This class is an introduction to issues in natural language morphology and generative morphological theory. We will focus on a variety of languages and theoretical frameworks in this course, but most of it will be geared toward the interface of morphology with syntax (as opposed to, say, phonology). Some questions we will tackle include how we should understand the notion "word," what the possible interactions between morphology and argument structure are, and whether we can empirically justify complex internal structure for words in natural language.

A syllabus for the course is available here (in pdf). Note that the syllabus contains more information than this website; note also that the pdf of the syllabus is not guaranteed to have a current weekly schedule on it. Finally, the readings are password protected. If you need access, email one of the course staff.

Schedule
Unit: Introduction; Basic Concepts
September 28 Intro to {the course, morphology}
October 1 Basic allomorphy Language Files ch.4
3 Affix typology
5 Morphological typology
8 Inflection vs. derivation Perlmutter (1988) HW 1
10 Infl. vs. deriv.: hard cases
Unit: Morphological Analysis
12 (Matt away at Workshop on Allomorphy)
15 Agreement Halle (1973) HW 2
17 Case Marking
19 Case, Part II and Miscellaneous Inflection
22 Clitics Zwicky & Pullum (1983) HW 3
24 Nonconcatenative Morphology, I
26 Compounding
29 Nominalizations revisited Chomsky (1970) HW 4
Unit: Grammatical Function-Changing Morphology
31 Final Project Intro (Basic Theta-Theory)
November 2 Passive, causative, reflexive/reciprocal
5 Grammatical Function changing pt. 2 Mohanan (1995) HW 5
7 Ergativity
9 Anti-{passive, causative}, applicatives
12 No Class — Veteran's Day
14 Incorporation & The Mirror Principle HW 6
16 Incorporation, II
Unit: Paradigms in Morphological Theory
19 Intro to Word-and-Paradigm models
21 Paradigms, II HW 7
23 No Class — Thanksgiving
Beyond Syntax-Morphology
26 Lexical Phonology Brame (1974)
28 Bracketing paradoxes
30 Reduplication
December 3 Nonconcatenative Morphology, II Baayen et al. (1997) HW 8
5 Mental Lexicon
7 Brain imaging and subliminal morphology
13 No Class — Reading Period Final Project due 5pm

Course Resources