Undergraduate - UnitATS3668 - Descriptive syntax: Grammatical structure, typology and universals

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 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

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Linguistics
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Dr Anna Margetts

Synopsis

The unit provides an introduction to the grammatical phenomena found in simple and complex sentences in a wide range of languages and to the basic tools for their analysis and description. The unit combines the investigation of morpho-syntax with an enquiry into linguistic typology and universals. It introduces and evaluates different theoretical approaches to morpho-syntactic analysis.

Outcomes

On successfully completing the unit students should be able to:

identify and describe morpho-syntactic phenomena in a variety of different languages;
apply different theoretical approaches to the analysis of sentence structure using the relevant terminology;
read and understand grammatical descriptions of languages and discussions of grammatical phenomena in the linguistic literature;
identify cross-linguistic patterns in morpho-syntax and discuss claims of universality.

More generally students are expected to develop their abilities to:

read critically;
use analytic and interpretive skills in dealing with language data;
assess evidence supporting various theories and thereby evaluate these theories;
present logical, coherent arguments both orally and in writing.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 75%
Exam: 25%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.