Kursinformation

This seminar addresses the role of optimization processes in derivational syntax. Topics addressed may include: OT approaches to syntax, global vs. local optimization, transderivational comparison, the relevance of syntactic optimization to the derivation/representation tradeoff, and optimization and gradience, among others. The focus of the course will be on reading proposals from the primary literature, with the goal of developing an appreciation for their theoretical and empirical merits and an aptitude for evaluating them relative to a wide range of empirical data and theoretical desiderata.