Course outline

Institution: The University of Hong Kong, School of Humanities, Linguistics

Title: Grammatical description
Lecturers: Dr. Kofi Yakpo, John Guest, TAs: Elaine Lau, Jackie Lai
Code: Ling2050
Semester: 1, 2014- 2015
Time &Place: Tuesday, 1:30pm 3:20, Venue: CPD LG.07
Assessment: Your grade will be a weighted average of the grades received for your individual & group assignments

Session Session title Group assignments Reading assignment for the next class

(1) 2 Sep Introduction

(-) 9 Sep Mid-Autumn Festival
(2) 16 Sep Basic concepts in morphosyntax Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: 32-39

Additional:
vanvalin_syntax2001: section 1.2 (p. 6-13); yakpo_grammar-
pichi2009: section 8.6.5 (p.319-322); section 3.6 (p. 112-114);
dixon_linguistic-theory2010: section 3.3 (p. 102-106)

(3) 23 Sep Syntactic & lexical categories G1, G2 presentation Core:

tallermann_syntax2011: 46-50, 173-181, 190-201

Additional:
givon_syntax-voli2001: 3.1.3-3.1.4 (p. 106-109) & p. 173-180
vanvalin_syntax2001: 21-33

1
(4) 30 Sep Grammatical relations & semantic roles G3, G4 presentation Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: 108-117, 132-134, 143-148

Additional:
vanvalin_syntax2001: 86-92, 110-119; givon_syntax-voli2001:
section 3.2.1 (p. 110-114)

(5) 7 Oct Dependency relations & constituent structure G5, G6 presentation Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: 172-181

Additional:
payne_morphosyntax1997:71-88

(-) 14 Oct Reading Week Catch up on reading and read for coming sessions
(6) 21 Oct Constituent order & case relations G7, G8 presentation Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: section 2.3 (p. 46-56)

Additional;
payne_morphosyntax1997: 32-46; yakpo_grammar-pichi2009:
sections 6.4.1-6.4.2 (p.179-184)

(7) 28 Oct The nominal system G9, G10 presentation Core:

tallermann_syntax2011: 39-46, section 3.1.5 (p. 80-83)

Additional:
payne_morphosyntax1997: 233-248

2
(8) 4 Nov The verbal system G11, G12 presentation Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: 211-217, 229-233

Additional:
payne_morphosyntax1997: 169-177, 196-204; dixon_linguistic-
theory2010: section 13.1, 13.2

(9) 11 Nov Verb valency & transitivity G13, G14 presentation Core:
tallermann_syntax2011: 73-75; section 3.1.5, 243-251

Additional:
payne_morphosyntax1997: 306-320, 325-341

(10) 18 Nov The clause & clause linkage G15, G16 presentation Catch up on reading and prepare for in-class quiz
(11) 25 Nov In-class quiz Discussion of in-class quiz
immediately afterwards