When we form sentences, we put words together to create syntactic structures. The words put together in this way end up next to each other in the most simple case. But often words that are not next to each other enter into important relations. For example, in all languages there are cases where you don't hear a word or a phrase in the position where you would usually expect it. That is, we move that word or phrase. For example the object in English generally follows the main verb (i).
(i) Michal likes red wine.
When you ask a question, however, the object is placed at the very beginning of the sentence (ii).
(ii) What does Michal like?
Movement relations can span very great distances as in (iii) versus (iv).
(iii) Klaus has claimed Luisa believes Michal likes red wine.
(iv) Who has Klaus claimed Luisa believes likes red wine?
That does not mean, however, that anything goes as you can see in (v) versus (vi) and (vii) versus (viii).
(v) Klaus drank milk after Michal bought red wine.
(vi) * What did Klaus drink milk after Michal bought?
(The '*' indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical)
(vii) Klaus wonders when Michal bought red wine.
(viii) ?? What does Klaus wonder when Michal bought?
Intuitively, the position where 'what' comes from and where it moves to are too far apart in (vi) and (viii) -- they are not 'local' enough. Interestingly, these kinds of 'locality' effects show up in many different areas and affect different kinds of relations such as coreference, Case licensing, Agreement, etc. What it means for an element to be 'local enough' is similar or identical across languages.
This makes locality a central problem for syntactic theory. In the class we will introduce the two main lines of thought which exist concerning locality phenomena: intervention (Relativized Minimality) and blockage (Barriers). We will see which kinds of data each of those can capture in a natural way and where the limits of each of those approaches are.
Since wh-movement will occupy us for a large part of the class it is advisable to have some prior familiarity with wh-movement. Any introduction to generative linguistics will do. Take for example one of the readings suggested below.
Readings
Huang, James - very basic introduction to wh-movement (without reference to locality), also available here.
Szabolcsi, Anna and Marcel den Dikken. 2001. Islands
Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. Introduction to Government and Binding Theory: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell. Chapter 7.
Napoli, Donna Jo. 1993. Syntax: Theory and Problems. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 8.
Radford, Andrew. 1997. Syntactic theory and the Structure of English: A minimalist approach: Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7.
Further readings:
Chomsky, Noam. 1973. Conditions on transformations. In A festschrift for Morris Halle, eds. Stephen R Anderson and Paul Kiparsky, 232-286. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers: Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 13. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sections 1-9.
Manzini, Maria Rita. 1992. Locality: A theory and Some of Its Empirical Consequences: Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 1.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chapter 1.