Summer School 2016

A one-week summer school with specialized courses will be held on 20 (Mon)-24 (Fri) June, 2016 at UCL.

Registration

Please register by sending an email to Richard Jardine (r.jardine@ucl.ac.uk) with your name, affiliation, and program of study as described on the school’s web page.

The tuition is 100.00 GBP.

The tuition is waived for students currently registered at Cambridge University, the University of Kent, Oxford University, QMUL, SOAS, or UCL. The first-year PhD students based at Cambridge University, the University of Kent, and Oxford University will also be reimbursed for their accommodation and/or transportation (max £80). Please contact Richard Jardine for details.

Lecturers

  • Caroline Féry (University of Frankfurt)
  • Kyle Johnson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
  • Giorgio Magri (Université Paris 8)
  • Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)

Schedule

All the lectures will take place in G10, Chandler House (2 Wakefield St., London WC1N 1PF).

Time Lecturer Course Title
8:30-9:30 Coffee
9:30-11:00 Caroline Féry (University of Frankfurt) Prosody at the interface with syntax and semantics
11:15-12:45 Kyle Johnson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Towards a Multidominant Theory of Movement
Lunch
2:15-3:45 Giorgio Magri (Université Paris 8) Computational generative linguistics: some case studies in constraint-based phonology
3:45-4:00 Coffee
4:00-5:30 Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware) Contrastiveness and Scalar Interpretations

There will be a party in Chandler House on 23 (Thu) June from 6:30.

Course Descriptions

Prosody at the interface with syntax and semantics [ pdf ]

Caroline Féry (University of Frankfurt)

First, the prosodic hierarchy and a typology of intonational classes will be introduced. Algorithms for syntax-prosody mappings will then be scrutinized and compared: relation- based model of Nespor & Vogel(1986), edge-based theory (Selkirk 1986), alignment theory (Truckenbrodt 1995, Féry 2013) and recursive prosodic structure (Ito & Mester 2015, Ishihara 2011) will serve as main theoretical models. At the same time, different kinds of languages will be investigated for their properties at the syntax-prosody interface, so that universals and language-specific phenomena can be kept apart. Phrasing and prominence both in syntax and in prosody are the main issues here and information structure will also play a role. Students will learn to understand the issues, to compare approaches, and to cope with data.

Handouts (pdf): Lecutre 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3, Lecture 4, Lecture 5

Readings:

  1. Nespor & Vogel (1986, chap 6), Ghini (1993)
  2. Chen (1987), Chen (2000), Selkirk & Shen (1990)
  3. Truckenbrodt (1995, chap 5), Féry (2013), Kratzer & Selkirk (2007)
  4. Féry & Truckenbrodt (2005, 2015) Ladd (2008), Büring (2016)
  5. Kentner & Féry (2013), Ishihara (2007), Ishihara (2011), Ito & Mester (2013), Ito & Mester (2015)

Literature (with Dropbox links)

Towards a Multidominant Theory of Movement

Kyle Johnson (Univeristy of Massachusetts, Amherst)

This is course examines a theory of movement that gives a central role to multidominant phrase markers. The focus will be on deriving two properties of movement. The first is that a moved item is usually pronounced in only one of the positions it occupies. We will investigate a linearization scheme designed for multidominant structures that implements Jairo Nunes’s proposal that this follows from how a movement relation is linearized. The second is how the semantics of movement works. We will investigate a way of deriving the fact that phrasal movement invokes variable binding that doesn’t involve ad hoc, movement specific, stipulations. The course focuses on V(P) movement, wh-movement and Quantifier Raising.

  • 20 June (Mon): Introduction. Reading: Citko (2005)
  • 21 June (Tue): Linearization and Terseness. Reading: Nunes (1999)
  • 22 June (Wed): Questions. Reading: Beck (2006), Cable (2010a)
  • 23 June (Thu): Quantifier Raising. Reading: Fox (2002)
  • 24 June (Fri): Hydras and Derivations. Reading: Fox & Johnson (2016)

Syllabus + handouts (pdf)

Background Reading:

  • S. Beck. (2006) Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics, 14(1): 1-56.
  • S. Cable. (2010a) Against the existence of Pied-Piping: Evidence from Tlingit. Linguistic Inquiry, 41(4): 563-594.
  • S. Cable. (2010b) The Grammar of Q: Q-Particles, Wh-Movement and Pied-Piping. Oxford University Press.
  • L. Champollion. (2015) Ten men and women got married today: noun coordination and the intersective theory of conjunction. Journal of Semantics, pages 1-62.
  • B. Citko. (2005) On the nature of merge: External merge, internal merge, and parallel merge. Linguistic Inquiry, 36(4): 475-496.
  • D. Fox. (1999) Reconstruction, binding theory, and the interpretation of chains. Linguistic Inquiry, 30(2):157-196.
  • D. Fox. (2002) Antecedent-contained deletion and the copy theory of movement. Linguistic Inquiry, 33(1): 63-96.
  • D. Fox. (2003) On logical form. In R. Hendrick, editor, Minimalist Syntax, pages 82-123. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
  • D. Fox & K. Johnson (2016) QR is restrictor raising. In Proceedings of WCCFL 33. pp.1-16.
  • K. Johnson. (2012) Toward deriving differences in how Wh movement and QR are pronounced. Lingua, 122(6): 529-553.
  • H. Kotek. (2014) Composing Questions. PhD thesis, MIT.
  • G. Link. (1984) Hydras. on the logic of relative clause constructions with multiple heads. In F. Landman and F. Veltman, editors, Varieties of Formal Semantics, pages 151-180. Reidel.
  • J. Nunes (1999) Linearization of chains and phonetic realization of chain links. In S. Epstein and N. Hornstein (eds.), Working Minimalism. pp. 217-249. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • D. Perlmutter & J. R. Ross. (1970) Relative Clauses with Split Antecedent. Linguistic Inquiry, 1(3):350.

Computational generative linguistics: some case studies in constraint-based phonology

Giorgio Magri (Université Paris 8)

The core assumption of generative linguistics is that for language learning to be possible, the typology must have some kind of non-trivial structure that can be exploited by the learner. Computational generative linguistics (CGL) develops this intuition by exploring the algorithmic implications of linguistically substantial and typologically motivated generalizations. A typical argument in CGL is thus twofold: it shows that a certain learning scheme fails at a certain aspect of the learning problem in the general case (negative part of the argument) but that some additional structure in the typology explored by the learner boosts its performance (positive part of the argument). The aim is at analytical guarantees, rather than just simulation results. This course will provide an introduction to CGL through some case studies in constraint-based phonology. Topics will include the problem of convergence for error-driven learners, the problem of restrictiveness for phonotactic learners, the problem of hidden structure (underlying forms) for inconsistency detection learners, and the problem of variation and gradience in MaxEnt models.

Lecture notes (pdf).

Contrastiveness and Scalar Interpretations

Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)

This mini-course addresses issues surrounding contrastiveness and its pragmatic effects, especially scalar meaning, in connection with the grammatical theory of scalar implicature. After reviewing the globalist-grammaticist debate on scalar implicature (Guerts 2010, Cherichia et at 2008, among others), we will (re-)examine a few contrast-related phenomena, including (i) contrastive topics, which are known to generate interpretations that show striking resemblance to the ‘weak’ scalar implicature (cf. Soams 1982, Sauerland 2004), which some claim (e.g., Guerts 2010) that the grammaticist’s approach cannot generate, and (ii) the ordering asymmetry of scalar items in Hurford’s Constraint (Singh 2008), and possibly (iii) the lack of exhaustive interpretation of focus in interrogative sentences.

Slides (pdf): 1, 2 3, 4

 

 

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