Undergraduate - UnitATS2668 - Syntax: Grammatical structure, typology and universals

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Linguistics
Offered	Clayton First semester 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Anna Margetts

Notes

Previously coded LIN2090

Synopsis

This unit will cover the basic tools necessary for the study of syntax and will specifically focus on the linguistic analysis of the sentence in different languages. This study will be approached through the comparison of different systems of case marking, agreement, use of clitic pronouns, word order, topic-comment structure and other mechanisms that reveal the structure of the clause. Attention will be given to understanding basic concepts such as verb, transitive verb, passive subject and direct object and tense/aspect.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit students will:

Be able to demonstrate familiarity with the basic units of analysis as exemplified in a variety of different languages.
Be familiar with different theoretical approaches to the analysis of sentence structure and the relevant terminology.
Be able to read and understand grammatical descriptions of languages and discussions of grammatical phenomena in the linguistic literature.
Be able to analyse data from languages which they know, and from those with which they are unfamiliar.

Assessment

Class participation and presentation: 20%
Written work: 80%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Anna Margetts

Workload requirements

2 hours (1 x 2 hour seminar) per week

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Linguistics

Prerequisites

A first-year sequence in Linguistics