A presentation of the basic ideas of modern syntactic theory, illustrating how they apply to the description of various different types of languages. The theoretical ideas covered will include phrase structure, features and feature structures, grammatical transformations and binding relations. The empirical areas they will be applied to will include word order, case-marking and agreement, valence-change, long-distance dependencies and anaphora. The emphasis will be on identifying how different theoretical ideas fare in dealing with descriptive data.

Graduate students attend joint classes with undergraduates but may expect more rigorous assessment and additional assignment work, tailored to the student's interests.