Undergraduate Intro to Linguistics (24.900) @ MIT, spring 2012

In the spring of 2012, I am teaching the undergraduate Introduction to Linguistics course at MIT. In this course, we provide some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we examine a number of ways in which human language proves to be a complex but law-governed mental system.

    In the first two thirds of the class, we study some core aspects of this system in detail. In the final part of the class, we use what we have learned to address a variety of other questions—including how language is acquired, how dialects arise, how languages change over time, and others.

1. the website for the course can be accessed here (most of the site is currently accessible to MIT students only)
   

Syntactic Models (24.960) @ MIT, fall 2011

In the fall of 2011, I taught a graduate course at MIT called Syntactic Models. In this course, we examined competing syntactic frameworks, both synchronically (GB/minimalism vs. HPSG vs. LFG) and historically (Generative Semantics vs. the “Conditions” framework vs. GB vs. minimalism), with the twin goals of (i) achieving literacy in the formalisms of these various frameworks; and (ii) understanding where the differences between these frameworks amount to actual differences in expressive power and empirical coverage, and where they do not.

1. you can download the syllabus here
   

2. the website for the course can be accessed here
   

LUCL (Leiden) Syntax Seminar, 2011

In the spring of 2011, I taught a 3-day seminar at LUCL (Leiden), called Agreement and case: Patterns, interactions, and implications.

1. the handout for this course can be downloaded here
   

EGG 2010 @ Constanța

In the summer of 2010, I taught two courses at the EGG summer-school in Constanţa, Romania. I co-taught Intro to Syntax with Michal Starke, and taught a topics class on Recent developments in (the theory of) ergativity.

1. handouts/slide-sheets from the Ergativity course can be downloaded here
   

EGG 2009 @ Poznań

In the summer of 2009, I taught two courses at the EGG summer-school in Poznań, Poland. One was Intro to Syntax; the other was a course called Agreement and its failures — which incorporated, among other things, some of my own research on Basque and on Hebrew.

1. handouts/slide-sheets from both courses can be downloaded here