LING 355 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Germanic Languages, Theta Role, Syntactic Category
17 Dec 2016
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November 3, 2015 - november 5 (lecture 15: island effects. Island effects are very transitional topics in syntax overall -- you have a lot of studies on it. You could say that most of what syntax does is explain how things move around, and how that related to the semantic interpretation of the sentence. Syntax and semantics are not necessarily aligned -- whatever you are assigned to might be assigned in a different place then your position on the surface. So you are assigned a theta role, and then you move. This is the basic assumption people have in relation to semantics and syntax. Of course, it depends on whether you are assuming government and binding, or if you are assuming minimalism. There are crucial differences in how things happen in minimalism (for example, you don"t have traces, you have copies, etc). In some languages, you don"t have these island effects.
