Argument Structure and Syntax, Spring 2003

Abstract:: Detailed investigation of the major issues and problems in the study of lexical argument structure and how it determines syntactic structure. Empirical scope is along three dimensions: typology, lexical class, and theoretical framework. The range of linguistic types include English, Japaneses, Navajo, and Warlpiri. Lexical classes include those of Levin's English Verb Classes and others producing emerging work on diverse languages. The theoretical emphasis is on structural relations among elements of argument structure.

Imaging the City: The Place of Media in City Design and Development, Fall 1998

Abstract:: Kevin Lynch's landmark volume, The Image of the City (1960), emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their own sensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented and constructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urban realms. City images are not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvy individuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the idea of city image proactively-- seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban, and regional areas. City imaging, in this sense, is the process of constructing visually-based narratives about the potential of places.

Abstract:: Theories about cities and the form that settlements should take will be discussed. Attempts will be made at a distinction between descriptive and normative theory, by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. The class will concentrate on the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. It analyzes current issues of city form in relation to city making, social structure, and physical design. Case studies of several cities will be presented as examples of the theories discussed in the class.

Abstract:: I realize that "Modes of Assertion" is a rather cryptic title for the course. What we will explore are ways of modulating the force of an assertion. This will engage us in formal semantics and pragmatics, the theory of speech acts and performative utterances, and quite a bit of empirical work on a not-too-well understood complex of data. It is obvious that he made a big mistake. If you're like me you didn't feel much of a difference. But now see what happens when you embed the two sentences: We have to fire him, because he obviously made a big mistake. We have to fire him, because it is obvious that he made a big mistake. One of the two examples is unremarkable, the other suggests that the reason he needs to be fired is not that he made a big mistake but the fact that it is obvious that he did. We will try to understand what is going on here and look at related constructions not just in English but also German (with its famous discourse particles like ja ) and Quechua and Tibetan (with their systems of evidentiality-marking, as recently studied in dissertations from Stanford and UCLA).