Syntax and Semantics of Verbs

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

The verb seems to guide both the building of structure and the semantic composition of the sentence. We see this, for example, in the fact that the verb is responsible for the transitivity of the sentence (whether it contains a direct object or not) and in the fact that the semantic roles of subjects and objects are determined by the verb. And yet, recent work has questioned whether it is the verb itself that takes on these roles, or the structure which surrounds the verb. In this seminar, we will discuss a variety of topics in the syntax and semantics of the verb that have been important in recent debates, including argument association, aspectual composition, adverbial modification, transitivity, and complementation patterns. The two instructors bring different expertise to the course: Alison Biggs is a syntactician who researches argument structure and morphosyntactic structure, among other topics; Paul Portner is a formal semanticist who has recently focused on mood, modality, the syntactic representation and discourse participants. We will pursue our investigation of each topic in an integrated way, as we master the relevant literature in formal semantics and syntax and use the tools of each field to enrich and make precise the ideas which have been developed in the other.