Honours – Structure of a Language (Finnish): homepage

Lecturer Maija McKinnon

Semester 1

Lectures Mondays 2-3, Thursdays 2-3, Fridays 2-3

Tutorials included in the lecture hours

Credits 20 credits

This page: Aims Assessment

Syllabus Reading

Aims

The course has two main aims:

• To enable students to learn about the structure of a non-Indo-European language with grammatical features which are very different from those of English and other Indo-European languages.
• To develop skills in linguistic analysis by studying in some depth an unfamiliar language. No prior knowledge of Finnish is assumed.

N.B. This is not a course designed to teach you to speak Finnish.

By the end of the course students should be able to

• describe important features of the Finnish language in formal linguistic terms
• analyse Finnish examples in terms of their phonological, morphological and syntactic structure

Syllabus

Central features of Finnish phonology, morphology and syntax, including

• Introduction to the Finno-Ugric language family
• Phonology: phonemes, quantity, vowel harmony, suprasegmentals
• Morphophonological structure: Consonant gradation
• Morphology

Morphology of nominals: the case system

Morphology of verbs: tenses, moods, negation

Examples of Derivation

• Syntax and semantics

Functions of the local cases

Case assignment in transitive clauses: the accusative and the partitive object

Existential, possessive and copular clauses

Voice and impersonal constructions

Clitic particles

• Lexis
• Variants of Finnish: standard Finnish and the informal spoken language

Assessment

The course will be assessed by a written assignment (50%) and a 2-hour written examination (50%). Throughout the course work will be assigned to be completed at home and discussed in class. This work will not be graded but completion of it is a required part of the course.

Reading

Sulkala, Helena and Karjalainen, Merja (1992). Finnish. London: Routledge.

(Copies are on reserve in the Main Library.)

Other reading will be prescribed or recommended as it becomes relevant. Some books have been placed on reserve in the Main Library. Other readings will be made available in photocopied form in the Common Room of the Department, in a file marked Structure of Finnish.