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ENG467A: Syntax And Structures Of Language

Course Description

The course aims to introduce the UG students to the basic concepts of syntax in the field of linguistics. The course addresses some fundamental questions including how language is generated and computed in our minds. This course will help students understand the ways in which sentences are built from smaller conceptual elements. The students will discuss the ideas underlying modern generative linguistics and learn to analyse the syntactic structures from familiar languages. The empirical data for linguistic analysis will be chosen from many world languages, as per the requirement of context

Course Content

  1. Introductory Notes                                                                         (7 lectures)

Syntax as a Cognitive Science, Modeling Syntax, Syntax as Science – the Scientific Method, Prescriptive and descriptive grammar, the study of grammar, studying Syntax, Learning vs. Acquisition, Innateness: Language as an Instinct, The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, Other Arguments for UG, Explaining Language Variation

  1. Parts of Speech                                                                                 (6 lectures)

Determining Part of Speech and problems with Traditional Definitions, the Major Parts of Speech- Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs. Open vs. Closed; Lexical vs. Functional words, Subcategories and features of Nouns and verbs. 

  1. Constituency, Trees, and Rules                                                     (7 lectures)

Noun Phrases (NPs), Adjective Phrases (AdjPs) and Adverb Phrases (AdvPs), Prepositional Phrases (PPs), Verb Phrases (VPs), Clauses, Syntactic representations and drawing trees, bracketed Diagrams, Modification and Ambiguity, Constituency Tests

  1. Structural Relations                                                                         (5 lectures)

The Parts of a Tree, Domination, Exhaustive Domination, Immediate Domination, Precedence, C-command, Grammatical Relations

 

  1. Binding Theory                                                                                (7 lectures)

The Notions Coindex and Antecedent, Binding Theory, Locality Conditions on the Binding of Anaphors, The Distribution of Pronouns, The Distribution of R-expressions, Binding relations in Indian languages.

 

 

  1. X-bar Theory                                                                                    (7 lectures)

Bar-level Projections, Generalizing the Rules: The X-bar Schema, Complements, Adjuncts, and Specifiers, and Adjuncts in NPs, VPs, AdjPs, AdvPs, and PPs, The Notion Specifier, Parameters of Word Order

 

  1. Doubt clearing and discussion                                                      (1 lecture)

Course Audience

Undergraduate students