Lecture: Syntax of Germanic languages
This lecture series will be hold from 30.06.2025 to 04.07.2025 as part of the LOT Summer School in Antwerp. The course is an advanced course. It assumes the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar as the underlying framework. The analyses are sketched in a notation that I call HPSG Light: basically a tree notation with valence features. People who understand X-Bar structures should be able to follow the course. I basically suggest a what you see is what you get approach to syntax that is compatible with psycholinguistic findings. The course will be structured as follows:Day 1: General overview, phenomena, phrase structure and X-bar theory
Reading for preparation: Müller (2023, Chapter 1–2). These two chapters are general stuff about Germanic languages and also describe the phenomena that are covered in the book. Reading for the lecture: Müller (2023, Chapter 3): Phrase structures, features and generalizations, X-Bar structures as very general structures.Day 2: Valence, argument order and adjunct placement
Reading for the lecture: Müller (2023, Chapter 4): Valence, argument order and adjunct placement. It is explained how the SVO vs. SOV base-order can be accounted for as different mappings to valence features from a representation that is common to all Germanic languages (the Argument Structure). Scrambling can be accounted for as base-generation for the languages that allow for scrambling.Day 3: The verbal complex
Reading for the lecture: Müller (2023, Chapter 5) The OV languages form a verbal complex. This lecture explains how the theory can cover verbal complexes in languages like Afrikaans, Dutch, and German.Day 4: Verb position: Verb first and verb second
Reading for the lecture: Müller (2023, Chapter 6) One of the most fascinating topic of Germanic syntax is the clause type determination. All Germanic languages with the exception of English are V2 languages. This is usually accounted for by fronting the finite verb from its base position (SVO or SOV) and then fronting an additional constitutent so that the verb ends up in second position.Day 5: Passive and quirky subjects in Icelandic
Reading for the lecture: Müller (2023, Chapter 7) After the explanation of structural and lexical case and and the formulation of the case assignment principle, we will deal with the passive in Germanic languages, which shows some interesting variation: There are differences in the arguments that can be promoted to subject, there are differences in whether elements are reordered due to passivization, there are differences in the use of expletives. Icelandic has the most fascinating case system and it has subjects in the genetive, dative and accusative. While the work on Icelandic resulted in a boost for Lexical Functional Grammar since it was thought that grammatical functions like subject and object are key to covering the phenomena, I show that relative prominence of arguments and the distinction between structural and lexical case are sufficient to cover the data.Literature
- Müller, Stefan. 2023. Germanic syntax: A constraint-based view (Textbooks in Language Sciences 12). Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7733033.
- Müller, Stefan, Anne Abeillé, Robert D. Borsley & Jean-Pierre Koenig (eds.). 2024. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook. 2nd edn. (Empirically Oriented Theoretical Morphology and Syntax 9). Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13637708.