Last modified 17 April 2007
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Course
information Bibliography Rice WebCT login page |
| DAY | DATE | TOPIC | READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS | |
| Tu | Jan 9 | Introduction. Aspects of grammar. Key notions. | ||
| Th | Jan 11 | No class; assignment instead. | H&P Ch. 1. Assignment 1 due. | |
| Tu | Jan 16 | Two kinds of grammaticality (prescriptive/descriptive), and how they relate to style (formal/informal). Tricky mismatches or areas of disagreement. The groundwork of grammar: Case, syntactic functions (grammatical relations) and categories (syntactic categories or parts of speech). | H&P Ch. 2. | |
| Th | Jan 18 | Overview cont. Sentence parts and sentence functions, and relation to meaning. Parsing. Canonical vs. non-canonical sentences. Categories as prototypes. Verbal categories: Tense. The auxiliary. | H&P Ch. 2, cont.; Ch. 3. | |
| Tu | Jan 23 | More parsing. Verbal categories: Tense, aspect and mood. Modal and other auxiliaries. The modal auxiliary system in English: structural aspects. Modals vs. quasi-modals. | Ch. 3 cont. Assignment 2 posted. Due Monday Jan 29 | |
| Th | Jan 25 | Clause structure. Complementation. Tree structure, constituents, and other representational issues. | Ch. 4. | |
| Tu | Jan 30 | Complements vs. adjuncts. Gray areas. More on representation: tree structures; functional and structural labels for sentence parts. | Ch. 4 cont. | |
| Th | Feb 1 | Indeterminacy of syntactic parsing, and its causes. Nominal categories. Count vs. mass nouns/constructions. | Ch. 5. | |
| Tu | Feb 6 | Nominal categories cont. The relation of semantic/conceptual structure to grammatical categories. "Events" and "Things", and how speakers can package these types of entities in grammar (and lexicon). Parallel of genitive NP and of-NP structures with VP structures. Fused heads. Different structures with quantifier many; a partial look at the quantifier system of English. | Ch. 5 cont. | |
| Th | Feb 8 | Final observations on nominal categories. Adjectives and their functions. Adjectives functioning as modifiers (attributive adjectives); adjectives functioning as predicative complements (predicate adjectives). English adjectives: Conceptually complex but structurally relatively simple. | Ch. 6. | |
| Tu | Feb 13 | Some structural and functional properties of adverbs. Adverbs as a minor and non-cohesive category in English. VP-adverbs vs. sentence adverbs. Structural ambiguity. | Ch. 6 cont. Assignment 3 posted. Due Feb 19 11:00 pm. | |
| Th | Feb 15 | A few notes on relative clauses. Prepositions and their role in the clause. How grammarians and linguists analyze language into functional and structural elements. Distinguishing syntactic categories. | Ch. 11; Ch. 7 (with focus on Ch. 7). | |
| Tu | Feb 20 | Expanding the class of prepositions to include some (traditional) subordinators (the Jespersen analysis of the English prepositional system). Prepositions as heads, with functional head properties and semantics, vs. true subordinators as simply grammatical clausal complement-introducers ("complementizers"). Heads vs. dependents, a contrast in functions. The nature of heads; heads as carrying the prime identifying/communicative features of the phrase. Distinguishing kinds of dependents: complements, adjuncts, modifiers. Complements vs. adjuncts, distinguished by licensing. The nature of licensing. Modifiers, a third type of dependent; modification as another dimension of function, separate from licensing. Modifiers and what they do. PP modifiers. | Ch. 7 cont. | |
| Th | Feb 22 | Preposition stranding vs. pied-piping: alternate PP structures in relative and (limitedly) interrogative clauses. Prepositions vs. verb particles. Degrees of conventionalization, leading to differences in grammatical behavior, and sometimes indeterminacy, of units. Initial remarks on English negation. | Ch. 7 end; Ch. 8. | |
| Tu | Feb 27 | Midterm review. Midterm available Tuesday night. Due Friday March 2 11:00 p.m. on WebCT (under Assignments not Quizzes). Grace period, without penalty, lasts until Sunday March 4 11:00 p.m. | Midterm posted (see left). | |
| Th | Mar 1 | Negation and scope. | Ch. 8 cont. | |
| Tu | Mar 6 | Midterm recess | ||
| Th | Mar 8 | Midterm recess | ||
| Tu | Mar 13 | Midterm break recovery. No Class! | ||
| Th | Mar 15 | Clause types for specific speech acts. Relation of clause types (general clausal constructions) with pragmatic functions (speech acts). Correlations and mismatches. | Ch. 9 | |
| Tu | Mar 20 | Clause types continued; Subordination with various clause types. Content clauses. | Ch. 10 | |
| Th | Mar 22 | Subordination with content clauses. Verbs and constructions. Relation between the two. Relation of verb semantics and constructional semantics. | Ch. 10 cont. Assignment 4 posted Sunday 3/25. Due Friday 3/30 11p.m. | |
| Tu | Mar 27 | A brief look at grade and comparative constructions. | Ch. 12. | |
| Th | Mar 29 | Non-finite clauses. Infinitivals and participials. Structures and functions. More on the constructional view of linguistic knowledge. | Ch. 13. | |
| Tu | Apr 3 | More on kinds of non-finite clauses. Verbless clauses. | Ch. 13, cont. | |
| Th | Apr 5 | Spring Recess | ||
| Tu | Apr 10 | Coordination. Clause ordering in coordination and elsewhere. Symmetries and asymmetries in coordination. Markers of coordination and, or and but. | Ch. 14. | |
| Th | Apr 12 | Coordination as constrained by functional role, not syntactic category. Gapping constructions. | Ch. 14 cont. | |
| Tu | Apr 17 | Information packaging. Clause-level constructions for presenting information in various ways. Non-canonical (= marked) clause constructions. The Existential Construction (there is/are NP (PP)). | Ch. 15. | |
| Th | Apr 19 | Information packaging, cont. Extraposition and other non-canonical constructions. | Ch. 15 cont. | |
| Tu | Apr 24 | Review. |
The final examination is a take-home, open-book exam. It will be posted after the last class and is due the date on which the registrar has scheduled a take-home final exam time for Ling 394. Our exam "block" is on May 1, 2007. However, we are looking into extending the exam due date for graduating students to May 2 (the latest possible date for seniors) and May 5 for continuing students. The exam is to be uploaded via WebCT. Make sure that if you leave Rice, you have access to a good internet connection so that you can upload your exam. If you don't have a good internet connection from home or from somewhere else off campus, don't leave until you take the exam.
If you hand-draw trees for the exam, you will have to hand them in physically on time, or scan them into your exam file.
If you plan to take the exam away from Rice, it is advisable that you learn how to use phpSyntaxTree BEFORE the exam period, including how to paste the trees into your file, so you can upload your entire exam remotely. If you need help figuring out how to use the tree-drawing program, you can come to office hours for help--BEFORE finals week!
© 2007 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 17 April 2007