Syntactic agreement
This course will address syntactic agreement from a formal typological point of view.
The students will be introduced to the syntactic tools and notions that are necessary to analyze agreement facts. They will be confronted with many puzzling agreement facts, and asked to actively contribute to their analysis. After being introduced to a number of possible analyses/interpretations of the facts, they will have to think on open questions and debate on possible solutions, in order to learn how to shape syntactic argumentation and how to build a solid syntactic analysis.
The course is organized as follows:
Day 1.What is agreement? (Features/ agreement as a rule/ agreement as a relationship/ agreement as an operation, categories and agreement)
Day 2. A short history of Agree (from PSR, to Spec-Head, to Agree)
Day 3. The locus of agreement (Syntactic vs morphological agreement/PF vs NS agreement/agreement domains and syntax-PF mapping/ PIC (in)sensitivity)
Day 4. The “timing” of agreement (Long-distance agreement, intervention effects, parasitic agreement)
Day 5. The “direction” of agreement (Spec-Head, Agree, Multiple Agree, Reverse Agree)