Meeting times: Tuesdays 4-7pm in CAS 427.

Professor. Paul Hagstrom, 718 Commonwealth Ave. (Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures), Office 401D. Email: hagstrom@bu.edu (likely to get a quick response). Phone: 617-353-6220 (x3-6220). Office hours: TR 12-1, W 4-6. Available for appointments: Tue 9-4, Wed 9-7, Thu 9-4 (excluding office hours)

Prerequisites. CAS LX 522 ("Syntax I"), or equivalent.

Course goals. This is the second half of a two-part syntax course, and assumes basic familiarity with the Principles & Parameters approach to syntax and the Government and Binding framework. In the second semester, we will be exploring the actual linguistic literature, reading articles which have extended the theory in various directions. The first half of the course will focus primarily on functional heads and developing the structure of the clause, and the second half of the course will focus on more recent and/or radical approaches to the syntactic framework (including the Minimalist Program, Antisymmetry, and Optimality Theoretic syntax). At the conclusion of this class, you will be able to read actual articles from current research journals, you will have experience doing, writing up, and presenting original research in syntax.

Course Requirements. Homework. Your homework will be to do the readings, which will often be accompanied by short summaries. The summaries are graded, but the lowest grade will be dropped. Presentations. Everyone will be required to present the readings three times during the course of the semester. The presentations are required but are not graded. Presentations are expected to be done in groups of 2-3 people, and we will plan to cover about two papers per class, so each paper will get roughly an hour and a half, leaving each persons' contribution at around 20-30 minutes per presentation. Not so bad. The presentations will be informal, and discussion/questions throughout the presentations should be anticipated. Note: Even if you're not presenting, you are expected to do the readings! The only other twist: you can't present with the same group twice--at least one member of the group must be different each time. Final project. The final project is essentially a literature review and will consist of three parts. The proposal for the topic you would like to explore will be due Mar 13, in class. The topic should be one that we are not directly covering in class, but can be closely related. I will have a list of suggested topics ready very soon after the beginning of the semester. If you want to do something not on the list, please run it by me first to avoid having to redo the proposal if the topic turns out to be inappropriate for one reason or another (e.g., scale or relevance). Incidentally, you are welcome to turn in your project proposal early. The paper will be a summary of what you've discovered--it should be at most 20 pages long, and should summarize and synthesize different approaches to the topic you've found, with your own critical commentary. The paper will be due just after the last day of class (the day before finals period). The presentation is a summary of your paper for the class--it will be pretty much like your presentations of other people's papers from before, except that now you'll be covering a whole topic with which the class wasn't previously familiar. These presentations will be about 20 minutes long with 10 minutes afterwards for discussion & questions.

Email. Whenever feasible, homework (or project proposals, or final papers) can be emailed to me at hagstrom@bu.edu. Text-only is preferred, but you may also send PDF, RTF, or Microsoft Word files. Postscript and Word Perfect files are less welcome, and don't even bother sending TeX or LaTeX files. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just hand in a paper copy. Wherever email won't work for any reason (e.g., for tree diagrams), homework can be turned in at the beginning of class. Be aware that if you use any special fonts, I may not be able to read your homework--be sure you know how to "include" nonstandard fonts (or send it to me early, so I can let you know if I was unable to read it).

Late assignments. Late assignments will be accepted only by prior arrangement with me.

CAS Student Academic Conduct Code. As a member of a CAS course, it is essential that you read and adhere to the CAS Student Academic Conduct Code. In particular, several types of plagiarism (any attempt to represent the work of another as your own) are defined by this academic conduct code. A copy is available in CAS 105.

Textbook (required). Ian Roberts (1997). Comparative Syntax. London: Edwin Arnold.

Readings. This course relies heavily on readings from the linguistics literature (journal articles, manuscripts, and excerpts from books). These readings will be available in the hallway outside my office suite, in a folder labeled LX523. You may take the readings out for no more than an hour to make a personal photocopy, and then they should be returned to the folder so that others may photocopy them.