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
Here are a couple of example questions for the exam.