Ling P: The Syntax of Syncretism (advanced)
Bronwyn Bjorkman (Queen's University (Kingston))
Block 2
Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:50 am (NY)
(5:30-6:50 pm, Kyiv/St. P)
Morphological syncretism (the existence of one form that can express more than one set of grammatical features) sometimes appears to have syntactic consequences. For example some structures appear to be unacceptable due to conflicting syntactic requirements, but become acceptable just in case the conflicting features can be realized by one syncretic form. In the five meetings of this class we will survey different ways of representing syncretism in syntax and morphology, in several different syntactic and morphological frameworks, and we will discuss how different approaches can account for specific examples of syncretism and its syntactic effects.