LIN 6932 Syntax Seminar: Agreement

T 4, R 4-5th per
Dauer 68

Instructor: Brent Henderson

Office: Turlington 4125
Office Hours: Wed 3-4; Thur 7th and by appt.
Email: ​[email protected]
Course website on Canvas

Course Content/Objectives
It’s of a strange thing that features of one element in a phase often get realized on another. It’s
even stranger that languages should vary in so wildly in the extent to which they allow such
phenomena. Understanding the syntax and morphology of Agreement is the focus of this
course. The goals of the course are to become broadly familiar with issues in the syntax of
agreement and recent theoretical accounts (since Chomsky 2001). Specific topics are listed in
the course schedule below.

Students will develop critical reading and research skills as they engage primary literature on
the topic of agreement and work throughout the semester to identify an agreement puzzle and
develop it into an independent research project, resulting in a paper.

Prerequisites
LIN 6501, Syntax I, is a required prerequisite.

Required Readings:
All required readings are listed below in the tentative schedule and bibliography. The papers
listed will be discussed on the day they are listed; therefore, you should have read those papers
before coming to class on that day. The schedule is open to adjustment if time constraints or
class interest demands it. All readings will be made available on our course website on Canvas
under fair use guidelines and for the purposes of this course only. Please do not distribute them
without the author’s permission.

Course website:
We will use Canvas. The latest version of the syllabus as well as all readings and assignments
will always be posted there. In addition, we will use Canvas for engaging in out of class
discussions.

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Course​ ​Requirements​:
Class Participation: 15%
Article Presentation 15%
Final Paper Presentation: 15%
Final Paper: 55%

Class Participation
Students are expected to come to class having done the readings and be reading to discuss
them and ask questions. Many of the readings will be difficult and require slow reading,
repeated reading, and/or note taking. You should set aside sufficient time to engage well.
Bringing notes with questions to class is also encouraged. I​n addition, you are required to post
one question to our Canvas discussion board by midnight the day before class.​ The question
should relate to the next day’s reading or topic in some way and must be contentful (not simply
something like ‘What does XYZ mean?’ or ‘What does the author mean by XYZ?’ with no other
content).

Article Presentation:
Each student must present an article to the class. The article must deal with the nature of
agreement and be approved by me. The presentation should include a summary of the
background and goals of the paper, connection to other readings we have discussed, a
demonstration of the proposal and chief arguments of the paper, it’s predictions and any
difficulties or questions that arise. Presentations should use a handout and/or slides (your
choice) and engage the class in discussion. You should plan on a presentation that is no longer
than 25-30 minutes, using the rest of the class period for discussion and questions.

Final Paper and Presentation:

Through the semester, you will develop your own research projected centered around some sort
of agreement phenomenon or proposal. Your paper must be entirely your own and must make
some sort of original contribution, going beyond critical reviews and summaries of the existing
literature. Your paper must be well-organized and be clear about what your original contribution
is. At the end of the semester, you must present your project to the class, walking us through
your data and arguments.

I will work with each of you this semester to develop your project. To give us some deadline
goals, here is a timeline for development:

Final Paper Timeline

March 1~12th Schedule a meeting with me to discuss your topic
March 26th One page proposal due
April 18th Class presentations
April 26th Final Papers due

Tentative Schedule. ​The schedule below is subject to change based on pace of the course,
possible travel, guest lecturer availability, etc. An up to date version of the syllabus/schedule will
be on Canvas.

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Wk Dates Topics Readings

Overviews; Mechanics; Agreement and Case

1 1/8 Introduction None

1/10 Overview Adger and Harbour 2008

2 1/15-17 Mechanics of Agree Chomsky 2001, Pesetsky & Torrego 2007

3 1/22-24 Case and Agreement Bobaljik 2008; Diercks 2012; Polinsky 2016

Agreement and Clitics

4 1/29-31 PCC Bejar and Rezac 2003
Nevins 2011
5 2/5-7 (Doubled) Clitics and Agreement Harizanov 2014; Yuan 2017; Baker & Kramer
2018

Agreement and Locality

6 2/12 Clitics and Agreement Yuan 2017; Baker and Kramer 2018
No Class 2/14

7 2/19-21 Long Distance Agreement Dr. Potsdam’s choice!

8 2/26-28 Complementizer Agreement Diercks 2013; van Koppen 2017

3/5-3/7 SPRING BREAK

Directionality of Agreement
9 3/12-14 Directionality Baker 2008 (ch 1, 2); Bjorkman & Zeijlstra
2014; Preminger and Polinsky 2015

Concord

10 3/19-21 Concord in NP Carstens 2000; Norris 2014 (Ch 3)

11 3/26-28 Student article presentations

12 4/2-4 TBA Dr. Martinovic’s choice!

Re-evaluating Agree
13 4/9-11 Agreement and its Failures Preminger 2014 (Ch 1-5)
14 4/16 TBA

4/18 Student Research Presentations

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15 4/23 Wrap up

Other information:

Academic Honesty
Academic misconduct is taken very seriously at the University of Florida and in this classroom,
including cheating, attempts at cheating, and plagiarism. Violations may result in disciplinary
action, including failure of assignments, the course, or other consequences. As stated in the
student honor code policy, all work submitted for credit by students at UF, “the following pledge
is either required or implied: On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in
doing this assignment.” More information is available here:
http://www.dso.ufl.edu/sccr/process/student-conduct-honor-code/

Accommodations for students with disabilities.​ ​

Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students
Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then
provide this documentation to the Instructor when requesting accommodation. More information
at: ​http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drc

Course evaluations. ​
Students are expected to provide feedback on the quality of instruction in this course based on
10 criteria. These evaluations are conducted online at: https://evaluations.ufl.edu Evaluations
are typically open during the last two or three weeks of the semester, but students will be given
specific times when they are open. Summary results of these assessments are available to
students at: ​https://evaluations.ufl.edu/results

Bibliography
Adger, David and Daniel Harbour. 2008. Why Phi? In David Adger, Susana Béjar and Daniel
Harbour, eds. Phi-Theory: Phi Features Across Interfaces and Modules. Oxford Studies in
Theoretical Linguistics 16. Oxford: OUP. 1-34.

Baker, Mark C. 2008. The Syntax of Agreement and Concord. Cambridge: CUP.

Baker, M. and Kramer, R., 2018. Doubled clitics are pronouns. ​Natural Language & Linguistic
Theory,​ pp.1-54.

Béjjar, Susana, and Milan Rezac. 2003. Person Licensing and the Derivation of PCC Effects. In
Romance Linguistics: Theory and Acquisition, ed. Ana Teresa Perez-Leroux and Yves Roberge,
49–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Bhatt, Rajesh. 2005. Long-Distance Agreement in Hindi-Urdu. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory 23:757–807.

Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2008. Where’s Phi? Agreement as a Post-Syntactic Operation. In Phi
Theory: Phi-features across interfaces and modules, ed. Daniel Harbour, David Adger, and
Susana Béjar, 295–328. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bjorkman, Bronwyn and Hedde Zeijlstra. 2014. Upward Agree is superior. Ms., Toronto, ON &
Göttingen: University of Toronto & Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

Carstens, Vicki. 2000. Concord in Minimalist Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 31. 319-355.

Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. Michael
Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Diercks, M. 2012. Parameterizing case: evidence from Bantu. ​Syntax,​ ​15(​ 3), 253-286.

Diercks, M., 2013. Indirect agree in Lubukusu complementizer agreement. Natural Language &
Linguistic Theory, 31(2), pp.357-407.

Harizanov, Boris. 2014. Clitic doubling at the syntax-morphophonology interface: A-movement

and morphological merger in Bulgarian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32:1033–1088.

Henderson, B., 2013. Agreement and person in anti-agreement. ​Natural Language & Linguistic
Theory,​ ​31(​ 2), pp.453-481.

Nevins, Andrew. 2011. Multiple agree with clitics: person complementarity vs omnivorous
number. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29. 939-971.

Norris, Mark. 2014. A theory of nominal concord. Doctoral dissertation, University of California,
Santa Cruz.

Pesetsky, David, and Esther Torrego. 2007. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of
features. In Phrasal and clausal architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation - In honor of
Joseph E. Emonds, ed. Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian, and Wendy Wilkins, 262–294. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.

Polinsky, Maria. 2016. Agreement in Archi: a minimalist approach. In: Archi: Complexities of
Agreement in Cross-Theoretical Perspective.
Polinsky, Maria, and Eric Potsdam. 2001. Long-distance agreement and topic in Tsez. Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory 19:583–646.

Preminger, Omer. 2014. Agreement and its failures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Preminger, Omer and Maria Polinsky. 2015. Agreement and semantic concord: a spurious
unification. Ms., University of Maryland, College Park, and Harvard University.

van Koppen, M., 2017. Complementizer agreement. ​The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax,
Second Edition,​ pp.1-40.

Van Urk, C. and Richards, N., 2015. Two components of long-distance extraction: Successive
cyclicity in Dinka. ​Linguistic Inquiry,​ ​46(​ 1), pp.113-155.

Yuan, M., 2017. Diagnosing object agreement vs. clitic doubling: Evidence from Inuktitut. Ms., U
Chicago.