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Course information Course schedule (this page) Final Projects Bibliography Owlspace |
| DAY | DATE | TOPIC | READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS |
| Tu | Aug 21 | Course Information. What is this course? 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. | Read Preface. Course notes in the Wiki tool on Owlspace: Language Peeves; Varieties of English; and (to come) Standard varieties and Standard English. |
| Th | Aug 23 | "Language peeves": How people get mad,
irritated, disgusted etc. by particular usages. Relation of linguistic
peevism to prescriptivity, standardization. The Linguist's outlook:
language variation has no intrinsic moral dimension and it does not
relate to logic or other rational reasons. But it has a social
dimension and hence we are all affected by the prescriptive outlook.
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.
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). Basic idea of linguistic patterns: Recurrent form used in a particular function. May contain specific words, or just categories of words. | Ch. 1. Read Wiki course notes: Language peeves. Assignment 1: Discussion in class of your answers to the 3 questions under Part I. |
| Tu | Aug 28 | Relation of grammar, spelling,
punctuation. Syntactic differences in regional-national varieties of English.
More on grammar peeves. Deeper discussion of genre, style, form and
their interactions. What is a "grammatical" sentence? Introduction to the notion
of grammaticality. The notion of "grammatical rule" in
Linguistics: A general statement that describes
how sentences are put together by native speakers so that they are
consistent with these speakers' internal grammar (= grammar system),
in a certain variety or genre of a
language. 'Rule' here is 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.) | Wiki course notes: Varieties of English. Standard varieties and Standard English. Genre, style, form. Ch. 2. Last 3 questions of Assignment 1 due: upload to Assignments module before class and bring hardcopy to class. |
| Th | Aug 30 | The groundwork of grammar, cont. Some functional building blocks: syntactic functions (= grammatical relations), e.g. subjects, direct objects, predicative complements. Introduction to category labels and parsing of sentences. Tree structures. | Wiki course notes from above continued as needed. Ch. 2 cont., to end. Preview: start reading Ch. 16 on inflectional categories of English words and how they relate to syntactic structures; but we will begin with sentence structure by continuing to Ch. 3. Ch. 3 pp. 29-42 (through Section 3). |
| Tu | Sept 4 | The verb system of English. Two kinds of clauses: finite vs. non-finite. Two kinds of inflected verb forms that go with these, respectively: Finite vs. non-finite. Finite verb forms. Form vs. shape; shape-sharing by different forms. Non-finite forms: Infinitival (occurs with and without to); participles: present participle (book: gerund-participle form), past participle. | Ch. 3 pp. 29-42 (through Section 3). |
| Th | Sept 6 |
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. | |
| Tu | Sept 11 | Word structure as it pertains to syntax. Inflectional vs. lexical morphology: how they are different. The internal structure of words: bases and affixes. Alternations. Regular vs. irregular inflection. Generalizations ("rules"). Cross-dialect variation. Spelling vs. sound. 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 part on inflectional morphology (up to start of Section 3.2 on p. 271) |
| Th | Sept 13 | 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). | Ch. 3 Sections 4-8. |
| Tu | Sept 18 | Guest lecture: Prof. Michael Barlow, University of Auckland. Linguistic corpora and text analysis tools. Finding patterns and constructions in large text collections (corpora). Applications. | Start for later in week: Ch. 4, sections 1-4. Assignment 2. Second part now added. |
| Th | Sept 20 | Complements vs. adjuncts. Predicate complements and their associated forms. More on parsing and representation. Five canonical clause structures in English. The Adjunct function. | Ch. 4, remaining sections. |
| Tu | Sept 25 | Structures at the clause level. Problems from textbook. | Start Ch. 14. Assignment 2 due, upload before 9 am. |
| Th | Sept 27 | Coordination and its various types. Markers of coordination and, or and but. Clause ordering. Symmetries and asymmetries in coordination. Joint vs. distributive coordination; gapped coordination. | Ch. 14 sections 1-7; Section 8.2. |
| Tu | Oct 2 | Discussion of constructions with give (from Asgn 2). More on coordinate structures and how to parse them. Closer look at gapped coordination. Exercises in class. "What has gone wrong?" (task on non-native syntax.) | Ch. 14 sections 1-7 continued; 8.2 continued. Comparison with relative clause gaps. Midterm posted. |
| Th | Oct 4 | Information packaging. More non-canonical (= 'marked') constructions in the clause. Overview of 3 types: Passive, Existential, Extraposition constructions. | Ch. 15 Sections 1-4. |
| Tu | Oct 9 | No class. | Midterm due. Upload your exam by noon. |
| Th | Oct 11 | No class. CENTENNIAL EVENTS. | |
| Tu | Oct 16 | More on information packaging in the clause. More on types of passives and their uses. Project discussion. | Ch. 15 Sections 6 to 9, with more on Sections 1-4 as needed. |
| Th | Oct 18 | Remarks on the midterm. Taking stock. More on constructions. | Review. |
| Tu | Oct 23 | The structure of noun phrases. What are nouns anyway? What kinds are there? What kinds of dependents do nouns have in NPs? Countability and agreement in Standard English. Contrast with non-standard varieties. Different structures with quantifier many; a partial look at the quantifier system of English. Intro to determinatives and their function. | Ch. 5 Sections 1-2, Section 3 |
| Th | Oct 25 | Genitive NPs. Parallel between of-NP genitive construction and VP structures. Determiners and determinatives. Complements and modifiers in NPs. Pronouns. | Ch. 5 Sections 3-9. Assignment 3. |
| Tu | Oct 30 | 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 | Nov 1 | Structural and functional properties of adverbs. Adverbs as a non-cohesive category in English. VP-adverbs vs. sentence adverbs. | Ch. 6 cont. |
| Tu | Nov 6 | Prepositions and their role in the clause. Two alternating PP structures: Stranding vs. pied-piping. Prepositions vs. subordinators. Prepositions vs. Adverbs. Issues with prepositions. | Ch. 7 Sections 1-5 |
| Th | Nov 8 | Special guest, Jennifer Shade Wilson, Director of the Center for Written, Oral and Visual Communication, Rice. 1) The Center; opportunities for students for help or jobs. 2) Jennifer's path from English literature to Second Language Acquisition to Communication Effectiveness. 3) Certifications in ESL; further education in ESL, Second Language acquisition, language assessment, and related areas | |
| Tu | Nov 13 | The preposition/verb particle/adverbial grammatical spectrum in English. 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 1-5 recap as needed; Sections 6-8. |
| Th | Nov 15 | Data on preposition/particle semantics and syntax cont. Transition to non-canonical, non-finite clauses. Infinitivals and participials. Structures and functions. | Ch 13 |
| Tu | Nov 20 | More kinds of finite clauses. Verbless clauses. Project issues as needed. | Ch 13 to end. |
| Th | Nov 22 | Thanksgiving break. No class. | |
| Tu | Nov 27 | Discussion and presentation of 2 projects. | |
| Th | Nov 29 | Discussion and presentation of remaining project(s). Wrapping up. | No extra reading. |
We will not get to the following in detail in class. We will probably have to access some of the examples when looking at particular cases/assignments.
© 2007-2012 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 12 Nov 2012