Contemporary syntactic theory is commonly grouped into formal and functional theories. Each group has spawned a plethora of competing models. In this course, students will examine the philosophical underpinnings of some of the models of syntactic theory and how they account for human beings’ ability to use and understand language. Issues associated with their treatment of form, meaning and learnability will be discussed in detail and students will be expected to compare and contrast some of the chosen models on the basis of observational, descriptive and explanatory adequacy.