The course divides into two main parts: 1. the thought and works of Noam Chomsky, who has deeply influenced linguistics in the past fifty years or so, connecting with currents of thought in psychology and in the philosophy of mind, especially mentalist and innatist approaches in cognitive psychology; 2. the introduction to some fundamental concepts in the formal analysis of natural languages, privileging syntactic aspects more likely to interact with the construction of semantic interpertation.
N. Chomsky. Linguaggio e problemi della conoscenza. Il Mulino
R. Jackendoff. Linguaggio e natura umana. Il Mulino
M. Frascarelli et al. Elelementi di sintassi. Caissa italia
Learning Objectives
The course has two main aims in consonance with the contents indicated: 1. knowledge of the thought and works of Noam Chomsky and of the intellectual context in psychology and philosophy in which it situates itself; knowledge of the fundamental concepts of syntactic analysis, including the ability to apply them to simple example sentences in the student's language(s)
Prerequisites
none
Teaching Methods
lectures
Further information
none
Type of Assessment
final exam
Course program
Chomsky's mentalism: I- and E- language; innatism and the poverty of the stimulus; the Faculty of Language: Narrow (FLN) and Broad (FLB); recursion and the origin of language; the biological foundations of language; levels of linguistics analysis; syntax; categories and constituents; the verb Phrase; the sentences; the left periphery of the sentence; different types of movement