Formal Syntax

Syntax, being one of the core fields in linguistics, is the study of sentence structure. Over the years, the formal syntacticians in the Department of English at NTNU have been devoted to discovering interesting facts in language and putting forward fascinating theories to account for them. These attempts show why the study of syntax is exciting and why its results are important to researchers in other language sciences. The overall outcomes have proven extremely useful for linguists in comparing differences that might otherwise appear unrelated, and have helped identify the core principles of Universal Grammar.

In the past decades, Prof. Chun-yin Doris Chen has explored wh-questions in Chinese and proposed Reindexing as a mechanism to explain how the asymmetries between English and Chinese work. She has also examined a variety of constructions in Chinese regarding serial verbs, ba, bei, rang, A-not-A, topic, pro-drop, reflexives, etc. It has been found that the typological variations between Chinese and other languages can be accounted for by different parameter settings of a given principle of UG.

Prof. Jen Ting has been devoted to the research on syntactic theory, comparative studies of syntax, as well as the interfaces of syntax and other fields of linguistics. She has published, among other things, on the syntactic theory of head movement and A’-movement, on Chinese suo-sentences from a cross-linguistic perspective involving Modern Chinese, Classical Chinese and Romance languages, on Chinese bei-sentences drawing on the data from Modern and Classical Chinese as well as experimental data.

The research of Prof. Miao-Ling Hsieh includes a range of topics in negation, questions, and noun phrases. For the past few years, she has shifted her focus to measurement and scalarity, two topics that have received a growing interest in theoretical syntax and semantics. With the study of pre-classifier adjectival modification in Mandarin Chinese in a measurement-based analysis, and some ongoing research on event-internal/ event-external verbal classifiers, pluractionality, and the scale-sensitive particle tioh in Taiwanese, she aims to contribute to the field not only in terms of empirical data, but also theoretical implications.

Prof. Hsiao-hung Iris Wu's research interests include syntactic theory, syntax-semantics interface and comparative syntax from both macro- and micro- parametric perspectives. She has published articles on ellipsis, phrase structure, predication, generalized existential constructions and she has been working, as well as supervising students, on the syntax of Mandarin, Taiwanese Southern Min, Hakka and Formosan languages.

Prof. Gerardo Fernández-Salgueiro is interested in theoretical syntax and the syntax/sentence processing interface. He has done research on a variety of topics in syntax, including linearization, empty categories, wh-movement, and agreement. In recent years he has also been conducting experimental research on first and second language sentence processing.

Instructor(s):

• Dr. Chen, Chun-yin Doris
• Dr. Fernández-Salgueiro, Gerardo
• Dr. Hsieh, Miao-Ling
• Dr. Ting, Jen
• Dr. Wu, Hsiao-hung Iris

Related Course(s) Provided:

• ENM2004 Syntax
• ENC2007 Generative Theory and Chinese Syntax
• ENC2008 Comparative Study of Chinese Syntax and English Syntax
• ENC2010 Comparative Study of Mandarin Syntax and Taiwanese Syntax
• ENC2038 Studies in Syntax
• ENC2049 Syntactic Theory and Sentence Processing
• ENC2050 Studies in Comparative Syntax
• ENC2051 Comparative Syntax: English, Chinese, and Romance Languages
• END2003 Seminar in Syntax
• END2032 Seminar in Comparative Study of Chinese Syntax and English Syntax