HOVEDEMNE IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Winter term 1996

Peter Svenonius

Title: THETA ROLES AND LEXICAL DECOMPOSITION

This course examines word meaning from the perspective of Theta Theory and lexical decomposition. Some early papers will be read for background, and then more recent approaches will be examined. Familiarity with the Government & Binding theory is presupposed.

Tentative course outline

Week 1: INTRODUCTION

(2/4.1) Williams, Edwin. 1995: 'Theta theory,' in Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program, ed. by Gert Webelhuth, 99-124. Blackwell, Oxford.

Week 2: LEXICAL DECOMPOSITION

(9/11.1) Gruber, Jeffrey. 1965. Studies in Lexical Relations. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Ma.; Chapter 1.

Week 3: FILLMORE'S DEEP CASE

(16/18.1) Fillmore, Charles. 1968. 'The case for case,' in Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. by Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1-88.

Baker, Mark. 1985: 'Review of Fillmore's "The case for case",' in Lexical Semantics in Review, ed. by Beth Levin (Lexicon Project Working Papers 1), 63-73. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Cambridge, Ma.

Week 4: AGAINST LEXICAL DECOMPOSITION

(23/25.1) Chomsky, Noam. 1970: 'Remarks on nominalization,' in Readings in English Transformational Grammar, ed. by Roderick Jacobs and Peter Rosenbaum. Ginn and Co, Waltham, Mass.

Fodor, Jerry. 1970: 'Three reasons for not deriving 'kill' from 'cause to die'.' Linguistic Inquiry 1:429-38.

Week 5: INTERPRETIVE SEMANTICS

(30.1/1.2) Jackendoff, Ray 1972: Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma.; Chapters 1-2.

Week 6: DERIVATIONAL THETA ASSIGNMENT

(6/8.2) Larson, Richard. 1988: 'On the double object construction.' Linguistic Inquiry 19.3:335-391.

Week 7: DEBATE ON LARSON'S STRUCTURE

(13/15.2) Jackendoff, Ray 1990a: 'On Larson's treatment of the double object construction.' Linguistic Inquiry 21.3:427-456.

Larson, Richard. 1990: 'Double objects revisited: Reply to Jackendoff.' Linguistic Inquiry 21.4:589-632.

Week 8: ZERO SYNTAX

(20/22.2) Pesetsky, David. 1995. Zero Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma. (excerpts).

Week 9: LEXICAL REPRESENTATIONAL STRUCTURE

(27/29.2) Hale, Kenneth, and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993: 'On Argument Structure and the Lexical Expression of Syntactic Relations,' in The View From Building 20, ed. by K. Hale and S. J. Keyser, 53-110. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Week 10: LOCALITY

(5/7.3) Williams, Edwin. 1994: Thematic Structure in Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma. (excerpts).

Week 11: CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE

(12/14.3) Jackendoff, Ray. 1990b. Semantic Structures. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma. (excerpts).

Week 12: CONCLUSION

(17/21.3) No reading assignment.

Further reading (optional):

Emonds, Joseph. 1991: 'Subcategorization and syntax-based theta-role assignment.' Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9.3:369-429.

Grimshaw, Jane. 1990: Argument Structure. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Gropen, Jess, Steven Pinker, Michelle Hollander, and Richard Goldberg. 1991: 'Affectedness and direct objects: The role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure,' in Levin & Pinker 1991, 153-95.

Higginbotham, James. 1985: 'On semantics.' Linguistic Inquiry 16:547-94.

Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1991: 'Wiping the slate clean: A lexical semantic exploration,' in Levin & Pinker 1991, 123-51.

Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1992: 'The lexical semantics of verbs of motion: The perspective from unaccusativity,' in Thematic Structure: Its Role in Grammar, ed. by I. M. Roca, 247-69. Foris, Dordrecht.

Levin, Beth, and Steven Pinker. 1991: Lexical & Conceptual Semantics. Blackwell, Cambridge, Ma. and Oxford.

Ritter, Elizabeth, and Sara Thomas Rosen. 1993: 'Deriving causation.' Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 11.3:519-555.

Talmy, Leonard. 1978: 'Figure and ground in complex sentences,' in Universals of Human Language, ed. by Joseph Greenberg, 625-49. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Ca.

Williams, Edwin. 1981: 'Argument structure and morphology.' Linguistic Review 1:81-114.

Williams, Edwin. 1987a: 'Implicit arguments, Binding Theory, and control.' Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5:151-80.

Williams, Edwin. 1987b: 'NP trace in Theta Theory.' Linguistics & Philosophy 10.4:433-47.

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