Introduction to Linguistic Analysis
Code
711131044
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Linguística
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Ana Maria Lavadinho Madeira
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
This course, which has a strong practical component, aims to develop: a) the ability to adopt a descriptive, rather than normative, approach towards languages; b) the ability to identify regularities in a language system; c) the ability to identify languages units and their variants at each level of analysis; d) the ability to resort to introspection in order to make the knowledge of the language explicit.
By the end of the course, students should:
a)be able to distinguish descriptive and normative attitudes in linguistic analysis;
b)be able to identify different components of linguistic analysis, as well as the units in each component;
c)be able to identify different grammatical categories and distinguish category from function;
d)be familiar with and be able to apply different methodologies appropriate for the identification of language units at each level of analysis;
e)be able to create paradigms relevant to linguistic analysis;
f)have developed the ability to observe and compare different language systems;
g)be able to make explicit which language strings are possible and impossible in languages which they are familiar with;
h)be able to draw conclusions through the manipulation of linguistic data.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
1. Knowledge of language: language as a system and levels of linguistic analysis.
2. Linguistic analysis: different methodological approaches.
3. Speech sounds and sound structure.
4. Words.
4.1. Open and closed classes.
4.2. Word classes and subclasses: identification criteria.
4.3. Characterisation of word classes: nouns, determiners, quantifiers, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and prepositions.
5. Sentence structure: word order and relations among words.
5.1. The immediate and non-immediate constituents of the sentence; empirical constituency tests.
5.2 Predicates and argument selection.
5.3. Identification of syntactic functions.
5.4. Sentences and clauses: simple and complex sentences. Coordination and subordination.
5.5. Word orders: crosslinguistic comparisons.
Bibliography
Cunha, Celso & Luis Filipe Lindley Cintra (1984) Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, Lisboa: Ed. J. Sá da Costa.
Duarte, Inês (2000) Língua Portuguesa. Instrumentos de Análise. Lisboa: Universidade Aberta.
Eliseu, André (2008) Sintaxe do Português. Lisboa: Caminho.
Fromkin, Victoria, Rodney Rodman & Nina Hyams (2003) An Introduction to Language. Thomson & Wadsworth, 8ª ed.
Mateus, Maria Helena Mira et al (2003) Gramática da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Caminho, 5ª ed.
Teaching method
(a) Lectures
(b) Practical classes: practice exercises, problem resolution
(c) Take-home exercises
(d) Short assignments: description, manipulation and analysis of data
Evaluation method
(a) Three take-home exercise sets (20%)
(b) Short project on a topic covered in the syllabus (30%)
(c) Written test covering the whole of the syllabus (50%)