Almost all modern grammatical descriptions can be seen as "feature grammars", in which grammatical categories are regarded as sets of features (attribute-value pairs), and grammatical functions are seen as the attributes to which values are assigned. This class will take a partly theoretical, partly practical look at different aspects of the feature grammar paradigm, divided into different phases:
The main language under discussion will be English, but German will also be dealt with from a contrastive point of view.
We will start by discussing the following introductory textbook: Ivan Sag & Thomas Wasow (1999), Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction. CSLI Publications.
We will then move on to selected aspects of feature grammars such as Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and recent developments in MIT grammar theory.
Each phase will be oriented towards practical issues connected with the end-of-term project, on which term papers may be based by those who require qualifications of this kind.
You should prepare yourselves for the class by getting the textbook and researching on the web for concepts like ``unification grammar'', ``feature grammar'', ``attribute-value pair'', HPSG, LFG, GB, X-bar theory.
For further information, check our teaching web site and search the web for further information on the technical terms used in this outline. In the first meeting we will collate this information and define tasks for the term.