Spring 2014
Course Information
- Time:
- MWTh, 10-10:50am [Block C]
- Location:
- tbd
Professor
- Lotus Goldberg
- Email: lmgold AT brandeis DOT edu
- Office: Volen 134
- Office Hours:
- tbd
Course description and objectives
This course focuses on linguistic typology, in which the languages of the world are classified in terms of the grammatical features that they have in common. We will also deal some with language universals: traits and implicational relationships that hold in (nearly) every language. This type of typological classification of languages contrasts with the genetic classification of languages done in e.g. historical linguistics: languages grouped together genetically would be a language family (such as Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic), while languages grouped together because they are typologically similar would constitute a language type (such as head-final as opposed to head-initial, or SVO as opposed to SOV or VSO).
This course will focus primarily on morphological and syntactic typology, surveying the types of patterns which are found across the languages of the world. At the start of the course, we will give some discussion of phonetic and phonological typology as well.
Prerequisite: Ling100a, Introduction to Linguistics (or instructor consent).
Course readings
The course has no official textbook, but will involve primary readings from the distinct 1985 and 2007 editions of the three volume series Language Typology and Syntactic Description, edited by Timothy Shopen, from Cambridge University Press. Volume 1 is entitled Clause Structure, Volume 2 Complex Constructions, and Volume 3 Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. The chapters that we will read will be posted on the class LATTE site.
Schedule (subject to change)
| Week |
Topics Covered |
|---|---|
| 1 |
Introduction to Typology; How to choose a grammar for the term; Phonetic and
phonological generalizations |
|
2 |
Shopen Vol I, Ch 1 Parts-of-Speech systems |
|
3 |
Shopen Vol III, Ch 3 Inflectional Morphology |
|
4 |
Shopen Vol III, Ch 4 Tense, aspect, and mood |
| 5 |
Schopen Vol III, Chs 5-6 Causative verb formation, Lexical nominalizations |
|
6 | Morphology wrap-up |
| 7 |
Shopen 2nd Edition, Vol I, Ch 2 Word Order |
| 8 |
Shopen 2nd Edition, Vol I, Ch 4 Clause types |
|
9 |
Shopen Vol II, Ch 2
Complementation
|
|
10,
11 | Shopen Vol II, Ch 1 Complex phrases and complex sentences |
| 12 ... |
Shopen Vol I, Ch 5 Passive in the world's languages
Shopen Vol II, Ch 3 Relative clauses; Syntax wrap-up |