Pre-requisites

None.

Co-requisites

None.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, the student will be able to:

• Read and critically evaluate a specific topic of grammatical literature

• Understanding of the principles underlying the structural study of grammar

• Examine language data with respect to grammatical concepts

• Analyse data from other languages

• Formulate and justify grammatical rules based on such data (write a grammatical description)

Unit Description

This unit provides an introduction to grammatical analysis, understanding the interplay of other aspects of linguistic structure for the communicative purposes of language, and developing the practical skills and tools to enable students to think analytically and formally about the structure of a language. This unit examines a wide range of typological patterns which are common in the world’s languages and students analyse real language data from typologically diverse languages and identify, define, and describe the component parts of that data using accepted linguistic terminology. The course will be based primarily on data from poorly described languages.

Topics

The communicative basis of grammar

Categorisation

Identifying constituents/Word classes

Phrases and clauses

Clause structure and linear order

Semantic roles

Grammatical relations & alignment patterns

Valency changes

Clause grammatical operators (Tense, aspect, modality, illocutionary force)

Noun phrase structure

Nominal grammatical operators

Information structure

Morphology

---

Unit offerings

SILA: (Demand based)

Please note

The Unit Offerings listed above are a guide only and the timetable for any year is the final authority. The College may vary offerings based on demand, regulatory requirements, continual improvement processes or other conditions.

This unit may be available in different modes of delivery i.e. online and face-to-face as listed above. The unit content will not differ between these modes of delivery. There will possibly be a difference in the schedule and/or the prescribed assessment tasks, however both will cover and assess the same content.