OJ511 Language typology

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2007
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
prof. Joseph Emonds (lecturer), doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D.
Timetable
Mon 13:20–14:55 C11bezkodu
Prerequisites
Knowledge of English.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 20 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/20, only registered: 0/20, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/20
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 13 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
Language Typology can be studied along many dimensions: word order (head-initial vs. head-final, free vs. fixed), dominant types of grammatical categories, associations of semantic roles with structural positions (topic dominant vs. subject dominant, accusative vs. ergative), availability of null topics or subjects, systems of word formation, contrasting properties of bound morphology, and phonological types. It would be absurd to pretend that such topics can all be covered or even interestingly surveyed in a single course. In this course, we will examine at most three of the above headings: (i) systems of word formation and contrasting properties of bound morphology. (ii) time permitting, head-initial vs. head-final word order, including internal to words. With regard to (i), most linguistic thinking continues to adhere to W. Humboldt's distinctions from the 1820s involving the concepts of analytic, inflectional and agglutinating word formation. Humboldt's "levels of development" are the obvious (but unmentioned) target of Sapir's well-known 1921 foray into morphological typology. This "deconstruction of Humbolt," unfortunately little understood, will be our starting point. Among other points, I will try to show that all languages, even the so-called analytic and inflecting types, are basically agglutinating: one morpheme = one syntactic feature. The lectures will also examine counterexamples to pure agglutination, which seem to involve cross-classification only with number features and deictic features in certain bound and free morphemes. Interestingly, these feature combinations are not limited to bound morphology. Thus, agglutination is a universal property, whose extent provides a typology across languages. Similarly, number and deictic features also vary across languages in different ways. If there is time for (ii), the course will contest two widespread ideas: that languages divide between "head-initial" and "head-final," and that headedness inside words and inside phrases is unrelated. I will argue rather that the universal default setting is head-final in both domains, even though current Indo-European languages rarely show the default setting external to word structures. Typology here again consists in specifying divergence from the default setting. Of interest is how uniformly Slavic languages exhibit word-internal final heads.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Information on completion of the course: Ukončení zápočtem je možné pouze pro kredit typu C. Uděluje se na základě aktivní účasti při výuce.
The course is taught annually.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2010.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2007, recent)
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