Examination of approaches to syntactic analysis that take the construction as the basic unit. We will study analyses from Construction Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and Corpus Linguistics, including some work that combines more than one of these approaches. Readings are about specific analyses and the focus in discussion will be on data and analyses as well as higher theoretical ideas, and not necessarily on technical details of theory representation, although students can pursue this in their own topics. Readings include works by Fillmore, Tomasello, Croft, Goldberg, Langacker, Barlow, Gries and Stefanowitsch, Kemmer. Publications or papers by seminar participants can also be assigned as readings, by agreement of participants. (Further suggestions for readings also considered.)

This course is a graduate seminar, meaning the focus will be on exploring cutting edge work together. The format is intended to be discussion-based and not lecture format.

At the outset or at least early in the course, students should have some basic understanding of why constructions are of intense interest in Linguistics, as well as a knowledge of fundamental functional linguistic ideas. (Additional background readings will be suggested if some students who did not take Ling 402 need and want to acquire or deepen these understandings.) We will start with a discussion of this issue, so students should prepare to say something about their understanding of why linguists are interested in constructions, and what their own understanding of a construction is.

For their seminar work, students may develop a new topic investigating a particular construction or family of constructions, or they can continue on a topic for which the groundwork was laid in another course on syntax (for example the 402 course, with appropriate expansion of data sources and number and depth of problems treated.) Collection of data from corpora will be expected.

For topics newly started in this course, the final paper requirement is a draft of a publishable paper that can be submitted for the departmental requirement of publishable papers. For topics started on earlier, in another course such as Syntax and Semantics, the requirement is a new paper submitted to a proceedings volume or a journal. Papers written based on previously submitted abstracts and/or work previously publicly presented are acceptable. However, papers that have already been submitted for publication cannot be used to fill the requirement of this course, only newly written or substantially revised work. Advanced students who already have one or more publications submitted should aim for the second requirement, even if starting a new topic, and should come as close as possible to a new publication.

Course Requirements