Syntax: Studying Language Structure

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• define, present and exemplify key theoretical concepts in syntax
• organise, present and justify your own analyses of linguistic data in an academic way.
• analyse and question assumptions and received opinion

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• key theoretical principles of the 'Minimalist' approach to syntactic theory, concerning Merger, Movement, Feature Checking and Locality.
• theoretical concepts such as the DP hypothesis, empty categories, the theta-criterion, head-movement, operator-movement and anaphor binding, and how these concepts can explain various kinds of key data in syntax.
• the internal structure of sentences, with particular focus on the structure of English
• the role of syntax in the grammar and its relationship to the other components of the language faculty
• techniques to help determine the structure underlying sentences

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• present findings and ideas in a structured, coherent manner.
• demonstrate your understanding of language in different modes (e.g. concise, focused analyses as well as more extensive discussion or summaries)
• apply reasoning and problem-solving techniques in order to analyse new data;
• demonstrate understanding of elements of theory which can be applied to the study of English and other languages;

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Represent the structure of sentences of English in line with modern syntactic approaches to phrase structure, e.g. applying a specific theory of syntax to prepare syntactic 'tree' diagrams

This module constitutes an introduction to syntactic theory within a ‘Generative Grammar’ framework. It will encourage you to reflect analytically on how sentences work and how their structure is organised. You will look at how sentences are structured and analysed and practise such analyses by doing weekly exercises. You will learn to engage in consciously examining English as well as reflecting on other language(s) that you know or are learning.

The schedule for the module focuses on constructing a theory of syntax week by week, beginning with basic principles in syntax such as syntactic categories, morphosyntactic features of words, and phrase structure. We will first establish some assumptions concerning how each of these works in syntax, to provide the foundations of a model of the grammar. Building on this, each week we will introduce new types of sentence structures and explore how our developing theory of syntax should be updated to accommodate them. Through this we will see some of the major insights that generative syntax has revealed in its relatively short history, including analyses of phrase structure, verb inflection, movement, interrogatives, null subjects and pronoun interpretation.

Teaching methods include:

• 1 lecture per week
• 1 seminar per week

Learning activities include:

• Individual reading
• Collaborative work with other students on seminar tasks
• Practical exercises and reflection

Each week, the lecture will serve to introduce ideas, concepts and theories. The seminar that follows will give you the opportunity to engage with them critically, to consolidate your understanding, and apply your knowledge in analysing sentence structure. This will usually be in the form of a set of focused tasks and short exercises to be reflected on in advance for discussion in class.

Weekly reading will introduce you to linguistic phenomena which may pose problems for syntactic theory and will encourage you to consider the relationships between linguistic data and the hypotheses that explain them.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.