AJ52013 Topics in Linguistics: Syntax

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2015
Extent and Intensity
0/0/0. 7 credit(s) (plus 3 credits for an exam). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Martin Drápela, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek
Supplier department: Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
each even Friday 10:50–12:25 G21
Prerequisites
Knowledge of syntactic terminology at least in the extent of the terms listed in the glossary to the Internet Grammar of English.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The course focuses on selected aspects of English syntax and aims to deepen students' knowledge of syntactic terms and skills of syntactic analysis. To facilitate this, the students will be asked to carry out syntactic analyses and evaluations of selected syntactic features appearing in discourse fragments of three written registers: the news register, the register of academic prose, and the fiction register. The results of the analyses will be compared to the statistical data obtained from large electronic corpora of the English language. The topics covered in this course are centred around, but are not limited to, the general phenomena of clause grammar, the specifics of the complex noun phrases, adverbials, and word order.
Syllabus
  • Summary of topics
  • 1. A syntactic terminology refresher
  • 2. Exploring the grammar of clause
  • 3. Complex noun phrases
  • 4. Adverbials
  • 5. Word order choices and information structure
Literature
    required literature
  • GREENBAUM, Sidney and Randolph QUIRK. A student's grammar of the English language. First published. Harlow: Longman, 1990, 490 stran. ISBN 0582059712. info
  • Glossary of Terms to the The Internet Grammar of English (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/frames/consult.htm)
    recommended literature
  • BIBER, Douglas, Susan CONRAD and Geoffrey N. LEECH. Longman student grammar of spoken and written English. First published. Harlow: Longman, 2002, vii, 487. ISBN 9780582237278. info
  • BIBER, Douglas. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman, 1999, 1204 pp. ISBN 0582237254. info
  • DUŠKOVÁ, Libuše. Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny. 2. vyd. Praha: Academia, 1994, 673 s. ISBN 8020004866. info
  • Dušková, L. a kol.: Elektronická mluvnice současné angličtiny - Syntax, http://www.mluvniceanglictiny.cz/syntax
Teaching methods
Seminar discussions, presentations and homework assignments.
Assessment methods
The credits will be awarded upon reaching at least 35 points out of the total of 50 points in the following breakdown:
- Participation at more than 70 per cent of the seminar sessions (equals 3 points);
- Seminar handout (5 points)
- Seminar presentation (35 points)
- Final written test (7 points max.).
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught once in two years.
General note: This course is NOT designated for Erasmus students! List of courses offerd by the Department of English and American studies for Erasmsus students is available at http://www.phil.muni.cz/wkaa/ under "Information for Erasmus students".
Information on the extent and intensity of the course: This course is NOT designated for Erasmus students! List of courses offerd by the Department of English and American studies for Erasmsus students is available at http://www.phil.muni.cz/wkaa/ under "Information for Erasmus students".
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Spring 2013.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2015/AJ52013