The first part of the proseminar will be devoted to the discussion of selected syntactic phenomena which have been brought to the linguistic surface over the span of 60+ years of generative research (e.g. hierarchical structure, locality of syntactic relations or binding-related phenomena). The goal is not to be overly technical and, instead, to rely on the analysis of specific linguistic examples. In the second part of the course we will review the common arguments which are typically leveled against the generative approach(es) to syntax. Special attention will be given to the empirical base of generative syntax and different methods of data collection; in particular, we will talk about an acceptability judgment task. To obtain a credit for the course, students will have to design and construct a simple acceptability judgment task focusing on a selected syntactic property in Polish or English.
- Nauczyciel: Sylwiusz Żychliński