BA English Language and Chinese / Course details

This course builds on “English Word and Sentence Structure” to deepen students’ knowledge of the grammatical analysis of a language. Empirically, it covers a comprehensive set of morpho-syntactic and word order phenomena. The data comes mainly from English, but some phenomena require data from other languages. We consider how more abstract generalisations can be made over the data and how these generalisations can be captured with formal tools.

Compulsory Pre-Requisite: LELA10301: English Word and Sentence Structure. Students who do not meet this pre-requisite must gain academic approval before they can enroll.

• to introduce students to language data that illustrate some central properties of morpho-syntax;
• to introduce the students to the basic principles and formal tools of Lexical-Functional Grammar;
• to show the students how to apply the tools of Lexical-Functional Grammar to the data sets in order to capture generalisations;
• to give students a sense of what can be gained by constructing an abstract model for a complex dataset

By the end of this course students will:

• understand the crucial properties of a core set of morpho-syntactic data;
• learn how data in formal grammar is used, grammatically judged and presented professionally:
• apply formal tools in syntax to data sets.

 By the end of this course students will:

• make generalisations over complex data sets;
• acquire abstract concepts;
• understand the value of constructing an abstract model for a complex dataset;
• understand that if they read a complex argument a second time, they understand it better than the first time they read it.

By the end of this course students will:

• manipulate the tools of a formal system;
• analyse unfamiliar language data and detect patterns;
• understand that if they read a complex argument a second time, they understand it better than the first time they read it.

All intellectual and practical skills listed above are transferrable. Personal skills that will be developed include independence, perseverance, working to a deadline, time management, and the confidence to trust your own intelligence.