Description
We will look at some recent topics in minimalism, with an eye to how analyses of Japanese can help to clarify the issues and establish research directions. The first 2/3 of the course will deal with the following topics which I am presently working on - all related to issues of movement:
The nature of optional movement (e.g., Chomsky 2001, Fox 2000, Miyagawa, to appear (a), Saito 1989, Sauerland and Elbourne 2002)
The nature of the EPP (e.g., Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, Baker 2003, Miyagawa, to appear (b))
The nature of parametric variation (e.g., Kuroda 1988, Miyagawa, to appear (b), Sigurdsson 2003)
The nature of floated quantifiers (e.g., Bobaljik, Miyagawa and Arikawa, Ms. 2004)
The nature of QR (e.g., Fox and Nissenbaum 1999, Johnson and Tomioka 1997, Miyagawa, Ms. 2004a)
The nature of weak islands (e.g., Miyagawa, Ms. 2004b, Rizzi 1992)
The nature of maturation: A-chain in acquisition (e.g., Machida, Miyagawa, and Wexler, to appear, Sano et al)
In addition, we will explore the following topics; these will be in the form of student presentations.
The nature of agreement, case, and verbal morphology (e.g., Hiraiwa, Ochi, Uchibori 2000, Watanabe 1996)
The nature of nominal ellipsis (e.g., Hoji 1998, Otani and Whitman)
The structure of the DP (Watanabe 2004)
Prosody and question formation (Ishihara 2003, Y. Kitagawa et al)
Requirements
The requirements and grading for this course are based on two major assignments: a class presentation and a final course paper.