LING306-20S2 (C) Semester Two 2020

Topics in Syntactic Theory

This occurrence is not offered in 2020

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 13 July 2020
End Date: Sunday, 8 November 2020
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 24 July 2020
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 25 September 2020

Description

This course follows on from second-year syntax, covering selected advanced topics and current research in syntactic theory.

Syntactic theories systematically represent and explain the grammatical structure of human languages. Why are some combinations of words meaningful while others are never produced by speakers? How do children learn productive combinations without observing ungrammatical alternatives? What syntactic structures are possible in human languages? The goal of a syntactic theory is to maintain descriptive adequacy (i.e., to explain as much of the grammatical structure of as many languages as possible) while limiting the complexity of its representations.

This course explores representations of syntactic structure ranging from simple phrase structure grammars to more complex transformational grammars and construction grammars. The descriptive adequacy of each approach involves four primary sources of evidence: introspection, corpus data, psycholinguistic measurements, and language acquisition. Specific syntactic phenomena include arguments vs. adjuncts, active/passive alternations, local reorderings, verb position, and phrase fronting. The goal is to use these phenomena to understand the empirical foundations of syntactic theories.

Relation to other courses:
This is one of a range of 300-level courses available for students majoring in Linguistics either for the BA or the BSc, alongside LING307, LING310, and LING320. It can also be taken by students majoring in English Language or other disciplines.

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of the course, students will be able to:

  • Explain the linguistic assumptions behind different syntactic theories
  • Demonstrate how different theories describe the same syntactic structure
  • Compare and contrast the descriptions produced by different syntactic theories
  • Critique the assumptions of syntactic theories against empirical evidence
  • Develop an argument to support the analysis of one theory over another
    • University Graduate Attributes

      This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

      Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

      Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

Prerequisites

Course Coordinator

Jonathan Dunn

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Quizzes 10% Through Learn
Review Paper 1 15% Week 4.
Review Paper 2 15% Week 6.
Research Proposal 20% Week 8
Research Paper 40% Due in exam period.

Textbooks / Resources

Required Texts

Stefan Müller; Grammatical theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches ; 2015 (Available for free at http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/195).

Course links

Library portal
The course outline is available on LEARN (only for students enrolled in this course).
LEARN

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,553.00

International fee $6,750.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All LING306 Occurrences

  • LING306-20S2 (C) Semester Two 2020 - Not Offered
  • LING306-20S2 (D) Semester Two 2020 (Distance) - Not Offered