Admission requirements
BA Dutch language and culture (specialization Linguistics), BA Linguistics, or equivalent
Description
All humans can learn any language as a native tongue. For this reason, the most central hypothesis in current syntactic research is that all languages share abstract syntactic principles. The first goal of comparative syntactic investigations is to discover whether syntactic principles are shared in this sense and what kind of principles are shared this way. The second goal is to understand how these principles allow for variation among languages and how syntactic variables are connected. This leads to a general theory of syntax for natural languages.
This course involves an advanced introduction into comparative syntax, combined with hands-on comparative syntactic research. We discuss a number of perpectives on and approaches to comparative syntax. We select a specific empirical domain (e.g., DP structure, VP-structure, dependencies, quantifiers, etc) as a central topic and read and discuss state-of-the-art literature on this topic. Towards the end of block 1 students formulate a topical research question that they are going to investigate in block 2. Block 2 will then be dedicated to the students’ own research, supported by discussion of specific literature relevant to their research questions.
Course objectives
When you have completed this course you are able to:
Report and discuss orally and in writing on the most important questions, findings and theories in comparative syntactic research.
Use the most relevant methods and data collections for comparative research.
Carry out your own comparative syntactic research, including a presentation and writing of an essay.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Research
Literature study
Assessment method
paper and oral presentation of own research (80%)
presentation on an article (10%)
active participation (10%)
The final paper can be expanded to meet the Extra Requirement for Research Master students.
Resit
A resit is only possible for the paper.
Inspection and feedback
The students will receive feedback on their paper during the final presentation and can get more personal feedback upon request.
If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized
Reading list
Will be announced on Brightspace. Brightspace will be used for:
Course program and further information exchange
Assignments
Bibliography
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Registration Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats
Remarks
None.