BA English Language and French

What is this course about?

• Taking a different approach to English grammar
  • Descriptive rather than theoretical
  • Bottom-up rather than top-down
  • Usage-based
• Becoming a descriptive linguist
  • Look at real-language data (usage) with an open mind
  • Read different theories/analyses and evaluate them on the basis of data
  • Construct the most accurate model and come up with a revised analysis

• And becoming an expert on English noun phrases!

Prerequisite: LELA10301 (English Word and Sentence Structure) or LELA10041 (Introducing English Grammar)

The aims of the unit are:

• To examine one area of English Grammar in greater depth, and work towards fine-grained levels of grammatical description.
• to evaluate existing grammatical descriptions against the variety and flexibility of actual language use.

Introduction to using the British National Corpus (first 5 weeks)

Lecture/seminar topics:

• NPs and NP structure
• Types of nouns
• Types of nouns
• Determiners
• Quantification
• Premodifiers
• Postmodifiers
• Genitives
• Pronouns
• Fused heads
• Intensification

Total of 33 contract hours divided over

• 11 weekly two-hour block of lecture + seminar
• 5 one-hour tutorials (week 1-5) preparing you for the final project
• 1 presentation 'day' in week 11

Students will

• acquire a detailed knowledge of the categories involved in the construction of English noun phrases.
• have read grammatical descriptions of various levels of difficulty concerning nominal categories in English and be able to critically evaluate them.
• be able to undertake a basic corpus-based analysis using the British National Corpus.

Students will:

• develop skills of problem-solving, building an analysis on the basis of corpus-based data, critically assessing and comparing different descriptions, constructing and refining an argument defending their analysis.
• develop skills in interpreting and synthesising information.

Students will:

• be able to analyze noun phrases and describe nominal categories, using the descriptive methods developed in the course.
• have learned to perform corpus searches and apply basic qualitative and quantitative analyses.

Students will:

• develop skills of successful self-directed study and learning, with appropriate time management.
• develop their report writing skills.

Recommended texts

• Payne, John & Rodney Huddleston. 2002. Nouns and noun phrases. Chapter 5 of Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum et al. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bache, Carl. 2000. Essentials of Mastering English: A Concise Grammar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.