| The course outlines the major empirical discoveries and conceptual shifts which characterized the evolution of generative syntax in the past three decades, and which led up to the GB theory, and to more recent versions of the Principles -and -Parameters framework. Special attention will be paid to what motivated each particular change in the theory, and through this to the methodology of syntactic research and theory construction in general. The major aim of the course is to provide depth of understanding regarding the relatively static theoretical framework , its internal structure, particular subsystems of principles, etc., that students were exposed to in our second-year syntax courses (“beginning” and “advanced” syntax), by exploring their roots and predecessors in earlier versions of the theory. Some of the topics to be discussed will be levels of representation (D-structure, S-structure, etc.,), the Lexicalist Hypothesis, modularity, and the evolution of the transformational component to “Move alpha”. |