Linguistics 1: Morphology and Syntax

 

Lecturer: Peter Ackema

packema@ling.ed.ac.uk.ignorethisbit

http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~packema/

 

This module deals with the study of the structure of words (morphology) and the study of the structure of phrases and sentences (syntax). We will look at how complex words and phrases are built up in English, as well as in other languages. We will also look at some restrictions on possible words and phrases.

 

The required reading is chapters 4 and 5 from W. O’Grady, M. Dobrovolsky and F.Katamba (1996)3, Contemporary Linguistics (London: Longman), except for sections 5 and 6 of chapter 5, as well as the lecture notes that you can find by clicking on the lectures below. These lecture notes cover a lot of the same ground as the chapters from O’Grady et al. However, some material from these chapters is not in the lecture notes and vice versa. So be sure to read both!

 

There are eight lectures, four each for morphology and syntax.

 

Lecture 1  Morphology I: Complex words

 

Lecture 2  Morphology II: Compounding and derivation

 

Lecture 3  Morphology III: Inflection

 

Lecture 4  Morphology IV: Morphological language variation

 

Lecture 5  Syntax I: Constituency

 

Lecture 6  Syntax II: Phrase structure

 

Lecture 7  Syntax III: Constituent movement

 

Lecture 8  Syntax IV: Head movement

 

 

 

There will also be two tutorials for this module, one devoted to morphology and one devoted to syntax. You can find the exercises for these here:

 

Exercises for morphology tutorial

 

Exercises for syntax tutorial

 

 

Here are a couple of example questions for the exam.