MA in English Language
L64A - The Grammar of English
Credits:
3
Duration:
39 hours
Evaluation:
- 1 Short Research Paper (40%)
- Final Examination (2 hours) (60%)
Rationale
Because the linguist's insights into the Structure of English are often hidden within very specialist theoretical frameworks, this course seeks to make these insights available to persons interested in the grammar of English but not in the theoretical constructs within which these insights are usually presented.
Aims
It will seek to contrast these, where these do exist, with rules presented by traditional and prescriptive work on English grammar. By the end of the course, the student should be able, with reference to any of the major syntactic structures of English, (i) to work out a rough initial rule (ii) check and refine this against data obtained from corpora of English, notably the International Corpus of English and (iii) test its validity in relation to analyses presented in authoritative sources on the syntax of English.
Content
Starting with particular language structures within actually occurring English language data, the course will allow the student to work out the grammatical rules that underpin these structures, at each stage checking these out against the descriptions within the appropriate linguistic texts as well as within traditional prescriptive grammars of English. Within this framework, the student will explore
- Basic concepts in grammar
- The structural approach to linguistic analysis
- The parts of speech of English
- Verbs and verb phrases in English
- The structure of Kernel clauses in English
- English Nouns and noun phrases
- Pronouns
- Adjectives and adjective phrases
- Verbs, nouns and adjectives: the boundaries between them
- Adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions
- Clause type
- Coordination and subordination
- Negation
- Thematic systems of the clause
Reading List
- Aarts, B. 2001 English Syntax and Argumentation, Elsevier, ?
- Berk, L. 1999, English Syntax: From Word to Discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Biber, D., S. Conrad, et al. (eds.) 1998 Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Greenbaum, S. (ed.) (1996) Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
- Greenbaum, S. 1996 The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Huddleston, R. 1984 Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Huddleston, R. & G. Pullum 2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Quirk, R. et al. 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
- Radford, A. 2004 An Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Riley, K. & F. Parker1999 English Grammar: Prescriptive, Descriptive, Generative, Performance, Longman.
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