Tentative Course Schedule
With Readings and Assignments

Course information
Course schedule (this page)
Assignments List
Bibliography
Owlspace

Subject to change--revisit this site often

DAY DATE TOPIC READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS
Tu Jan 11 Introduction. Varieties of English. Regional varieties of English (World Englishes). Standard vs. nonstandard varieties. Formal vs. informal styles. Written vs. spoken forms of English. Multiple Standard English varieties: Standard British English, Standard American English (and others). Prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar. "Language peeves". Read Preface. Wiki (course notes on Owlspace): Varieties of English; Standard varieties and Standard English; Prescriptivism and Language Peeves.
Th Jan 13 Kinds of English: the notion of genre. Different genres have different forms of English (structural characteristics). Intersection of genre with style (formal, informal), form (written, spoken), medium (face-to-face; paper: written, print; electronic: radio, TV broadcast, movie, computer, podcast, phone). Genres of English (which cross-cut the above classifications to some extent). What is a "grammatical" sentence? Introduction to the notion of grammaticality. Ch. 1. Wiki: Genre, style, form; Prescriptivism and language peeves.
Tu Jan 18 Grammaticality cont. The notion of "grammatical rule" in Linguistics: A general statement that describes (not prescribes) how sentences are put together so that they are consistent with people's internal grammar (= grammar system), in a certain variety or genre of a language. Many 'rules' are stated in the form of a pattern composed of structures and functions, and an order. (e.g.: Subject - Predicate; NP VP). Unlike traditional grammatical rules which are prescriptive, of the form "Do this. Not this. You should/must say X, not Y", etc.
Our focus: descriptive grammatical 'rules', i.e. general statements of patterns in Standard English. Grammar: the entire system of grammatical rules/patterns/generalizations. The Big Picture: The groundwork of grammar. Two basic sentence functions: Subject vs. Predicate. Structure (categories of phrases) vs. Function (what we do with phrases (structures) in sentences and larger discourses). Noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases. Heads of phrases (= phrasal heads). Smallest syntactic building blocks of structure in the sentence: Syntactic categories (= parts of speech), e.g. nouns and verbs. Parsing. (In class we didn't talk about the sections on: Canonical vs. non-canonical sentences; Categories as prototypes. But keep these ideas in mind as they will come back at numerous points during the semester.)
Ch. 2. Assignment 1 posted.
Th Jan 20 The groundwork of grammar, cont. Some functional building blocks: syntactic functions (= grammatical relations), e.g. subjects, direct objects, predicative complements. Ch. 2 cont., to end. Preview: start reading Ch. 16
Tu Jan 25 Grammaticality ("is an expression grammatical or not?") and its dependence on form (written vs. spoken), style, genre. Word structure and word analysis. Inflectional and lexical (= derivational) morphology. Ch. 16. Assignment 1 due: upload before class, bring to class.
Th Jan 27 Relation of grammar, spelling, punctuation. Syntactic differences in regional-national varieties of English. Discussion of grammar peeves. Historical note: The development of strong prescriptive tendencies in 18th century with standardization of written language and spelling and spread of literacy. Lack of official language bodies in English-speaking world. No centralized authority; language authority vested by English speakers in universities, schools, and the developing publishing industry.
More on inflectional and lexical morphology and how they are different. The internal structure of words: layers of bases and affixes. Tree structures in word analysis. Formation of inflected forms in verbs: past tense and past participle. Past participle in the passive construction. Present participle or -ing form. ( = "gerund-participle" in book's terminology).
Ch. 16 cont.; Course wiki: Prescriptivism and "language peeves".
Tu Feb 1 Morphology: word formation devices. (Compounding, affixation, and more unusual processes.) Transition to syntax and verbal inflectional categories in English. Ch. 16 to end. Ch. 3 pp. 29-42 (through Section 3).
Th Feb 3 The verb system of English. Two kinds of inflected verb forms: Finite vs. non-finite. (Textbook prefers: two kinds of clauses: finite vs. non-finite.) Non-finite forms: Infinitival (occurs with and without to); participles: present participle (book: gerund-participle form), past participle. Auxiliaries. Modal auxiliaries (= modals). Modals vs. quasi-modals. The other English auxiliaries: be, have, do. English constructions with auxiliaries. Syntactic behavior of auxiliaries vs. full verbs (or lexical verbs). Basic verbal contrasts in English: tense, aspect, mood: 1. present vs. preterite (book: "primary tense") 2. perfect constructions: present perfect vs. preterite perfect (= past perfect [traditional term]) (book: "secondary tense") 3. Progressive constructions. 4. Modal auxiliaries for marking verb mood. Shape-sharing (traditional term: syncretism): use of same form for different inflectional categories. Complements vs. modifiers: licensed constituents vs. more peripheral, descriptive elements. Ch. 3 Sections 4-8.
Tu Feb 8 Wrap-up on tense, aspect, mood. Progressive constructions and interaction with semantic classes of verbs. Clause structure. Complementation; internal and external complements of the VP. Subjects, Direct Objects and other nominal complements of the VP (all called "arguments"). Other VP complements. Prepositional phrases as oblique complements of the VP. (Issues introduced but taken up in detail later: prepositions vs. verb particles; degree of lexicalization of V + Prep and V + particle). Parsing. Tree structures: nodes and their labels. Equivalence of labelled bracketing notation to tree representation. Constituents (sentence parts). Functional and structural labels for constituents. Other representational issues. Importance of parsing in natural language processing. Ch. 4, sections 1-4. Assignment 2 activated.
Th Feb 10 Complements vs. adjuncts. Predicate complements and their associated forms. More on parsing and representation. 5 canonical clause structures in English. The Adjunct function. Ch. 4 to end.
Tu Feb 15 Structures at the clause level. Textbook problems; parsing problems on homework. Start Ch. 14. Assignment 2 due, upload before 9 am.
Th Feb 17 Coordination and its various types. Markers of coordination and, or and but. Clause ordering. Symmetries and asymmetries in coordination. 'Gapping' constructions. Ch. 14 Midterm 1 postponed. Due instead March 10 (after break) before class.
Tu Feb 22 More kinds of coordinate structures. Parsing. Ch. 15.
Th Feb 24 Information packaging. More non-canonical (= 'marked') constructions in the clause. Overview of 3 types: Passive, Existential, Extraposition constructions. Indeterminacy of syntactic parsing (i.e. existence of various valid ways to parse a single sentence) and some of its causes. Ch. 15 cont.
Fri-Fri Feb 25-March 11 Midterm 1 activated Friday Feb. 25, noon.
Feb 26-Mar 6 Spring Break
Tu Mar 8 More on special constructions: Extraposition and Existential/Locational; other information packaging constructions

end Ch. 15
Th Mar 10 Nominal categories. Count vs. mass nouns/constructions. The relation of semantic/conceptual structure to grammatical categories. Things and Events (these are technical terms!), and how speakers can package these types of entities in grammar (and lexicon). Determinatives.
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. A few notes on relative clauses.
Ch. 5; Ch. 11. Friday March 11 11:55 p.m. (updated date): Midterm 1 due.
Tu Mar 15 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.
Th Mar 17 [We discussed the midterm and then adjectives, spending little time on adverbs. But the following should be kept in mind while reading.] 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.
Tu Mar 22 [We spent more time on the midterm instead of adverbs, but adverbs will come up again when we get to Ch. 7 on Prepositions.] The relation of Conceptual content to the 3 most important syntactic categories, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives. Grammar as a way to fit conceptual structure to discourse structure. Derivation (with lexical morphology as a way to mark cases where the conceptual content does not match its prototypical syntactic category. (Zero-derivation does not overtly flag the mismatch, but it is still there. ) Ch. 6 to end.
Th Mar 24-25 Midterm recess
Tu Mar 29 [This is a changed chapter order, anounced 3/22.] Clause types for specific speech acts. Relation of clause types (general clausal constructions) with pragmatic functions (speech acts). Correlations and mismatches. Verbs and clause types: how they relate. Ch. 9, first two sections, 159-168.
Th Mar 31 Organizational day. Project topics. (Not discussed in class, but nevertheless interesting nooks and crannies of English: Exclamative what: Quasi-adjectival syntax with modifier (specifically intensifier) function, contrasting with interrogative pronoun what . Exclamative how: Adverb syntax with modifier function (within an AdjP), or Adverb syntax with adjunct function in the clause, contrasting with interrogative of same syntax and function, but with different semantics. Occasional ambiguity of the two types, with meaning difference. Imperatives and what we can do with them. Minor clause types. finish reading Ch. 9 (Ch 168-173). Assignment 3 posted.
Tu Apr 5 Verbs, clause types, and speech acts, end. Subordination with various clause types. Content clauses and subordination. Relation of (traditional) subordinators to adverbs. Ch. 10

Th Apr 7 Non-finite clauses. Infinitivals and participials. Structures and functions. The constructional view of linguistic knowledge. Ch 13. Assignment 3 due before class. Bring hard copy to class. Assignment 4 posted.
Tu Apr 12 More kinds of non-finite clauses. Verbless clauses. Ch. 13, cont.
Th Apr 14 Prepositions and their role in the clause. Two alternating PP structures: Stranding vs. pied-piping. Prepositions vs. subordinators. Prepositions vs. Adverbs. Ch. 7 Sections 1-5
Tu Apr 19 The structure of prepositional phrases. The various complement types licensed by prepositions. Verbs that take prepositional complements. Idiomaticity and partial fusion of verb and preposition (fossilization type 1). Verb + particle constructions; alternate orders. H&P's analysis of particles as intransitive prepositions. Verbal idioms with prepositions/particles (get by, get away with, put down, put up with). Prepositional idioms; fossilization type 2. Ch. 7 Sections 6-8.
Th Apr 21 Wrapping up. No extra reading. Group projects officially due this day. If your group needs an extension of a week or so it can be arranged. Assignment 4 due before class. Bring hard copy to class.

Not covered in detail in class:

Negative constructions: function and form. Ch. 8
Relative clauses. Ch. 11
Comparison and "Grade". Ch. 12

(unknown)

DAY	DATE	TOPIC	READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS
Tu	Jan 11	Introduction. Varieties of English. Regional varieties of English (World Englishes). Standard vs. nonstandard varieties. Formal vs. informal styles. Written vs. spoken forms of English. Multiple Standard English varieties: Standard British English, Standard American English (and others). Prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar. "Language peeves".	Read Preface. Wiki (course notes on Owlspace): Varieties of English; Standard varieties and Standard English; Prescriptivism and Language Peeves.
Th	Jan 13	Kinds of English: the notion of genre. Different genres have different forms of English (structural characteristics). Intersection of genre with style (formal, informal), form (written, spoken), medium (face-to-face; paper: written, print; electronic: radio, TV broadcast, movie, computer, podcast, phone). Genres of English (which cross-cut the above classifications to some extent). What is a "grammatical" sentence? Introduction to the notion of grammaticality.	Ch. 1. Wiki: Genre, style, form; Prescriptivism and language peeves.
Tu	Jan 18	Grammaticality cont. The notion of "grammatical rule" in Linguistics: A general statement that describes (not prescribes) how sentences are put together so that they are consistent with people's internal grammar (= grammar system), in a certain variety or genre of a language. Many 'rules' are stated in the form of a pattern composed of structures and functions, and an order. (e.g.: Subject - Predicate; NP VP). Unlike traditional grammatical rules which are prescriptive, of the form "Do this. Not this. You should/must say X, not Y", etc. Our focus: descriptive grammatical 'rules', i.e. general statements of patterns in Standard English. Grammar: the entire system of grammatical rules/patterns/generalizations. The Big Picture: The groundwork of grammar. Two basic sentence functions: Subject vs. Predicate. Structure (categories of phrases) vs. Function (what we do with phrases (structures) in sentences and larger discourses). Noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases. Heads of phrases (= phrasal heads). Smallest syntactic building blocks of structure in the sentence: Syntactic categories (= parts of speech), e.g. nouns and verbs. Parsing. (In class we didn't talk about the sections on: Canonical vs. non-canonical sentences; Categories as prototypes. But keep these ideas in mind as they will come back at numerous points during the semester.)	Ch. 2. Assignment 1 posted.
Th	Jan 20	The groundwork of grammar, cont. Some functional building blocks: syntactic functions (= grammatical relations), e.g. subjects, direct objects, predicative complements.	Ch. 2 cont., to end. Preview: start reading Ch. 16
Tu	Jan 25	Grammaticality ("is an expression grammatical or not?") and its dependence on form (written vs. spoken), style, genre. Word structure and word analysis. Inflectional and lexical (= derivational) morphology.	Ch. 16. Assignment 1 due: upload before class, bring to class.
Th	Jan 27	Relation of grammar, spelling, punctuation. Syntactic differences in regional-national varieties of English. Discussion of grammar peeves. Historical note: The development of strong prescriptive tendencies in 18th century with standardization of written language and spelling and spread of literacy. Lack of official language bodies in English-speaking world. No centralized authority; language authority vested by English speakers in universities, schools, and the developing publishing industry. More on inflectional and lexical morphology and how they are different. The internal structure of words: layers of bases and affixes. Tree structures in word analysis. Formation of inflected forms in verbs: past tense and past participle. Past participle in the passive construction. Present participle or -ing form. ( = "gerund-participle" in book's terminology).	Ch. 16 cont.; Course wiki: Prescriptivism and "language peeves".
Tu	Feb 1	Morphology: word formation devices. (Compounding, affixation, and more unusual processes.) Transition to syntax and verbal inflectional categories in English.	Ch. 16 to end. Ch. 3 pp. 29-42 (through Section 3).
Th	Feb 3	The verb system of English. Two kinds of inflected verb forms: Finite vs. non-finite. (Textbook prefers: two kinds of clauses: finite vs. non-finite.) Non-finite forms: Infinitival (occurs with and without to); participles: present participle (book: gerund-participle form), past participle. Auxiliaries. Modal auxiliaries (= modals). Modals vs. quasi-modals. The other English auxiliaries: be, have, do. English constructions with auxiliaries. Syntactic behavior of auxiliaries vs. full verbs (or lexical verbs). Basic verbal contrasts in English: tense, aspect, mood: 1. present vs. preterite (book: "primary tense") 2. perfect constructions: present perfect vs. preterite perfect (= past perfect [traditional term]) (book: "secondary tense") 3. Progressive constructions. 4. Modal auxiliaries for marking verb mood. Shape-sharing (traditional term: syncretism): use of same form for different inflectional categories. Complements vs. modifiers: licensed constituents vs. more peripheral, descriptive elements.	Ch. 3 Sections 4-8.
Tu	Feb 8	Wrap-up on tense, aspect, mood. Progressive constructions and interaction with semantic classes of verbs. Clause structure. Complementation; internal and external complements of the VP. Subjects, Direct Objects and other nominal complements of the VP (all called "arguments"). Other VP complements. Prepositional phrases as oblique complements of the VP. (Issues introduced but taken up in detail later: prepositions vs. verb particles; degree of lexicalization of V + Prep and V + particle). Parsing. Tree structures: nodes and their labels. Equivalence of labelled bracketing notation to tree representation. Constituents (sentence parts). Functional and structural labels for constituents. Other representational issues. Importance of parsing in natural language processing.	Ch. 4, sections 1-4. Assignment 2 activated.
Th	Feb 10	Complements vs. adjuncts. Predicate complements and their associated forms. More on parsing and representation. 5 canonical clause structures in English. The Adjunct function.	Ch. 4 to end.
Tu	Feb 15	Structures at the clause level. Textbook problems; parsing problems on homework.	Start Ch. 14. Assignment 2 due, upload before 9 am.
Th	Feb 17	Coordination and its various types. Markers of coordination and, or and but. Clause ordering. Symmetries and asymmetries in coordination. 'Gapping' constructions.	Ch. 14 Midterm 1 postponed. Due instead March 10 (after break) before class.
Tu	Feb 22	More kinds of coordinate structures. Parsing.	Ch. 15.
Th	Feb 24	Information packaging. More non-canonical (= 'marked') constructions in the clause. Overview of 3 types: Passive, Existential, Extraposition constructions. Indeterminacy of syntactic parsing (i.e. existence of various valid ways to parse a single sentence) and some of its causes.	Ch. 15 cont.
Fri-Fri	Feb 25-March 11	Midterm 1 activated Friday Feb. 25, noon.
	Feb 26-Mar 6	Spring Break
Tu	Mar 8	More on special constructions: Extraposition and Existential/Locational; other information packaging constructions	end Ch. 15
Th	Mar 10	Nominal categories. Count vs. mass nouns/constructions. The relation of semantic/conceptual structure to grammatical categories. Things and Events (these are technical terms!), and how speakers can package these types of entities in grammar (and lexicon). Determinatives. 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. A few notes on relative clauses.	Ch. 5; Ch. 11. Friday March 11 11:55 p.m. (updated date): Midterm 1 due.
Tu	Mar 15	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.
Th	Mar 17	[We discussed the midterm and then adjectives, spending little time on adverbs. But the following should be kept in mind while reading.] 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.
Tu	Mar 22	[We spent more time on the midterm instead of adverbs, but adverbs will come up again when we get to Ch. 7 on Prepositions.] The relation of Conceptual content to the 3 most important syntactic categories, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives. Grammar as a way to fit conceptual structure to discourse structure. Derivation (with lexical morphology as a way to mark cases where the conceptual content does not match its prototypical syntactic category. (Zero-derivation does not overtly flag the mismatch, but it is still there. )	Ch. 6 to end.
Th	Mar 24-25	Midterm recess
Tu	Mar 29	[This is a changed chapter order, anounced 3/22.] Clause types for specific speech acts. Relation of clause types (general clausal constructions) with pragmatic functions (speech acts). Correlations and mismatches. Verbs and clause types: how they relate.	Ch. 9, first two sections, 159-168.
Th	Mar 31	Organizational day. Project topics. (Not discussed in class, but nevertheless interesting nooks and crannies of English: Exclamative what: Quasi-adjectival syntax with modifier (specifically intensifier) function, contrasting with interrogative pronoun what . Exclamative how: Adverb syntax with modifier function (within an AdjP), or Adverb syntax with adjunct function in the clause, contrasting with interrogative of same syntax and function, but with different semantics. Occasional ambiguity of the two types, with meaning difference. Imperatives and what we can do with them. Minor clause types.	finish reading Ch. 9 (Ch 168-173). Assignment 3 posted.
Tu	Apr 5	Verbs, clause types, and speech acts, end. Subordination with various clause types. Content clauses and subordination. Relation of (traditional) subordinators to adverbs.	Ch. 10
Th	Apr 7	Non-finite clauses. Infinitivals and participials. Structures and functions. The constructional view of linguistic knowledge.	Ch 13. Assignment 3 due before class. Bring hard copy to class. Assignment 4 posted.
Tu	Apr 12	More kinds of non-finite clauses. Verbless clauses.	Ch. 13, cont.
Th	Apr 14	Prepositions and their role in the clause. Two alternating PP structures: Stranding vs. pied-piping. Prepositions vs. subordinators. Prepositions vs. Adverbs.	Ch. 7 Sections 1-5
Tu	Apr 19	The structure of prepositional phrases. The various complement types licensed by prepositions. Verbs that take prepositional complements. Idiomaticity and partial fusion of verb and preposition (fossilization type 1). Verb + particle constructions; alternate orders. H&P's analysis of particles as intransitive prepositions. Verbal idioms with prepositions/particles (get by, get away with, put down, put up with). Prepositional idioms; fossilization type 2.	Ch. 7 Sections 6-8.
Th	Apr 21	Wrapping up.	No extra reading. Group projects officially due this day. If your group needs an extension of a week or so it can be arranged. Assignment 4 due before class. Bring hard copy to class.

Linguistics/English 394 Spring 2011 Prof. Suzanne Kemmer Rice University

Tentative Course Schedule With Readings and Assignments

Subject to change--revisit this site often

Linguistics/English 394
Spring 2011
Prof. Suzanne Kemmer
Rice University

Tentative Course Schedule
With Readings and Assignments