structure of the IP: from  Syntactic Structures to The Minimalist Program
2. How many functional projections within IP? The features in IP and verb movement; the features of IP and subjects

 2.1.  The split IP hypothesis (Pollock 1989, Iatridou 1990, Chomsky 1995) 

 Pollock89  Iatridou1990

         2.2.  The split IP parameter  (Bobaljik & Thrainsson 1998, Biberauer & Roberts 2006)

          B&T 1998

         2.3.  Is there a Person Phrase within the IP? (Platzack 2004)

         2.4.  Is there an Aspect Phrase within the IP?

         2.5.  Is there a Mood Phrase within the IP ?

    3. A hybrid minimalist account of inflection (Lasnik 1995)

    4. Auxiliary verbs in English: lexical or functional?

    5. Modal verbs: a distinct morpho-syntactic class

Course requirements

Attendance: please attend classes on a regular basis!