LISSIM 6

June 1-15, 2012@ Kangra

Selected Essays

Nano, Me and Other Animals

Rahul Balusu
Assistant Professor, EFL-U, Hyderabad

At LISSIM 5, I got my teeth into Nanosyntax, which was the theme of the summer school. To really explore the framework, we came back and organized a seminar around the topic at EFL-U called‘LS-445 – Seminar on Nanosyntax (INGLOURIOUS TERMINALS)’. The topics discussed in the seminar were Week 1-2, Architecture of Nanosyntax; Week 3-5, Nanosyntax of Case; Week 6-9, Nanosyntax of Verb Phrase; Week 10-12, Nanosyntax of P and Week 13-14, Nanosyntax of Noun Phrase. It was a successful course with around 6-10 research students (registered, auditors), who were excited enough by the framework and the questions and answers that it brought to the research table, to write viable research papers which they later presented at various conferences. The grand finale for the course and our initial foray into nanosyntax at EFL-U was a workshop on Complex Predicates in South Asian Languages within the nanosyntax framework which focused on the important work currently being done on the analysis of verb classes and the syntax of verbal projections especially in the framework of First Phase syntax (Gillian Ramchand 2008). Some of the areas that student papers in the workshop have investigated are causativization in Hindi/Urdu, resultatives and verb-particle constructions in English etc.

This semester, I’m teaching LS-153, Introduction to Formal Semantics. We don’t have a properly trained semanticist at EFL-U and since P. Madhavan, our only faculty with a considerable exposure to semantics is busy with administrative chores, it looks like I will be doing more of semantics teaching at EFL-U in the coming semesters. It would therefore be good for me to get a proper semantics training. I got some training at NYU, but that has not really stood the test of time! It would be great to learn from two formidable semanticists - Pantcheva and Moltmann. Pantcheva has a more syntax-semantics approach and Moltmann a more semantics-philosophy approach. This covers the entire gamut of semantics and is a delectable offering. I simply wouldn't want to miss it.


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