Schedule

The following schedule is subject to change. All listed readings are required.  Click on any of the listed reading assignments to be taken to the “Readings” page (password-protected).

Week Date Topic Reading Assignments
1 Th  1/14 Course Overview, Requirements
2 Tu 1/19 Course Overview;
Cross-Linguistic Variation in the Expression of Negation		 Payne 1985
Th 1/21
3 Tu 1/26 Negation and Word Order Universals Dryer 1989 List of possible languages for lang. desc. project due (via email)
Th 1/28
4 Tu 2/2 Negation and the Structure of the English Clause
Th 2/4 Potsdam 1997
5 Tu 2/9 Negation in the Romance Languages Zanuttini 1994
Th 2/11 Language Description #1 Due
6 Tu 2/16 No Class
Th 2/18 The Morphological Status of English -n’t Zwicky & Pullum 1983 Take-Home Exam #1 Out
7 Tu 2/23 Negative Polarity Items
Th 2/25 (Discuss Take-Home Exam #1) Take-Home Exam #1 Due
8 Tu 3/2 Negative Polarity Items (cont’d) Ladusaw (1980) (excerpt);
Fauconnier 1979
Th 3/4
Spring Break (Sa 3/6 – Su 3/14)
9 Tu 3/16 Negative Concord Zeijlstra 2007
Th 3/18
10 Tu 3/23 Negative Concord (cont’d)
Th 3/25 Negative in African American Vernacular English and the history of (Standard) English Martin and Wolfram 1998
11 Tu 3/30 Is (Standard) English a Negative Concord Language?
Th 4/1 Vulgar Minimizers Postal 2004 Language Description #2 Due
12 Tu 4/6 Jespersen’s Cycle Jespersen 1917 (excerpt)
Th 4/8 No Class
Special lecture by Prof. J. McCloskey (UCSC), “Sex and the Irish Language”, 7:30pm @ KCB101
F 4/9 Special lecture by Prof. J. McCloskey (UCSC), “Yes, No, and Finite Verbs in a VSO Language”, 3:30pm @ KCB106
13 Tu 4/13 Antonymy;
Affixal Negation		 Cruse 1986
To Be Determined
Th 4/15
14 Tu 4/20 Negation, Opposition, and Markedness;
Course Evaluations
Th 4/22 No Class
15 Tu 4/27 Student Presentations Take-Home Exam #2 Out
Th 4/29 Student Presentations
16 Tu 5/4 Take-Home Exam #2 Due