This is the current view of how the semester will proceed, but the schedule will be adjusted from time to time. Do not rely on the printed copy; the truth is here: http://ling-blogs.bu.edu/lx328f16/schedule/. Homework will generally be assigned on Wednesdays and due on the following Wednesday. The readings in the Readings column are those that pertain to the lectures that week (so read them for the class they are listed by).
| Date | Topic | Comment | Homework | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEPTEMBER | ||||
| W 7 | What is a "Questions" course? | Wherein we survey the future. | HW1 | |
| F 9 | What is a question? | Wherein we meet the cast of characters. | Hamblin (1958) | |
| M 12 | ||||
| W 14 | Basic question typology | Wherein we consider the strategies available to languages to mark yes-no questions and wh-questions. | HW2 | Cheng (1997, ch. 2) |
| F 16 | Huang (1982) | |||
| M 19 | Islands and covert wh-movement | Wherein we consider the idea that wh-movement happens whether or not we see a wh moving. | ||
| W 21 | HW3 | Cheng (2003) | ||
| F 23 | Referentiality, Superiority, and D-linking | Wherein we continue the discussion of islands and conditions on wh-movement. | Pesetsky (1987) | |
| M 26 | ||||
| W 28 | HW4 | |||
| F 30 | Historical development of questions, and intervention effects (part 1) | Wherein we look at how languages change over time, with particular attention to the history of Japanese. and we begin looking at a certain kind of restrictions on wh-questions. | Watanabe (2001) | |
| OCTOBER | ||||
| M 3 | Morphology of wh-words and indefinite pronouns | Wherein we look at a very common connection between where and somewhere. Is a wh-word a wh-word a wh-word? Or do languages differ? | Bhat (2000) | |
| W 5 | The effects of Subjacency in Japanese, and continuation of intervention effects and the historical discussion | Wherein we meet Akira Watanabe’s data and proposal about overt movement of silent wh-words in Japanese, and continue to talk about islands and intervention effects. | HW5 | Watanabe (1992) |
| F 7 | ||||
| M 10 | No class | |||
| T 11 | Prosody of wh-questions in Japanese | Wherein we continue to try to explore the judgments relating to Subjacency in Japanese by controlling and testing the prosody. | Kitagawa (2005) | |
| W 12 | Prosodic explanations of wh-movement patterns | Wherein we meet Minor Phrases, left and right bracketing, left and right positionings of C, and predictions that arise therefrom. | No homework | Richards (2006) |
| F 14 | Recap | Wherein we discuss what we've seen so far. | Midterm (out Fri, due Wed) | |
| M 17 | Prosody cont'd | Wherein we continue prosody. | ||
| W 19 | Interpretation of questions | Wherein we begin the discussion of how we can model what a question might mean. | Project proposal | Hagstrom (2003) |
| F 21 | Rival approaches to question meanings | Wherein we meet some of the main views that have been taken on the interpretation of questions, and the arguments that have been used to distinguish them. | ||
| M 24 | ||||
| W 26 | The relation of questions and focus | Wherein we look at the meaning of (contrastive) focus, primarily, and how it seems to relate to the answers to questions. | Rooth (1996) | |
| F 28 | Questions and discourse | Wherein we consider questions under discussion. | Büring & Gunlogson (2000) | |
| M 31 | ||||
| NOVEMBER | ||||
| W 2 | Wh-in-the-world questions | Wherein we discuss the allegedly aggressively non-D-linked wh-phrases. | Hagstrom & McCoy (2003) | |
| F 4 | No class | BUCLD | ||
| M 7 | Positive and negative yes/no questions, A-not-A questions | Wherein we consider the pragmatics of polar questions in connection with their semantics. And also look at a certain kind of Chinese question. | Hagstrom (2006), Romero & Han (2004) | |
| W 9 | Rhetorical and echo questions | Wherein we consider some non-standard question types. | HW6 | Han (2002) |
| F 11 | Arguments and adjuncts | Wherein we consider the what, the why, the how, and their differences | ||
| M 14 | Why-questions | Wherein we look at why why is special. | Project report | |
| W 16 | Parasitic gaps | Wherein we consider sentences that we use without having an analysis for. | Culicover (2001) | |
| F 18 | Partial wh-movement and scope marking, child language acquisition of questions | Wherein we meet German, Hungarian, and Malay. | Cole & Hermon (1998), Thornton (1990) | |
| M 21 | Questions and quantifiers | Wherein we look at what everyone says about questions with quantifiers. | No homework | Chierchia (1991) |
| W 23 F 25 |
No class | Fall recess | ||
| W 30 | Free-choice indefinites | Wherein we look at Kratzer & Shimoyama's story about irgendein and perhaps also Yanovich's story about wh-indefinites in Russian. | Paper draft | Kratzer (2005) |
| DECEMBER | ||||
| F 2 | Sentence processing, brain imaging and wh-questions | Wherein we look at the processing of wh-questions and the electrical activity of the brains of people interpreting questions. | Phillips (2006), Ueno & Kluender (2009) | |
| M 5 | The heart of the question | Wherein we try to summarize what we've seen about questions. | ||
| W 7 | Presentations | Course paper | ||
| F 9 | ||||
| M 12 | ||||
| Semester ends | ||||