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Principles and Parameters in Natural Language

Principles and Parameters in Natural Language. Instructor: Prof. Rajesh Kumar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. This course offers a view of human language as a rule governed system. It will show how language is learnt and how human mind stores structure of language. This course will introduce components of linguistics theory in generative framework. Some broad topics that will be covered in this course include: Introduction to language and linguistics as a scientific domain of systematic investigation into language at the levels of sounds, words, and sentences. Nature of learning language from generative perspective; Biological Foundation of Language; Generative Foundation of Language Acquisition; Language Acquisition Device; Universal Grammar; Structure of Language around Sounds, Words, and Sentences; Constraints on Word Formation; Introduction to phonotactic constraints on word formation; Order of Words in Sentence (Subject-Object-Verb); X-bar Theory (Specifiers vs. Complements, Arguments vs. Adjuncts); Theta-Theory; Theta Role Assignment; Case Theory (Abstract, Inherent, and Morphological Case, Exceptional Case Marking, Nominative-Accusative vs. Ergative-Absolutive patterns); Raising Movement (A-Movement); Movement in Passives; A-bar-Movement (Wh-Movement, Constraints on A-bar Movements; Binding Theory (Conditions A, B, and C, Role of Structural Relationships such as C-command, Locality, Binding Domains). (from nptel.ac.in)

Introduction


Lecture 01 - Introduction
Lecture 02 - What is Linguistics? What is Language?
Lecture 03 - Language and Arbitrariness, Language and Dialect
Lecture 04 - E vs I Language, Language as a Rule Governed System
Lecture 05 - Language Faculty, Language in Human Mind
Lecture 06 - How do We Learn Language?
Lecture 07 - Language Acquisition
Lecture 08 - Innateness: Some Essential Concepts
Lecture 09 - Structure of Language at the Level of Sounds
Lecture 10 - Sounds (Vocal Apparatus)
Lecture 11 - Places and Manners of Articulation
Lecture 12 - Word Formation/Phonotactic Rules
Lecture 13 - Rules of Word Formation (Singular-Plural)
Lecture 14 - Sentence: An Introduction
Lecture 15 - Making of a Sentence (Components)
Lecture 16 - Grammaticality and Acceptability
Lecture 17 - Subject and Verb in a Sentence
Lecture 18 - Sentence: Objects and Verbs
Lecture 19 - Phrase Structure
Lecture 20 - X-bar Theory
Lecture 21 - Specifier and Complement
Lecture 22 - Complements and Adjuncts
Lecture 23 - VP Complements
Lecture 24 - Categorial Selections, Selectional Restrictions on Verbs
Lecture 25 - Thematic Relations
Lecture 26 - Case Theory
Lecture 27 - Morphological and Abstract Case
Lecture 28 - Structural Case
Lecture 29 - Exceptional Case Marking
Lecture 30 - Movement
Lecture 31 - Motivations for Movement
Lecture 32 - Questions and Movement
Lecture 32b - Generative Grammar (Guest Lecture by B. N. Patnaik)
Lecture 33 - Passives and NP Movement
Lecture 34 - NP Movement and Raising
Lecture 35 - Binding Theory and NP Interpretations
Lecture 36 - Principles of Binding Theory
Lecture 37 - Constraints on Movements
Lecture 38 - Structure of Language and Negation
Lecture 39 - Negation and Negative Polarity Items
Lecture 40 - Structure, Language, Cognition and Pragmatics

References
Principles and Parameters in Natural Language
Instructor: Prof. Rajesh Kumar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. This course offers a view of human language as a rule governed system.