The Linguistic Cycle

Linguistic cycles describe phenomena which recur in unidirectional, systematic patterns. They provide insight into the Faculty of Language by (a) illustrating the economizing principles in a syntactic derivation, and (b) displaying the array of universal semantic features. Cycles also give typological insight into the possible shapes of languages.

This course will first introduce what a linguistic cycle is, what the types are, as well as when and why linguists started to become interested in this phenomenon. It will then move to describe various micro-cycles: the determiner, copula, tense, mood, aspect, voice, negative, interogative, complementizer, and pragmatic cycles. Macro-cycles are more controversial and a discussion of agreement and case cycles will illustrate that. During the class sessions on micro- and macro-cycles, theoretical accounts of the cycles will be introduced, mainly generative ones (structural, featural, and in terms of third factors). The last class will broaden our discussion by including other frameworks and also examining how external factors may be involved.